--- title: July 2018 News description: July 2018 Gwern.net newsletter with links on genetics, RL, true crime, tech economics, and 4 book reviews created: 2018-05-01 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2018/06 next: /newsletter/2018/08 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... This is the July 2018 edition of [the Gwern.net newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013"); previous, [June](/newsletter/2018/06 "'June 2018 News', Branwen 2018") 2018 ([archives](/doc/newsletter/index)). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my [Changelog](/changelog); brought to you by my donors on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/gwern). This month I'd like to particularly thank my 2 anonymous donors, who gave \$20,000. # Writings - Nothing completed # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies"](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1801238115), Belsky et al 2018a (Incredible followup to [Belsky et al 2016](/doc/genetics/heritable/correlation/2016-belsky.pdf "The Genetics of Success: How Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Associated With Educational Attainment Relate to Life-Course Development")) - IQ GWASes beyond [Lee et al 2018](/doc/iq/2018-lee.pdf "Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a GWAS of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals"): ["Polygenic scores predict >9% of variance in IQ and >15% of variance in educational attainment at age 16. `#bga2018`"](https://twitter.com/kph3k/status/1009875245900156928) (_r_ = 0.30/0.39 respectively; this appears to have been a preview of [Allegrini et al 2018](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/418210.full "Genomic prediction of cognitive traits in childhood and adolescence").) - ["The Nature of Nurture: Using a Virtual-Parent Design to Test Parenting Effects on Children’s Educational Attainment in Genotyped Families"](/doc/genetics/heritable/2018-bates.pdf), Bates et al 2018 ([Kong et al 2018's](/doc/genetics/heritable/2018-kong.pdf "The nature of nurture: Effects of parental genotypes") nature-of-nurture seems to be mostly operating through causing parental SES) - ["A Chinese province is sequencing 1 million of its residents' genomes" in 4 years](https://futurism.com/neoscope/chinese-province-sequencing-1-million-residents-genomes); ["Gigantic study of Chinese babies yields slew of health data"](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05522-1 "Early results from birth-cohort have public-health implications, as other groups use the data to investigate the microbiome and mental health") (the Born in Guangzhou Cohort Study: _n_ = 33k, increasing to _n_ = 50k by 2020) - ["Modeling functional enrichment improves polygenic prediction accuracy in UK Biobank and 23andMe data sets"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/375337.full), Marquez-Luna et al 2018 (Informative priors for Bayesian GWAS leads to a new height PGS record, 42% of variance---+2% from Lello et al 2017's lasso) - ["GWAS Round 2"](https://www.nealelab.is/uk-biobank) (New public release of UK Biobank GWASes/PGSes: 2,419→4,203 trait PGSes, with sex-stratified versions.) - ["Polygenic risk scores applied to a single cohort reveal pleiotropy among hundreds of human phenotypes"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/203257.full), Socrates et al 2017 (everything is correlated; [supplement w/full heatmaps](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/suppl/2017/10/14/203257.DC1/203257-1.pdf#page=1)) - ["Elucidating the genetic basis of social interaction and isolation"](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04930-1), Day et al 2018 - ["Genomic underpinnings of lifespan allow prediction and reveal basis in modern risks"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/363036.full), Timmers et al 2018 - ["Critical Need for Family-Based, Quasi-Experimental Designs in Integrating Genetic and Social Science Research"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3778076/ "'Critical need for family-based, quasi-experimental designs in integrating genetic and social science research', D’Onofrio et al 2013"), D'Onofrio et al 2013 (Correlation≠causation: many "maternal smoking effects" are simply genetic or family-level confounds.) - ["Genetics & the Geography of Health, Behavior, and Attainment"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/376897.full "'Genetics & the Geography of Health, Behavior, and Attainment', Belsky et al 2018"){#belsky-et-al-2018-2}, Belsky et al 2018b - [Whole-genome sequencing hits a new low: \$350](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dante-labs-offers-349-whole-genome-sequencing-on-amazon-prime-day-300681487.html "Dante Labs