--- title: May 2019 News description: May 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with links on cloning, DRL, religion, parasites; 6 movie reviews. created: 2019-04-26 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2019/04 next: /newsletter/2019/06 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... May 2019's [Gwern.net](/newsletter/2019/05 "'May 2019 News', Branwen 2019") [newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013") is now out; previous, [April 2019](/newsletter/2019/04 "'April 2019 News', Branwen 2019") ([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). # Writings - ["How Should We Critique Research?"](/research-criticism "Criticizing studies and statistics is hard in part because so many criticisms are possible, rendering them meaningless. What makes a good criticism is the chance of being a 'difference which makes a difference' to our ultimate actions.") - ["One Man's Modus Ponens..."](/modus "'One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens' is a saying in Western philosophy encapsulating a common response to a logical proof which generalizes the 'reductio ad absurdum' and consists of rejecting a premise based on an implied conclusion. I explain it in more detail, provide examples, and a Bayesian gloss.") - [TWDNEv2](https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/ "'ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net', Branwen 2019"): upgraded anime faces to ['portrait' samples](/face#anime-faces-portrait) (bigger crops of faces, showing ears/hats etc) & some 345M plot summaries; GPT-2 poetry: [upgraded to 345M](/gpt-2#gpt-2-345m) (plus new ["nucleus sampling"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09751#allen "'The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration', Holtzman et al 2019") generation) # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["Behavior Genetic Research Methods: Testing Quasi-Causal Hypotheses Using Multivariate Twin Data"](/doc/genetics/heritable/correlation/2014-turkheimer.pdf), Turkheimer & Harden 2014 - ["How genome-wide association studies (GWAS) made traditional candidate gene studies obsolete"](/doc/genetics/heritable/2019-duncan.pdf), Duncan et al 2019 (apropos of [SSC](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/ "5-HTTLPR: A Pointed Review") on [Border et al 2019](/doc/genetics/heritable/2019-border.pdf "No Support for Historical Candidate Gene or Candidate Gene-by-Interaction Hypotheses for Major Depression Across Multiple Large Samples") revisiting the candidate-gene & gene-environment debacles) - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - [full genome synthesis of _E. coli_: 4 million base-pairs](/doc/genetics/genome-synthesis/2019-fredens.pdf "'Total synthesis of Escherichia coli with a recoded genome', Fredens et al 2019") ([media](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/science/synthetic-genome-bacteria.html "Scientists Created Bacteria With a Synthetic Genome. Is This Artificial Life?")) - [The majority of SK police quarantine dogs are now clones](https://tribune.com.pk/story/1967033/3-amid-animal-cruelty-debate-80-south-koreas-sniffer-dogs-cloned "Amid animal cruelty debate, 80% of South Korea's sniffer dogs are cloned") - ["Birth of clones of the world’s first cloned dog"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5681657/), Kim et al 2017 ("We'll always have [Snuppy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snuppy). Here's looking at you, pup.") **AI**: - ["Adversarial Examples Are Not Bugs, They Are Features"](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/bm7iix/r_adversarial_examples_arent_bugs_theyre_features/), Ilyas et al 2019 (‽) - ["Meta-learning of Sequential Strategies"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03030#deepmind), Ortega et al 2019; ["Reinforcement Learning, Fast and Slow"](https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(19)30061-0#deepmind), Botvinick et al 2019; ["Meta-learners' learning dynamics are unlike learners'"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01320#deepmind), Rabinowitz 2019; ["Ray Interference: a Source of Plateaus in Deep Reinforcement Learning"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.11455#deepmind), Schaul