January 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with Danbooru2018 release announcement, links on genetic engineering, reinforcement learning, compression, and 3 book/movie reviews
This is the January 2019 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, December 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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Danbooru2018 released: a dataset of 3.33m anime images (2.5tb) with 92.7m descriptive tags
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Gwern.net CSS/JS changes courtesy of Obormot: implemented collapsible sections for hiding digressions/especially large sections, for more readable pages; more varied headers to convey the semantic hierarchy; added use of a lightweight subset of Source Serif Pro, as a better Baskerville font with real small caps; improved font selection on Macs; minimized MathJax library use, for faster loading
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“The Tragedy of Grand Admiral Thrawn” (why he had to be assassinated at the end of the Thrawn trilogy)
Media
Links
Genetics:
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Everything Is Heritable:
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“Repurposing large health insurance claims data to estimate genetic and environmental contributions in 560 phenotypes”, et al 2019 (56k twin pairs & 724k sibling pairs; see also 2016)
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“Multivariate genome-wide analyses of the well-being spectrum”, et al 2019
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“Identification of 12 genetic loci associated with human healthspan”, et al 2019
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“Genome-wide analysis reveals extensive genetic overlap between schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and intelligence”, et al 2019 (why is BPD only slightly negatively genetically correlated with IQ? lots of positive SNPs canceling out most of the negatives)
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“A global view of pleiotropy and genetic architecture in complex traits”, et al 2018
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“Genome wide meta-analysis identifies genomic relationships, novel loci, and pleiotropic mechanisms across eight psychiatric disorders”, PGC Cross-Disorder et al 2019
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“I Was a 4-Year-Old Trapped in a Teenager’s Body” (toxic masculinity: the devastating consequences of “familial male-limited precocious puberty”)
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Recent Evolution:
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“Highly Heritable and Functionally Relevant Breed Differences in Dog Behavior”, Macet al 2019; “Absolute brain size predicts dog breed differences in executive function”, et al 2019
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“An evolutionary compass for detecting signals of polygenic selection and mutational bias”, et al 2019 (long-term net selection for higher EA, lower BMI)
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“Cat of the Pharaohs: The African Wild Cat from Past to Present”, 1968 (short account of raising tamed African wild cats and their differences from domesticated cats; with cute photos)
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Engineering:
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“Livestock 2.0—genome editing for fitter, healthier, and more productive farmed animals”, Tait-et al 2018
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“Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field”, et al 2019
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“Super-Mendelian inheritance mediated by CRISPR-Cas9 in the female mouse germline”, et al 2019 ( media; gene drive demonstrated in mammals)
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“The Century-Long Scientific Journey of the Affordable Grocery Store Orchid”
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A short history of the idea of ‘iterated embryo selection’ (independently invented at least 4 times since 1998)
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“Linking a mutation to survival in wild mice”, et al 2019 ( media; reverse-engineering the response to selection in mice evolved in wild enclosures)
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AI:
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“AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II” (discussion; AmA)
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“Designing neural networks through neuroevolution”, et al 2019 (review of recent competition & crossover with DL/DRL)
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“Forecasting Transformative AI: An Expert Survey”, et al 2019 (ICML/IJCAI/HLAI conference surveys: substantial acceleration of AI timelines)
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“ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst”, et al 2018 (Google/Waymo on imitation learning for self-driving cars: RNNs for trajectory planning + prediction of object trajectories, works on test track; weak out of sample, as usual for imitation learning)
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“Measuring the Intrinsic Dimension of Objective Landscapes”, et al 2018 ( blog/video; measuring absolute difficulties of tasks: inverted pendulum, 4; MNIST, 290; Humanoid, 700; CIFAR-10, 2990; ALE Pong, 6000.)
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“2018 AI Alignment Literature Review and Charity Comparison”
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Ganbreeder “Featured Images” (Ganbreeder has been upgraded to 512px BigGAN, 2x upscaling using
waifu2x
, accounts to save images, best-of gallery; deliciously uncanny)
Statistics/Meta-Science:
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“Notes on a New Philosophy of Empirical Science”, 2011 (the ‘compression as inference’ paradigm of intelligence for application to science; stupid
gzip
tricks, 2006; stupidzpaq
tricks withpaqclass
); also works for RL -
“The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use”, 2019 (SCA: brute-forcing the ‘garden of forking paths’ to examine robustness of results—the poor man’s Bayesian model comparison)
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“ActiveRemediation: The Search for Lead Pipes in Flint, Michigan”, et al 2018 (optimal search problem; efficient approach abandoned due to local politics)
Politics/religion:
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“Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”, Tom Wolfe 1970 (the Western activist ecosystem)
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“Those Who Stayed: Individualism, Self-Selection and Cultural Change during the Age of Mass Migration”, 2019 (potentially genetic)
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“Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System”, Donella 1999 (systems analysis)
Psychology/biology:
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“Doing Despite Disliking: Self-regulatory Strategies in Everyday Aversive Activities”, et al 2018
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The boy who convinced his friend to murder him via false online identities
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“Self-management of Fatal Familial Insomnia. Part 2: Case Report”, 2006 (a remarkable case-study of one man’s efforts to control his sleep & stave off death, allowing him to report interesting hallucinations from the end-stage; background: “One Couple’s Tireless Crusade to Stop a Genetic Killer: When Sonia Vallabh lost her mother to a rare disease, she and her husband, Eric Minikel, set out to find a cure”)
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“How Do People Communicate Before Death? Insights into the little-studied realm of last words” (who by slow decay…)
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“Marijuana intoxication in a cat”, et al 2018
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The Asian giant hornet (anti-hornet defense mechanisms are interesting)
Technology:
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“Construction of arbitrarily strong amplifiers of natural selection using evolutionary graph theory”, et al 2018 (creating subpopulations with topologies designed for much more efficient natural selection—implications for evolutionary RL or online ‘plazas and warrens’-style community design?)
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“TV or not TV? The Impact of Subtitling on English Skills”, et al 2018 (every Scandinavian I’ve asked agrees that subtitling helped them learn English; it’s also interesting that one’s comfort seems to depend on growing up with it—my normal-hearing siblings grew up with subtitles because of me, and now say they prefer subtitles)
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Advice: “Photograph Your Work” (HN)
Economics:
Philosophy:
Fiction:
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“Giant Killer”, A. Bertram Chandler (Astounding, 1946; a cross between Shin Sekai Yori/Watership Down)
Misc:
Books
Nonfiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
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The Dark Knight Rises (2012; bombastic & unconvincing sequel. The only thing more boring than the poorly-reheated French Revolution shtick are the fights between Bane & Batman and the unconvincing twist at the end.)
Animated:
Music
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“いつかの空の下で” (VALLEYSTONE feat. 空音; デジウィ NEXT {R15}) [electronic]
MLP:
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“Going Far” (Jyc Row & PegasYs feat. Michelle Creber; Jyc Row Orchestral Compilation Vol. 3—SOLAR {2018}) [rock]
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“Sunshine and Celery Stalks” (PinkiePieSwear; PPS 2011 {2011}) [electronic]
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“Embraced By The Fields of The Lagalume” (Lectoblix; The Night Shall Last Forever {2015}) [ambient]
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“A Pale Lit Sanctuary” (Lectoblix; The Night Shall Last Forever {2015}) [metal]