Offers $349 Whole Genome Sequencing on Amazon Prime Day") - ["Genealogists Turn to Cousins' DNA and Family Trees to Crack Five More Cold Cases"](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/science/dna-family-trees-cold-cases.html) - [Recent Evolution]{.smallcaps}: - ["Genome-wide association analyses identify 143 risk variants and putative regulatory mechanisms for type 2 diabetes"](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04951-w), Xue et al 2018 (selection against diabetes risk alleles) - ["Darwinian positive selection on the pleiotropic effects of KITLG explain skin pigmentation and winter temperature adaptation in Eurasians"](/doc/genetics/selection/2018-yang.pdf), Yang et al 2018 - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - ["Genomic Selection in Dairy Cattle: The USDA Experience"](/doc/genetics/selection/artificial/index-selection/2017-wiggans.pdf), Wiggans et al 2017 (What has marker-assisted selection done for us *lately*? It's "doubled the rate of genetic progress for traits of economic importance, decreased generation interval, increased selection accuracy, reduced previous costs of progeny testing, and allowed identification of recessive lethals." [Figure 1](/doc/genetics/heritable/correlation/2017-wiggans-dairyselection-figure1-genotypingincreasesince2009.png "Number of genotyped animals included in the US genomic evaluations for dairy cattle since January 2009"){.invert}/[Table 4](/doc/genetics/heritable/correlation/2017-wiggans-dairyselection-table4-predictionaccuracyincreases.png "Increases in reliability of US genetic evaluations of Holsteins from including genomic information [31 traits]"){.invert}/[Figure 5](/doc/genetics/heritable/correlation/2017-wiggans-dairyselection-figure5-increasingeconomicvalue.png "Net merit in April 2015 of marketed US Holstein bulls that entered artificial-insemination service in 2000 and later [showing doubling of annual increases due to genomic selection]"){.invert}.) **AI**: - [Google Waymo's Arizona self-driving car program after 1 year](https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-early-rider-program-one-year-in-3a788f995a9c); ["Inside the Life of the World's First Self-Driving Teen"](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-31/inside-the-life-of-waymo-s-driverless-test-family) (>400 daily riders, >39k kilometers daily; no fatalities or major injuries) - [Dactyl: "Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.00177#openai "'Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation', OpenAI et al 2018"), OpenAI 2018 ([blog](https://openai.com/research/learning-dexterity "Learning Dexterity"); videos: [1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwSbzNHGflM#openai)/[2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKe8FumoD4E#openai); PPO-LSTM+domain-randomization in MuJoCo/Unity for sim2real transfer in a robotic hand grasper---nothing really new here but it is yet another demonstration of what brute force + systems engineering can do with existing DRL.) - ["Large-Scale Visual Speech Recognition"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.05162), Shillingford et al 2018 (New SOTA for lipreading) - ["Adversarial Reprogramming of Neural Networks"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.11146), Elsayed et al 2018 (NNs as ["weird machines"](/turing-complete "'Surprisingly Turing-Complete', Branwen 2012")) - ["The challenge of realistic music generation: modelling raw audio at scale"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.10474#deepmind), Dieleman et al 2018 (WaveNet [samples](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NY3MTkOSodz_5eCkjtoHUGYSulR25QGU); getting surprisingly good and starting to pick up rhythm/melody) - [RL sample-efficiency progress]{.smallcaps}: - ["Deep Reinforcement Learning in a Handful of Trials using Probabilistic Dynamics Models"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.12114), Chua et al 2018 - ["Model-Ensemble Trust-Region Policy Optimization"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.10592), Kurutach et al 2018 - ["Sample-Efficient Deep RL with Generative Adversarial Tree Search"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05780 "'Surprising Negative Results for Generative Adversarial Tree Search', Azizzadenesheli et al 2018"), Azizzadenesheli et al 2018 - ["Learning Real-World Robot Policies by Dreaming"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.07813), Piergiovanni et al 2018 - ["RUDDER: Return Decomposition for Delayed Rewards"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07857), Arjona-Medina et al 2018 - ["General Value Function Networks"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.06763), Schlegel et al 2018 - ["Adversarial