et al 2019 (Bayesian RL interpretations of meta-DRL & why DRL is so sample-inefficient) - ["GROVER: Defending Against Neural Fake News"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.12616#allen), Zellers et al 2019 (training a GPT-2-1.5b on news articles to generate super-realistic fake news: [online demo](https://rowanzellers.com/grover/); oddly, GROVER can also do [fanfiction/riddles/poetry](https://iforcedabot.com/what-can-a-fake-news-detector-do/ "'Testing The Limits of GROVER The Neural Fake News Detector. Can It Write Fiction? Can It Write Riddles?', Fly 2019")) - ["EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.11946#google), Tan & Le 2019 (a simple architecture design trick to get new ImageNet SOTA at a fraction the model size; [comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/bumjdc/r_efficientnet_rethinking_model_scaling_for/)) - ["Speech2Face: Learning the Face Behind a Voice"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09773), Oh et al 2019 (really?) - [SOLAR: "Model-Based Reinforcement Learning from Pixels with Structured Latent Variable Models"](https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2019/05/20/solar/), Zhang et al 2019; [VICE-RAQ: "End-to-End Deep Reinforcement Learning without Reward Engineering"](https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2019/05/28/end-to-end/), Singh et al 2019 (highly sample-efficient robot arm training) - [Bruteforcing _Breakout_](https://tasvideos.org/6347S "Submission #6347: Chef Stef's NES Arkanoid 'warpless' in 11:11.18") (optimal play by depth-first search of an approximate MDP in an optimized C++ simulator for 6 CPU-years, which is possible because [your computer is faster than you think](/note/faster "'Computer Optimization: Your Computer Is Faster Than You Think', Branwen 2021"); crazy gameplay---like [chess endgame tables](/doc/ai/1985-michie.pdf "'Human Window on the World', Michie 1985"), a glimpse of superintelligence) **Statistics/Meta-Science**: - ["Objecting to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies or treatments"](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1820701116), Meyer et al 2019 - [_Life On the Infinite Farm_](https://www.math.brown.edu/reschwar/Farm/RGB.pdf), Schwartz 2018 (Hilbert's farm) **Politics/religion**: - [How Soviet centralized economic planning led to the near-extinction of whales, for no particular reason](https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-crime-of-the-20th-century-russia-whaling-67774 "The Most Senseless Environmental Crime of the 20th Century: Fifty years ago 180,000 whales disappeared from the oceans without a trace, and researchers are still trying to make sense of why. Inside the most irrational environmental crime of the century") - ["Medieval Monogamy"](/doc/history/1995-betzig.pdf), Betzig 1995 - ["The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/the-apostate-lawrence-wright) - ["'This place is pryson': review of _Hermits and Anchorites in England, 1200--1550_, ed Jones" ](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n10/mary-wellesley/this-place-is-pryson) - ["A Modern History of Satanic Panic in South Carolina"](https://charlestoncitypaper.com/2019/02/06/a-modern-history-of-satanic-panic-in-south-carolina/) **Psychology/biology**: - ["Invisible Designers: Brain Evolution Through the Lens of Parasite Manipulation"](/doc/genetics/selection/natural/2019-delguidice.pdf), Del Giudice 2019 ([SSC](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/08/19/maybe-your-zoloft-stopped-working-because-a-liver-fluke-tried-to-turn-your-nth-great-grandmother-into-a-zombie/ "Maybe Your Zoloft Stopped Working Because A Liver Fluke Tried To Turn Your Nth-Great-Grandmother Into A Zombie"); is the complexity of brains largely accidental complexity, protective obfuscation against parasites, including design features like literally poisonous neurotransmitters?) - ["The Family That Feels Almost No Pain: An Italian clan's curious insensitivity to pain has piqued the interest of geneticists seeking a new understanding of how to treat physical suffering"](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/family-feels-almost-no-pain-180971915/) (more fodder for my [backstop essay](/backstop "'Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning', Branwen 2018")) - ["The Hype Cycle of Working Memory Training"](https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/U8YNVXKM5SKF6ZY9TQBR/full), Redick 2019 - ["Strange-face illusions during eye-to-eye gazing in dyads: specific effects on derealization, depersonalization and dissociative identity"](/doc/psychology/personality/2019-caputo.pdf), Caputo 2019 ([media](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/locking-eyes-with-a-monster/ "Locking Eyes with a Monster: Staring at somebody's face for ten minutes may give you nightmares"); only sort of works for me) - ["My Brother Tom's Schizophrenia"](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-brother-toms-schizophrenia) - ["An astounding, one-of-a-kind trove of stories and drawings reveals what life was like for young men growing up in rural 19th-century America"](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/05/nelson-archive-at-amherst-a-one-of-a-kind-trove-reveals-what-rural-19th-century-american-boyhood-was-really-like.html) (on the Nelson Brothers' Colonial America [paracosm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm), "the Big, Long, and Round Continents") **Technology**: - ["How Complex Systems Fail"](/doc/technology/2000-cook.pdf "'How Complex Systems Fail: Being a Short Treatise on the Nature of Failure; How Failure is Evaluated; How Failure is Attributed to Proximate Cause; and the Resulting New Understanding of Patient Safety', Cook 2000"), Cook 2000 - ["SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Internet Satellites Into Orbit"](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/science/spacex-launch.html) - [Rivest's LCS35 time-lock crypto puzzle has been broken 15 years ahead of schedule by 2 different groups](https://www.wired.com/story/a-programmer-solved-a-20-year-old-forgotten-crypto-puzzle/ "A Programmer Solved a 20-Year-Old, Forgotten Crypto Puzzle") ([HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782634); [background on time-lock crypto](/self-decrypting "'Time-lock encryption', Branwen 2011")) - RIP: [FBI has seized Deep Dot Web and arrested its administrators](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/administrators-deepdotweb-indicted-money-laundering-conspiracy-relating-kickbacks-sales "Administrators of DeepDotWeb (DDW) Indicted for Money Laundering Conspiracy, Relating to Kickbacks for Sales of Fentanyl, Heroin and Other Illegal Goods on the Darknet: Prior to the Website's Seizure by the Federal Government, the Defendants Allegedly Referred Hundreds of Thousands of Users to Darknet Marketplaces, Who in Turn Completed Hundreds of Millions' of Dollars' Worth of Transactions in Drugs, Firearms and Other") ([indictment](/doc/darknet-market/2019-04-24-deepdotweb-219cr0015dwa-indictment.pdf "'US Federal Indictment of DeepDotWeb.com (Tal Prihar, Michael Phan)', Brady 2019"); [mirrors of select DDW pages](https://www.reddit.com/r/DNMBusts/comments/blrw5v/fbi_has_seized_deep_dot_web_and_arrested_its/ems785p/)) - ["The Lost Picture Show: Hollywood Archivists Can't Outpace Obsolescence---Studios invested heavily in magnetic-tape storage for film archiving but now struggle to keep up with the technology"](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-lost-picture-show-hollywood-archivists-cant-outpace-obsolescence) - ["The Paris Compressed-Air Network"](http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/airnetwork/airnetwork.htm) (cf. ["The Paris Pneumatic Clock Network"](http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/airclock/airclock.htm)) - ["Dictionary of Numbers, Putting numbers in human terms"](http://glench.com/closed-source/dictionaryofnumbers/) (a browser extension for replacing large numbers in text with familiar quantities, Fermi-estimate-style) **Economics**: - ["The Optimistic Thought Experiment"](https://www.hoover.org/research/optimistic-thought-experiment), Thiel 2008 (globalization, bubbles, technological progress, & survivorship bias) - ["The making of Amazon Prime, the Internet's most successful and devastating membership program: An oral history of the subscription service that changed online shopping