September 2019 News
September 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with 2 behavioral genetics analyses and links on AI text generation, Registered Reports, political polarization, and history of technology; 4 movie reviews.
This is the September 2019 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, August 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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On Selective Emigration and Personality Trait Change in Scandinavia
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Gwern.net: added Bitcoin support to
Inflation.hs
; CSS optimizations to cut mobile load time by half; width-full image support
Media
Links
Genetics:
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Everything Is Heritable:
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“Genetic ‘General Intelligence’, Objectively Determined and Measured”, de la et al 2019 (the UKBB cognitive measures properly analyzed using genetic correlations, allowing better prediction of the genetic g ‘generalist genes’ and also test-specific cognitive performances)
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“Social and non-social autism symptoms and trait domains are genetically dissociable”, et al 2019 (more evidence that embryo selection for intelligence would not also lead to greater social dysfunctionality/autism)
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“Extreme inbreeding in a European ancestry sample from the contemporary UK population”, et al 2019 (>10% ROH → −0.3–0.7SD on 7 traits like height/intelligence)
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“A Prospective Analysis of Genetic Variants Associated with Human Lifespan”, et al 2019
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Engineering:
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“Controlled modeling of human epiblast and amnion development using stem cells”, et al 2019 (creation of quasi-embryos from stem cells; towards IES; media: TR, Nature)
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“The Perfect Milk Machine: How Big Data Transformed the Dairy Industry” (for estimates of limits to selection/how valuable the perfect cow would be, see Cole & Van2011)
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“Genetics-based methods for agricultural insect pest management”, 2019
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AI:
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“Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferences”, et al 2019 ( blog; source; training better text generation using human ratings of quality)
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Matters Of Scale:
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“Megatron-LM: Training Multi-Billion Parameter Language Models Using GPU Model Parallelism”, et al 2019 ( text samples; earlier blog)
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“Exascale Deep Learning for Scientific Inverse Problems”, et al 2019
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“Large-scale Pretraining for Neural Machine Translation with Tens of Billions of Sentence Pairs”, et al 2019
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“Learning to Seek: Autonomous Source Seeking with Deep Reinforcement Learning Onboard a Nano Drone Microcontroller”, et al 2019 (reminds me of Bonsai)
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Statistics/Meta-Science:
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“Registered reports: an early example and analysis”, et al 2019 (parapsychology was the first field to use Registered Reports in 197648ya, which cut statistical-significance rates by 2⁄3rds: Johnson 197549yaa, Johnson 197549yab, 19761)
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“The Power of Two Random Choices: A Survey of Techniques and Results”, et al 2001
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“Sparkline theory and practice”, Edward Tufte (examples & questions)
Politics/religion:
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“Anthropology’s Science Wars: Insights from a New Survey”, et al 2019 ( visualizations)
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“Leninthink: On the practice behind the theory of Marxism-Leninism”
Psychology/biology:
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“Effect of Lower Versus Higher Red Meat Intake on Cardiometabolic and Cancer Outcomes: A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials”, et al 2019 (“diets lower in red meat may have little or no effect on all-cause mortality (HR 0.99 [95% CI, 0.95–1.03])”; on the accusations of conflicts of interest)
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“Reading Lies: Nonverbal Communication and Deception”, et al 2019
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“Is Cognitive Functioning Impaired in Methamphetamine Users? A Critical Review”, et al 2012
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“Nature’s Spoils: The underground food movement ferments revolution”
Technology:
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“STEPS Toward Expressive Programming Systems: ‘A Science Experiment’”, Ohshima et al 201212ya (writing a GUI OS in 20k LoC; tricks include ASCII art networking DSLs & generic optimization for text layout)
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“Secrets by the thousands”, Walker 194678ya (more on the post-WWII brain drain from Germany/Europe to the USA)
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“Secrets of the Little Blue Box”, Rosenbaum 197153ya; “Terminal Delinquents: Once, They Stole Hubcaps And Shot Out Street-Lights. Now They’re Stealing Your Social Security Number And Shooting Out Your Credit Rating. A Layman’s Guide To Computer High Jinks”, Hitt & Tough 199034ya (I feel this article must have been a reference for Hackers)
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“The Radioactive Boy Scout: When a teenager attempts to build a breeder reactor”, 1998
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“Fancy Euclid’s Elements in TeX”, Slyusarev Sergey (with generative dropcaps); “Making of Byrne’s Euclid”, Nicholas Rougeux (how to create a beautiful interactive HTML version of Byrne’s unique color-diagram book interpretation of Euclid’s Elements (Tufte discussion); you shouldn’t do this sort of thing for everything, but maybe you should try to do it for something)
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“SpeechJammer: A System Utilizing Artificial Speech Disturbance with Delayed Auditory Feedback”, 2012
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“Mark of Integrity”, Jonathan Allen (on juiced cards, luminous readers, sunning the deck, and other card sharpers’ tricks for card marking)
Economics:
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“Managing an iconic old luxury brand in a new luxury economy: Hermès handbags in the US market”, 2014 (Summary; see also “Birkin Demand: A Sage & Stylish Investment”, 2016)
Fiction:
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Bakker’s Second Apocalypse & Frank Herbert’s Dune: time loops & finding freedom in an unfree universe (compare Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”)
Misc:
Film/TV
Live-action:
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Falling Down (199331ya)
Animated:
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Neon Genesis Evangelion Concurrency Project (201311ya; review)
Music
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“ann~庵~” (茶太 feat. Chata; 『spill over』 {C95}) [rock]
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“cardiac sound” (Kirin; Cleave Spark the Instrumental {C95}) [trance]
MLP:
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“Getting Stronger” (Michelle Creber, Black Gryph0n, Baasik; Getting Stronger {2016}) [rock]
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“Landscapes” (Mane in Green {2016}) [electronic]
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“Moonlight” (Black Gryph0n & Baasik; IMmortal {2014}) [trance]
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“Faster Than You Know” (Black Gryph0n & Baasik; IMmortal {2014}) [pop]
Doujin:
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“Natsukage -endless summer lights-” (Falmaki; Natsukage -endless summer lights- {C94}) [post-rock]