Exploration Strategy for Self-Supervised Imitation Learning"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.10019 "'Adversarial Active Exploration for Inverse Dynamics Model Learning', Hong et al 2018"), Hong et al 2018 - ["The Sound of Pixels"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.03160), Zhao et al 2018 ([samples](http://sound-of-pixels.csail.mit.edu/); I can't believe this works) - ["How to Fix Reinforcement Learning"](https://thegradient.pub/how-to-fix-rl/) (meta-learning) - [Danbooru2017](/danbooru2021#danbooru2017 "A Large-Scale Crowdsourced and Tagged Anime Illustration Dataset") is [now on Kaggle](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/mylesoneill/tagged-anime-illustrations/home) (a version of the SFW subset---_n_ = 300k tagged anime images---is now available on Kaggle, which should be convenient for people in that ecosystem) **Statistics/Meta-Science**: - ["_p_-Hacking and False Discovery in A/B Testing"](/doc/statistics/decision/2018-berman.pdf), Berman et al 2018 (Informative priors: Internet A/B tests are >70% testing null effects.) - ["Validating Teacher Effects On Students' Attitudes And Behaviors: Evidence From Random Assignment Of Teachers To Students"](/doc/statistics/causality/2017-blazar.pdf), Blazar 2017 ([How often](/correlation "'How Often Does Correlation=Causality?', Branwen 2014") does correlation=causation? 1 of 4 education measures' teacher correlation w/grades is near-identical with the causal effect, 2 moderately biased, and 1 severely misleading.) - ["Sex matters in experiments on party drug---in mice: Ketamine lifts rodents' mood only if administered by male researchers"](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.23022) (A reminder of why you can't take [animal experiments](/replication#animal-models "'The Replication Crisis: Flaws in Mainstream Science § Animal models', Branwen 2010") too seriously.) - ["22 Case Studies Where Phase 2 and Phase 3 Trials had Divergent Results"](https://www.fda.gov/media/102332/download), FDA 2017 (Small study biases) **Politics/religion**: - ["The Origins of WEIRD Psychology"](https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/d6qhu/), Schulz et al 2018 - ["The Cynical Genius Illusion: Exploring and Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism and Competence"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146167218783195), Stavrova & Ehlebracht 2018 - ["Is Affirmative Action Doomed?"](https://newrepublic.com/article/73772/affirmative-action-doomed) **Psychology/biology**: - ["Effects of the Tennessee Prekindergarten Program on children's achievement and behavior through third grade"](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0885200618300279), Lipsey et al 2018 (fadeout of initial benefits and evidence of harm; [the Iron Law](/doc/sociology/1987-rossi "'The Iron Law Of Evaluation And Other Metallic Rules', Rossi 2012") strikes again) - ["Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused"](/doc/iq/2018-bratsberg.pdf), Bratsberg & Rogeberg 2018 ([supplement](https://www.pnas.org/doi/suppl/10.1073/pnas.1718793115/suppl_file/pnas.1718793115.sapp.pdf); more on the anti-Flynn effect in Norway operating since the mid-1970s) - ["Senolytics improve physical function and increase lifespan in old age"](/doc/longevity/senolytic/2018-xu.pdf), Xu et al 2018 ([Dasatinib](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasatinib)+[quercetin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercetin) senolytics reduce mortality in old mice; interestingly, transplanting even tiny numbers of senescent cells into young mice appears to cause systemic harm.) - ["A comprehensive meta-analysis of the predictive validity of the Graduate Record Examinations: Implications for graduate student selection and performance"](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5c69/875be977c1de9392dd8392937ebbf606dd18.pdf), Kuncel et al 2001 - ["Augmenting Long-term Memory" With Spaced Repetition](https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html) (Michael Nielsen) - ["Melatonin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know"](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/), Scott Alexander - ["The high abortion cost of human reproduction"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/372193.full), Rice 2018 (This is the trolliest paper I've seen in a while.) - ["Placebo Effects on the Neurological Pain Signature: A Meta-analysis of Individual Participant Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data"](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2694717), Zunhammer et al 2018 (Placebo effects are tiny on objective neural correlates of pain.) **Technology**: - ["Ice