November 2018 News
November 2018 Gwern.net newsletter with links on genetics, CRISPR, political change, oil; 1 book and 1 movie review.
This is the November 2018 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, October 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
Cat Sense, 2013: Are We Good Owners? (on cat psychology, genetics, domestication, & dysgenics)
Embryo selection analyses: FAQ, multi-stage selection, chromosome/
gamete selection , optimal search of batches, & robustness to error in utility weights“Urban Area Cost-of-Living as Big Tech Moats & Employee Golden Handcuffs” (speculations on Bay Area real estate & SV’s future)
Media
Links
Genetics:
Everything Is Heritable:
“Post-genomic behavioral genetics: From revolution to routine”, et al 2017
“Using genetics to examine a general liability to childhood psychopathology”, et al 2018 (if the ‘autism’ PGS is real & correlates with IQ, why doesn’t it correlate with other psychiatric disorders like it should?)
“Trans-ancestral GWAS of alcohol dependence reveals common genetic underpinnings with psychiatric disorder”, et al 2018
“A newly discovered tea plant is caffeine-free”: et al 2018 (towards drinkable decaf tea?)
the betas will continue until morale improves: Veritas 30x WGS $200 sale; Ancestry.com hits n > 14m; Ireland to WGS 10% of population
Recent Evolution:
“Neutral Theory of Evolution Challenged by Evidence for DNA Selection”
“Polygenicity of complex traits is explained by negative selection”, et al 2018
“Feral Cats: Their Role in the Population Dynamics of Felis catus”, et al 1999 (dysgenics on cat domestication?)
“The dumbo rat mutation and human analogues” (a pleiotropic mutation for domesticity in pet rats? cf. foxes/
domestication syndrome) “Assortative Mating, Class, and Caste”, 2015; “Some Uses of Models of Quantitative Genetic Selection in Social Science”, 2017
Engineering:
“Chinese researcher claims first gene-edited babies”; “Gene-editing Chinese scientist kept much of his work secret”; “Amid uproar, Chinese scientist defends creating gene-edited babies”; “The first CRISPRed babies are here, what’s next? 1. Develop international policy. 2. Communicate responsibly. 3. Recognize that editing is here to stay. 4. A global, collaborative project to edit”
“Despite CRISPR baby controversy, Harvard University will begin gene-editing sperm”
“Embryo Biopsies for Genomic Selection”, 2018 (embryo selection is being applied to Holstein cattle)
“Is Continued Genetic Improvement of Livestock Sustainable?”, 2016 (yes)
“One Hundred Years of Statistical Developments in Animal Breeding”, 2015
AI:
“Reward learning from human preferences and demonstrations in Atari”, et al 2018
“Prediction of cardiovascular risk factors from retinal fundus photographs via deep learning”, et al 2018 (age/
gender/ smoking/ blood pressure/ diabetes/ heart attacks—predicted from eye photographs using CNNs) Style2Paints NN: V4 now released (paper for V3; multiple layers of anime lineart coloring now supported: flat colors, then adding lines, then color gradients/
shading, then illumination. Uses Danbooru2017 for training data via data-augmentation/ corruption to train recoloring. Discussion: 1/ 2/ Twitter) “Bonsai: Resource-efficient Machine Learning in 2KB RAM for the Internet of Things”, et al 2017
“Towards Deep Modeling of Music Semantics using EEG Regularizers”, et al 2017
“Neural Population Control via Deep Image Synthesis”, et al 2018 (towards human adversarial examples?)
“Can computer science algorithms show us how to live better, or is that a false hope?” (a discussion with Brian Christian of Algorithms to Live By: explore vs exploit, optimal stopping, simulated annealing)
Statistics/
“Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation in Replicability Across Sample and Setting”, et al 2018 (28 targets, k = 60, n = 7000 each, Registered Reports: 14⁄28 replication rate w/
few moderators/ country differences & remarkably low heterogeneity) Eva Vivalt on development economics & charities (high variance in development study effects of ±100% in replications, expert elicitation of study quality & informative priors, publication bias/
p-hacking) “A Star Surgeon Left a Trail of Dead Patients—and His Whistleblowers Were Punished” (organizational incentives & science)
“How Facebook and Twitter could be the next disruptive force in clinical trials”
“Causal Inference Animated Plots” in R (animations of: “Controlling for a Variable, Matching on a Variable, Instrumental Variables, Fixed Effects, Difference-in-Difference, & Regression Discontinuity.”)
“Five-Year Follow-up of Antibiotic Therapy for Uncomplicated Acute Appendicitis in the APPAC Randomized Clinical Trial”, et al 2018 (media; most appendicitis surgeries unnecessary—the question is never whether running an RCT is ethical, the question is how can not running it possibly be ethical?)
