February 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with 2 essays/projects, site improvements; links on genetics, AI, propaganda, and typography; and 1 opera review.
This is the February 2019 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, January 2019 (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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“This Waifu Does Not Exist (TWDNE)” (background & implementation; how to train your own StyleGAN)
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Gwern.net CSS/HTML/JS changes: click-to-zoom images (using
image-focus.js
); headers are now self-links; Tufte CSS-style epigraph support; Table of Contents: Wikipedia-style section numbering, margin & size tweaks, lightweight subset of Source Sans Pro (for Mac users); nicer diamond list icons; sleeker sidebar (especially nice on mobile); PDF/internal/section links are now annotated with icons; borders on tables, image figures, and blockquotes; old-style numerals in text & tabular numerals in tables; justified text (but not in Chrome due to decade-old lack of hyphenation); narrowed maximum body-width in characters & made line-height responsive to body-width (hopefully addresses the perennial complaints that pages are always too wide/too narrow/lines too close); quote highlighting disabled by default; collapsible code-blocks; inline smallcaps support; optimized SVG logo & favicon; page-specific CSS overrides enabled; list paragraph bugs in Pandoc fixed; compressed JPEGs; changed code syntax-highlighting scheme to match overall esthetics better; miscellaneous responsive design/mobile improvements-
image-focus.js
(JS): release of new, correct, lightweight, dependency-free JS library written by Obormot for implementing “click to zoom” on images (useful for large images/graphs)
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Media
Links
Genetics:
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Everything Is Heritable:
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“Genetics and Crime: Integrating New Genomic Discoveries Into Psychological Research About Antisocial Behavior”, et al 2018 (IQ/EDU PGS predicts juvenile delinquency & crime; previously: et al 2016 /et al 2017 /et al 2018 )1
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“Predicting educational achievement from genomic measures and socioeconomic status”, von et al 2019
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Recent Evolution:
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Engineering:
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“The Death of a Dreamer—Austen Heinz and Cambrian Genomics” (what happened to an early genome synthesis pioneer)
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“The DIY designer baby project funded with Bitcoin: Cryptocurrency, biohacking, and the fantastic plan for transgenic humans” (Bryan Bishop’s startup for genetic editing of human embryos/sperm)
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AI:
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“Better Language Models and Their Implications”, OpenAI (GPT-2, a 10× larger Transformer model than before w/unsupervised learning on 40GB text leads to large gains on natural language generation & high performance on untrained NLP tasks: “Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners”, et al 2019. Worth pondering: GPT-2 costs only ~$43k raw compute and is not even fully trained (pg4); OA could afford to scale it 100×, which is still cheaper than their OA5 project. If GPT-2 is this good now, what does it look like scaled further, with improvements like limited recurrency?)
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“Real-time Continuous Transcription with Live Transcribe”/“Making audio more accessible with two new apps” (NN-powered Android app for live speech-to-text transcription, piloted at Gallaudet University for the deaf; great news for the hard-of-hearing too)
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StyleGAN source code & models released (I immediately applied it to create TWDNE)
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Entendrepreneur: a “Portmanteau & Rhyme Generator” using word embeddings, 2018 (SSC, HN; examples: “cat+rationality=mewtilitarian”; “computer+animation=miyazakistroke”; “the mapping of cats”: “geografeline”; see also “Alpha”)
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ProGAN generation of 128px anime faces, results (~3 weeks training on Danbooru2017)
Statistics/Meta-Science:
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“Most Rigorous Large-Scale Educational RCTs are Uninformative: Should We Be Concerned?”, Lortie-2019 (the metallic laws strike again)
Politics/religion:
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“The Real War 1939–1945”, Paul 1989 (“…he watched in disbelief while fat maggots tumbled out of his muddy dungaree pockets, cartridge belt, legging lacings…too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans”)
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“Land lotteries, long-term wealth, and political selection”, 2019
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“Nggwal, who travels in structures of fiber and bone atop rivers of blood.”
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“Taxes, Lawyers, and the Decline of Witch Trials in France”, 2014
Psychology/biology:
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MEMORIZE (a randomized spaced-repetition review algorithm derived using principles from control theory)
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“A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions” (psychiatric case study)
Technology:
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“Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s” (pre-greenhouse tech: thick southern-facing walls for passive heating)
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“Crinkler secrets: 4k-intro executable compression at its best”
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“Scanning a Braille Playboy issue”, Jason Scott
Economics:
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“The true story of Russia’s weakness [stifled by bad planning, bureaucratic inefficiency, and lack of any real incentive]”, 1957 (prescient)
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“The Great Shift in Japanese Pop Culture—Part One”/Part Two/Part Three/Part Four/Part Five
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“The Borderlands Gun Collector’s Club”, Steve 2012 (emergent token economies in video games)
Philosophy:
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“The Force That Drives the Flower”, 1973 (existential horror)
Fiction:
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“A Colder War”, Charles 2000
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“The Proverbial Murder Mystery”, SSC, SSC (see also “The Study of Anglophysics”)
Misc:
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The terribly tragic life of the terrible painter Benjamin Haydon
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“The Gravity Research Foundation” (dedicated to the war on gravity)
Books
Nonfiction:
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Practical Typography, Matthew Butterick 2013 (a useful if idiosyncratic introduction to typography with a word processor/HTML focus; reading through this was helpful in understanding possible CSS/design improvements while improving Gwern.net this month)
Film/TV
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Further reading from “Genomics of human aggression: current state of genome-wide studies and an automated systematic review tool”, et al 2019:
Reviewed papers from Table 2:
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2005, “Personality traits as intermediary phenotypes in suicidal behavior: genetic issues”
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2012, “Human aggression across the lifespan: Genetic propensities and environmental moderators”
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Anholt & 2012, “Genetics of aggression”
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et al 2014, “Systematic meta-analyses and field synopsis of genetic association studies of violence and aggression”
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et al 2012, “Unraveling the genetic etiology of adult antisocial behavior: a genome-wide association study”
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et al 2013, “A genome-wide association study of behavioral disinhibition”
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et al 2015, “Genetic background of extreme violent behavior”
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et al 2014, “Genome-wide association study of proneness to anger”
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Zhang-et al 2016, “Genetic architecture for human aggression: A study of gene–phenotype relationship in OMIM”
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Fernàndez-et al 2016, “Aggressive Behavior in Humans: Genes and Pathways Identified Through Association Studies”
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et al 2016, “Genetics of aggressive behavior: An overview”
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et al 2016, “The neurobiological basis of human aggression: a review on genetic and epigenetic mechanisms”
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et al 2018, “On the Genetic and Genomic Basis of Aggression, Violence, and Antisocial Behavior”
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et al 2018, “Recent advances in genetics of aggressive behavior” (Russian)
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et al 2019, “Genetic influences on antisocial behavior: Recent advances and future directions”
Other papers from Table 3:
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Sonunga-et al 2008, “Does parental expressed emotion moderate genetic effects in ADHD? An exploration using a genome wide association scan”
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et al 2010, “Genome-wide association study of conduct disorder symptomatology”
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et al 2011, “Hostility in adolescents and adults: a genome-wide association study of the Young Finns”
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et al 2011, “Genome-wide association study of the child behavior checklist dysregulation profile”
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et al 2016, “A genome-wide approach to children’s aggressive behavior: The EAGLE consortium”
See also:
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