Poseidon's Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/ice-poseidons-lucrative-stressful-life-as-a-live-streamer) - ["_StarCraft II_: How Blizzard Brought the King of E-sports Back From the Dead"](https://variety.com/2018/gaming/features/starcraft-ii-esports-history-1202873246/) (E-sports is more popular than ever; but what happened to the original e-sports, SC? Quite a bit.) - ["Resistant protocols: How decentralization evolves"](/doc/technology/2018-07-25-johnbackus-howdecentralizationevolves.html) (John Backus) **Economics**: - ["How E-Commerce Is Transforming Rural China"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/how-e-commerce-is-transforming-rural-china) - ["The Strange History of the 'King-Pine'"](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/25/the-strange-history-of-the-king-pine/) - [Myhrvold's patent troll funds suffering enormous losses](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2018/06/01/after-10-years-nathan-myhrvolds-3-billion-of-private-equity-funds-show-big-losses/ "After 10 Years, Nathan Myhrvold's $3 Billion Of Private Equity Funds Show Big Losses") (karma) - ["Hunting the Con Queen of Hollywood: Who's the 'Crazy Evil Genius' Behind a Global Racket?"](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hunting-con-queen-hollywood-1125932/) - ["How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game and Stole Millions"](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-an-ex-cop-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-millions) - ["How to spot a perfect fake: the world's top art forgery detective"](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/15/how-to-spot-a-perfect-fake-the-worlds-top-art-forgery-detective) **Philosophy**: - ["Last Call: A Buddhist monk confronts Japan's suicide culture"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/last-call-3) (how to do good well?) - ["Complicity, crime and conjoined twins"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1037969X17694787), Davis 2017 **Fiction**: - _Tale of an Industrious Rogue_: ["Part I"](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I)/[II](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_II)/[III](https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_III), by Kroft (A [D&D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_and_Dragons) campaign in which humble salt traders eventually wind up destroying the world.) - ["Welcome to Armageddon!"](https://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/64/lucas.php) - ["Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex"](https://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html), Larry Niven ## Books **Nonfiction**: - [_Intellectual Talent: Research and Development_](/doc/iq/high/smpy/1976-keating-intellectualtalentresearchanddevelopment.pdf), ed Keating 1976; [_Mathematical Talent: Discovery, description, and development_](/doc/iq/high/smpy/1974-stanley-mathematicaltalentdiscoverydescriptiondevelopment.pdf), ed Stanley 1974 (early [SMPY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Precocious_Youth) anthologies, recording the early results of the talent search and the immediate success of accelerating gifted students into Johns Hopkins college, the overall health of the participants, and SMPY's unsuccessful struggle to get rid of the male overrepresentation at their extreme of math scores) - [_Hanging Out with the Dream King: Conversations with Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators_](https://www.amazon.com/Hanging-Out-Dream-King-Collaborators/dp/1560976179), ed. McCabe 2005 ([review](/review/book#hanging-out-with-the-dream-king-mccabe-2005)) **Fiction**: - [_Three Parts Dead_](https://www.amazon.com/Three-Parts-Dead-Craft-Sequence/dp/0765333112) (Craft Sequence #1), [Gladstone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Gladstone) 2012 (urban fantasy, sold to me as being unusually legal and economic-themed; not bad, but those aspects turn out to be minimal, arguably less than, say, [_Spice and Wolf_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_and_Wolf), and some parts are a little derivative---[City of Doors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_\(Dungeons_%26_Dragons\)), anyone? I was a little more intrigued by the overall worldbuilding, with a geopolitical order polarized between upstart immortal human mage-kings seizing power with magic-science, and retrenched old gods.) - _The Japanese Family Storehouse, or, The Millionaire's Gospel Modernised_, [Saikaku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihara_Saikaku) 1688, trans. Sargent ([review](/review/book#the-japanese-family-storehouse-ihara-1959)) ## Music **Touhou**: - ["aquamarine"](https://www.bilibili.com/video/av7363832/) (AnayamaSoh; _Have A GoodTrip._ {M3-38}) [house]