Politics/
“Dagger and Swagger: The History of Russian Terrorism” (revolutionary terror and literature; see also “Toward a [J-curve] theory of revolution”, 1962)
“How the GOP Gave Up on Porn”; “Legalizing Marijuana and Gay Marriage Seemed Impossible—but losing taught libertarians how to win” (postmortems)
“How We All Failed In Performance Contracting”, 1972 (social impact bonds before social impact bonds: killed by failure in one of the largest education randomized experiments ever run—6 contractors, 18 school districts, and 25,000 students)
Synanon: “Shaved Heads, Snipped Tubes, Imperial Marines, and Dope Fiends” (the 1960s ex-AA drug rehab program that became a cult)
“Names for the Nameless”, 1980 (Biblical fanfiction)
“When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life” (see also “Sort By Controversial”: a Halloween Tale)
Psychology/
“Cognitive differences between orangutan species: a test of the cultural intelligence hypothesis”, et al 2016
“Discovery of volatile biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease from sebum”, et al 2018 (what other diseases could be smelt?)
“Your personality data can do more: Items provide leverage for explaining the variance and co-variance of life outcomes”, et al 2018 (lasso on NEO-PI inventory items outperforms the latent Big Five scores)
Technology:
“The Epic Saga of The Well” (early forums: offline meetups, SJWs, stalkers, marriages)
“Ancient Industrial Machinery” (on Roman technology)
“How to Win Founders and Influence Everybody” (hidden female networkers in Silicon Valley: the case of Margit Wennmachers)
“The Time Capsule That’s as Big as Human History” (the crowdsourced MOM ceramic tablet archive in a German salt mine)
“In Japan, the Kit Kat Isn’t Just a Chocolate. It’s an Obsession.”
Economics:
“Fuel to the Fire: How a US biofuel law intended to reduce dependence on fossil fuels has unleashed an environmental disaster in Indonesia” (“This was what an American effort to save the planet looked like. It was startlingly efficient, extremely profitable and utterly disastrous.”); “An (Even More) Inconvenient Truth Why Carbon Credits For Forest Preservation May Be Worse Than Nothing” (fraudulent or useless carbon offsets)
“Mexico’s Drug Cartels Are Moving Into the Gasoline Industry”
“Knitting Community: Human and Social Capital in the Early Transition into Entrepreneurship”, 2018 (quantifying social contagion/
peer-effects of innovation: knitting groups & novel knitting designs on Ravelry) “Toward an Understanding of Learning by Doing: Evidence from an Automobile Assembly Plant”, et al 2013
How Hollywood lobbying & Congress retroactively banned movie prediction markets
“Stories From the Neopets Economy” (on inflation/
monetary policy, conspicuous consumption, arbitrage, & transaction costs) Silk Road 1: ground-truth drug sale data (2011-02-06–2013-10-0212ya, GX-940)
Philosophy:
“Words”, 2010 (language & abstraction: a deaf adult learning what words are for the first time; brain damage causing enlightenment, see also 2013; <6yo children unable to understand directions like “left of the blue wall”)
Fiction:
“The Hours: How Christian Marclay created the ultimate digital mosaic” (the making of The Clock, a 24h supercut; watching it: 1/
2) “Time War //
Briefing for Neolemurian Agents” , Yves Cross“Imperialism, Translation, Gunbuster”: “Introduction”/
“Episode One”/ “Episode Two—NSFW”/ “Episode Three”/ “Episode Four”/ “Episode Five”/ “Episode Six” (nationalist subtexts in Gainax anime) “No Reservations: Narnia” (media; Anthony Bourdain does Narnia)
Books
Nonfiction:
Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet, 2013 (review)
Well-Played 3.0, ed 2011 (good: “And if You Go Chasing Rabbits: The Inner Demons of American McGee’s Alice”; “The Neverhood; A Different Kind of Never Never Land. You Had Me at Claymation”; “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves—Becoming a Hero”; “The World Ends With You”; “The Opposite of Accessible: Street Fighter IV”; “Siren is the Scariest Game Ever Made”)
Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning, ed 2010 (good: “Cloudmaker Days: A Memoir of the AI [ARG] Game”; “Resident Evil 4: The Mercenaries Mini-Game”; “Galcon”)
Well Played vol 4 no 1, ed 2015 (good: “Cause No Trouble: The Experience of”Serious Fun” in Papers, Please”)
Film/TV
Live-action:
Music
MLP:
“Wandering Eyes” (4everfreebrony; {2018}) [acoustic]
“Rainbow Drum Guitar Violins Cover” (Koron Korak; {2018}) [instrumental rock]
“Onward” (Jyc Row feat. Aloma Steele {2017}) [rock]
“A Kirin Tale” (Daniel Ingram feat. Rachel Bloom; S8E23 {2018}) [musical]
“Synthwave Lullaby” (Lorris {2018}) [synthwave/
trance]