forever"](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18511544/amazon-prime-oral-history-jeff-bezos-one-day-shipping) - ["Shady Numbers And Bad Business: Inside The Esports Bubble"](https://kotaku.com/as-esports-grows-experts-fear-its-a-bubble-ready-to-po-1834982843) **Fiction**: - ["Killing Rabbits"](/note/killing-rabbits), Miroslav Válek (WWII/Cold War/vegetarianism etc; from [_One Hundred Years of Slovak Literature: An Anthology_](/doc/fiction/poetry/2000-bratislava-onehundredyearsofslovakliterature.pdf), ed Chrobakova 2000) - ["Case Study: Anime Music Videos"](/doc/anime/2007-milstein.pdf), Milstein 2007 ## Film/TV **Live-action**: - [_Sicario_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_\(2015_film\)) (2015; cruelly perfect) - [_Terminator 2_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day) (entertaining but aside from great style, has little substance; I spent much of the time thinking about how 'cheap' the liquid metal special effects look now but how cutting-edge & excruciating those special effects were to pull off in 1991: ["The tech of _Terminator 2_---an oral history"](https://vfxblog.com/2017/08/23/the-tech-of-terminator-2-an-oral-history/)) - [_Dialogues des Carmélites_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogues_of_the_Carmelites) opera ([review](/review/opera#dialogues-des-carmelites "'Movie Reviews § Dialogues des Carmélites', Branwen 2014")) - [_Laura_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_\(1944_film\)) (1944; film noir murder mystery which benefits from sharp dialogue and casting, even though the culprit turns out to be precisely who you would guess a few minutes in and can hardly be considered to be a 'mystery') - [_Pokémon Detective Pikachu_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Detective_Pikachu) (2019; [review](/review/anime#pokemon-detective-pikachu)) - [_It Follows_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Follows) (2014; [review](/review/movie#it-follows)) **Animated**: - [_Children Who Chase Lost Voices_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Who_Chase_Lost_Voices "Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo") (2011; [review](/review/anime#children-who-chase-lost-voices)) ## Music [**Touhou**](https://www.reddit.com/r/TOUHOUMUSIC/search/?q=author%3Agwern&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all): - ["きらめきの谺"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fg3ut78fvjw7wg1/%E3%83%8F%E3%83%A0-%E3%81%A4%E3%81%8D%E3%82%88%E3%81%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%82%8A%E3%80%82-%E3%81%8D%E3%82%89%E3%82%81%E3%81%8D%E3%81%AE%E8%B0%BA.ogg) (Foxtail-Grass; 'つきよがたり。' {R15}) [folk] - ["乱 -Ran-"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcQ0GrtvttQ) (Stack; _第14回博麗神社例大祭 会場限定おまけCD_ {R14}) [rock] - ["Till The Next Journey"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhJCnbMMie4) (Ringing Volcano; _A Wolf and Gensokyo_ {R14}) [folk] - ["The Cattail's Head"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TxiokHaTxc) (Ringing Volcano; _A Wolf and Gensokyo_ {R14}) [folk] - ["A Pub"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/f4v0ss1ld9mm8wg/%E4%B8%AD%E8%BF%AB%E9%85%92%E8%8F%9C-awolfandgensokyo-apub.ogg) (Ringing Volcano; _A Wolf and Gensokyo_ {R14}) [folk] - ["The Ray of Light"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLIPxPuJmQE&t=104s) (NAGI☆ feat. Vivienne; _Increase Beat_ {R14}) [pop] **MLP**: - ["The Daring Explorer"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiFSJqzcHjo) (Jyc Row; [_Jyc Row Orchestral Compilation Vol. 3---SOLAR_](https://jycrow.bandcamp.com/album/jyc-row-orchestral-compilation-vol-3-solar) {2018}) [instrumental rock] - ["478,000 Miles (Shining Forth)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG8PjX7CX6w) (loophoof; [_Rebirth_](https://poniesatdawn.bandcamp.com/album/rebirth) {2018}) [house] - ["Heir of the Moonlight (EnsionD remix)"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taAJ0NACREU) (EnsionD & Synthis feat. FritzyBeat {2018}) [trance] **Doujin**: - ["エヴリデイドリーム"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/u2vx8ivwv188q6s/chicken-mysecretcute-%E3%82%A8%E3%83%B4%E3%83%AA%E3%83%87%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0.ogg) (c-hicken; _My Secret Cute_ {M3-39}) [acoustic]