April 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with links on AI, biology, SIGBOVIK, Dresden Codak; 1 book review, 3 movie reviews.
April 2019’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, March 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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Gwern.net: deprecated RSS (please use the newsletter with an email → RSS gateway or /r/gwern’s RSS feed for future updates via RSS); added “dark mode” support for Safari/FF (inverts colors for night reading on browsers supporting new CSS media query)
Media
Links
Genetics:
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Everything Is Heritable:
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“Comparing within- and between-family polygenic score prediction”, et al 2019 (within-family PGSes confirm causality; deflation in line with previous estimates & SES moderation consistence with much of it being “nature of nurture” genetic effects)
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“Polygenic Prediction of Weight and Obesity Trajectories from Birth to Adulthood”, et al 2019 (8.4% of variance; further confirmation that obesity is in part a neurological trait—“If people don’t want to come to the ballpark how are you going to stop them?”)
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“Familial influences on Neuroticism and Education in the UK Biobank”, et al 2019 (another GREML-KIN/family- GCTA)
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“The Intergenerational Effects Of A Large Wealth Shock: White Southerners After The Civil War”, et al 2019
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AI:
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OpenAI’s OA5 defeats the TI 2018 champions at DoTA2, 2-0; 8-0 in total pro matches; global Arena results (commentary; building AGI by scaling up convnets and LSTMs seems increasingly like trying to go to the moon by building ever-larger bottle rockets.)
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“Speech synthesis from neural decoding of spoken sentences”, et al 2019
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MuseNet: large Sparse Transformers for MIDI music generation (et al 2019 ; stream of random samples; HN)
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“Inferring Human Traits From Facebook Statuses”, 2018 (“everything is correlated”: personality, IQ, religion, politics etc)
Statistics/Meta-Science:
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“How Replicable Are Links Between Personality Traits and Consequential Life Outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project”, 2019 (individual-differences research continues to replicate well)
Politics/religion:
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the Italian “Podestà” system (alternate governments)
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“Using GPT-2 to ‘Sort by Controversial’”; “Simulated Culture War Roundup Thread Using GPT-2”
Psychology/biology:
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“Restoration of brain circulation and cellular functions hours post-mortem”, et al 2019 (Media: 1, 2, 3; reviving cells of a pig brain from a slaughterhouse hours later)
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“Enjoy It Again: Repeat Experiences Are Less Repetitive Than People Think”, 2019 (should we rewatch/reread much more than we do?)
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“A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota”, et al 2018 (media: New Yorker/Science/Smithsonian/NYT/National Geographic/Economist/Wikipedia)
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“Does incubation enhance problem-solving? A meta-analytic review”, 2009
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“A New Germ Theory: The dictates of evolution virtually demand that the causes of some of humanity’s chronic & most baffling ‘noninfectious’ illnesses will turn out to be pathogens”, 199925ya (20 years on, the jury is still out)
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“Variations on the Hermann grid: an extinction illusion”, 2000 (how many dots can you see?)
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Will Stephen’s TED talk about nothing (the kinesics of intelligentsia)
Technology:
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ArchiveBox: a user-friendly tool for making robust WWW archives (self-contained HTMLs, PDFs, PNG screenshots, & wget snapshots)
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“Was Moore’s Law Inevitable?”, Kevin Kelly
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DNM updates: Operation Bayonet: How Dutch Police took over the Hansa Darknet Market & Used It as a Honeypot; SR2’s Dread Pirate Roberts 2 (DPR2) was Thomas White (‘Cthulhu’), caught in 2014 in UK, & just sentenced to 5 years
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“Morrowind: An oral history—‘Here’s a world. Go play it how you wanna play it’”
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“Survival in chessland”, Murphy VII 2019
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“Turing-Complete [3D] Chess Computation”, et al 2019
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“LATEL: a Logical And Transparent Experimental Language”, Liu-2019
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“All You Need Is Dogball”, et al 2019
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“Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete”, et al 2019 (the TM is now fully-automated/forced-actions-only, removing the asterisk on its weird machine)
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“Harnessing vision for computation”, 2008 (“Example ‘visual circuit’ using visual stimuli and illusions to trick your brain into carrying out arbitrary computations.”?)
Economics:
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“Beware the pitfalls of short-term program effects: They often fade”
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“The Long Tail: Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream”, 2004 (15 years on: both right & wrong—the reality is stranger, as we got both increased superstardom and the long tail in spades)
Fiction:
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Best Of Dresden Codak
DC is a funny SF-meets-A Lesson is Learned webcomic; in its late-2000s glory era, DC was nigh-canonical among online nerds, up there with XKCD; unfortunately, around 200915ya, author Aaron Diaz began an ill-advised ‘serious’ storyline spanning 3 decades with minimal plot progression, during which quality, output, and readership have plummeted. Below is a selection of mostly early comics I still enjoy:
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“Dungeons And Discourse”:
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Transhumanism:
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“Dark Science #01—The Collected Works of Shakespeare: the Movie”; “DS #02—The Complexities of Finance”
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RIP Gene Wolfe
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“The Inner Life of Chinese Teenagers” (the call of meihao)
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“Stories I Will Not Write”, by Enki2
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“Long-Legged Fly”, 1939; if I may propose an additional stanza:
That OA5’s training may never cease,
that human players ever cheer and grieve,
give the DoTA client no upgrade leave;
cease all debate about meta,
hold your silence on the beta;
summon servers to muster,
racked inside the cluster;
and inside the data farms,
request no spot VMs.Quietly the GPU fans spin,
foreseeing all the games that have been;
above, birds take flight
with changes so slight,
as thus gradients flow
through all nodes fast and slow,
each agent taking steps
with countless games to check.
Passeth endless wars, scores high and low
through endless ages, that none can know.Like a long-legged fly upon the Steam,
its mind moves upon silence.
Books
Nonfiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
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What We Do in the Shadows (2014; mockumentary of contemporary vampires in the slacker vein, What We Do is better than it sounds because of a surprisingly thoughtful depiction of the dullness and vexations of such a life.)
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Big Trouble In Little China (198638ya; firmly in the “so bad it’s good” cluster, this is an intensely ’80s-ish martial arts melodrama, complete with a frame story which is entirely forgotten by the ending, which avoids insufferability by being low-key subversive humor where bumbling protagonist Kurt Russell is really the sidekick to his Asian partner who does most of the work)
Music
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“Blue memory” (maritumix; Daybreak #1 {KT14}) [chill electronic]
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“Dream Diver” (Luka; Mr.Kitty; A.I. {2017}) [trance]
MLP:
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“Starlight Sanctuary” (RoomVR & Zephysonas; Skyward {2019}) [classical]
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“Aphelion” (Jeff Burgess; Do Bat Ponies Have Souls? {2015}) [alt. rock]
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“Rituals And Dances Of The Pegasi” (Mane In Green feat. Koron Korak; Skyward {2019}) [orchestral/folk]
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“Undefined Blues” (Jeff Burgess; Undefined Blues EP {2014}) [alt. rock]
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“Nostalgia” (Jeff Burgess; Undefined Blues EP {2014}) [alt. rock]
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“Heroes Of The Sky” (Age Of Vinyl; Skyward {2019}) [dubstep]
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“Roar (Fluttershy cover)” (Katie Perry feat. Pinkie Rose {2017}) [pop]
Misc:
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“Turret Opera (A Cappella)” (Acquire A Cappella feat. Liz Baseman {201113ya}) [A Capella]