March 2018 News
March 2018 Gwern.net newsletter with links on genetics, RL, politics, Uber, 2 book reviews, and 2 movie/anime reviews
This is the March 2018 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, February 2018 (archives). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my Changelog; brought to you by my donors on Patreon.
Writings
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nothing completed
Media
Links
Genetics:
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Everything Is Heritable:
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“Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for height and body mass index in ~700,000 individuals of European ancestry”, et al 2018 ( PGS: 34.7% height, 10.3% BMI)
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“A Polygenic Score for Higher Educational Attainment is Associated with Larger Brains”, et al 2018 (confirmation of previous genetic correlations)
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“Measuring and Estimating the Effect Sizes of Copy Number Variants on General Intelligence in Community-Based Samples”, et al 2018 (On average, even healthy people carry at least 1 harmful CNV costing them >1 IQ points.)
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“A polygenic P factor for major psychiatric disorders”, et al 2018 ( likewise unsurprising)
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“Phenotype risk scores identify patients with unrecognized Mendelian disease patterns”, et al 2018 ( media; mutation load is much higher than we thought: the population burden of Mendelian disease may be >4x larger than previously estimated)
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“Relationships between estimated autozygosity and complex traits in the UK Biobank”, et al 2018 (Inbreeding harm for: fluid intelligence, lung function, & risk of early first sex.)
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“Differences in exam performance between pupils attending selective and non-selective schools mirror the genetic differences between them”, Smith-et al 2018 ( media)
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“Mixed model association for biobank-scale data sets”, et al 2018 (Attacks only get better: “…the total number of independent GWAS loci detected increased from 5,839 to 10,759, an 84% increase”)
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“Quantitative analysis of population-scale family trees with millions of relatives [n = 13m]”, et al 2018 ( Background; What’s interesting is the total absence of non-additive genetics despite a trait like longevity being the combination of all diseases/health variables.)
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“A genetic perspective on the relationship between eudaemonic- and hedonic well-being”, 2018 (amusing)
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“A Human Chimera” (the photos are remarkable)
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Engineering:
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Recent Evolution: “Novel susceptibility loci and genetic regulation mechanisms for type 2 diabetes”, et al 2018
AI:
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“World Models: Can agents learn inside their own dreams?”, 2018 (Planning & learning in deep environment models; in-browser JS demos for Car Racing/ViZDoom!)
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“Bayesian Optimization for a Better Dessert”, et al 2017 (Chocolate chip cookie design via ML)
Politics/religion:
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“The Struggle to Build a Massive ‘Biobank’ of Patient Data” (On the failure of the NIH biobank project: ‘diversity’ and ‘medical ethics’ are why we can’t have nice things.)
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“Randomizing Religion: The Impact of Protestant Evangelism on Economic Outcomes”, et al 2018 (How beneficial is religion to individuals?)
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“From the Concept of Totipotency to Biofortified Cereals”, 2015 (The Golden Rice ordeal)
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PredictIt Trump trading: “The Wolves of K Street” (though negative, it should be praising the traders for not being mindkilled & informing the rest of us; I check PredictIt regularly to cut through hype.)
Psychology/biology:
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“3.4 million real-world learning management system logins reveal the majority of students experience social jet lag correlated with decreased performance”, 2018 (Non-early owl chronotypes still hurt performance in college.)
Technology:
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“A Cyberattack in Saudi Arabia Had a Deadly Goal. Experts Fear Another Try.” (How big is your TCB, actually? “Don’t worry, our chemical plant has mechanisms designed to make it provably physically impossible to endanger it by hacking computers!” “OK. And where did you get those mechanisms’ blueprints?” “From a… computer.” “I see.” The CAD machines tell such elegant lines…)
Economics:
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“Taxi Industry Regulation, Deregulation, and Reregulation: The Paradox of Market Failure”, Dempsey 199628ya (after using Uber for 2 weeks to get around SF, I’m impressed how elegantly & effectively the ridesharing system of smartphones+GPSes+two-sided marketplace solves all the historical problems which caused taxis to be regulated (and then degenerate into rent-seeking regulatory capture).)
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“Planning Order, Causing Chaos: Transantiago”, Munger 200816ya (Chile’s experience with replacing a privatized highly competitive bus system with a government-run one.)
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“Resetting the Urban Network: 117–2012 AD”, 2016 (You might say this is an example of the costs of a… legacy architecture.)
Fiction:
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“Been A Long, Long Time” (R. A. Lafferty, 197054ya; infinite-monkeys theorem)
Books
Nonfiction:
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McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, 2015 (review; see also Low Aptitude Men in the Military: Who Profits, Who Pays?, Laurence & Ramsberger 199133ya.)
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Zen Koans, Kubose 197351ya (a fairly comprehensive collection going beyond the standard ones, accompanied by some nice commentaries & sumi-e illustrations)
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Japan As Number One: Lessons for America, Vogel 197945ya (review)
Film/TV
Live-action:
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Moulin Rouge! (clever but ultimately overly melodramatic; I wished it had kept more to comedy since I felt checked out by the end)
Animated: