Links

Genetics:

• Everything Is Heritable:

  • “The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex”⁠, Grasbyet al2020

• Engineering:

  • “Genetic Architecture of Complex Traits and Disease Risk Predictors”⁠, Yonget al2020 (joint optimization of human traits is easy because the genetic correlations⁠ cooperate & in high-dimensional space there’s always an alternative)

AI:

• “Agent57: Outperforming the Atari Human Benchmark”⁠, Badiaet al2020 (blog⁠; Agent57 reaches the median human level across ALE—including Pitfall!/Montezuma’s Revenge. It is impressive but still sample-inefficient & uncomfortably baroque in combining what seems like every DM model-free DRL technique in one place: DDQN, Impala, R2D2⁠, Memory Networks, Transformers⁠, Neural Episodic Control, RND, NGU⁠, PBT⁠, MABs… Is model-free DRL a dead end if this is what it takes? I would have preferred to see ALE solved by better exploration in the enormously simpler MuZero⁠.)

• “AutoML-Zero: Evolving Machine Learning Algorithms From Scratch”⁠, Realet al2020 (Github⁠; blog⁠; using evolutionary search to bootstrap SGD⁠/regularization; presumably the evolved SGD can be used to meta-learn, and so on—it’s optimizers all the way up⁠)

• 15.ai: NN TTS service for generating natural high-quality voices of characters with minimal data (especially MLP:FiM voices; demos: ⁠0⁠/⁠1⁠/⁠2⁠/⁠3⁠/⁠4⁠; EQ:D contest results)

• Matters Of Scale: “Train Large, Then Compress: Rethinking Model Size for Efficient Training and Inference of Transformers”⁠, Liet al2020 (previously: Kaplanet al2020⁠); “Rethinking Parameter Counting in Deep Models: Effective Dimensionality Revisited”⁠, Maddoxet al2020; “Bayesian Deep Learning and a Probabilistic Perspective of Generalization”⁠, Wilson & Izmailov2020; “On Linear Identifiability of Learned Representations”⁠, Roederet al2020 (why do NNs work so well, don’t overfit, and train both faster & better the more you overparameterize? Perhaps bigger = better because you’re searching over more classes of models which all have a bias towards simplicity, so you have a better chance of finding a simple sub-network which performs well.)

Statistics/Meta-Science:

• “A controlled trial for reproducibility: For three years, part of DARPA has funded two teams for each project: one for research and one for reproducibility. The investment is paying off”⁠, Raphaelet al2020 (the difficulties of creating reproducible biology research; the projects: 1⁠/2⁠/3⁠/4⁠/5⁠; see also Lithgowet al2017⁠/Lucanicet al2017⁠)

• “The Ph.D. Grind: A Ph.D. Student Memoir”, Philip J. Guo2012/2015 (on the grim reality of grad school/academia; cf. “What Does Any of This Have To Do with Physics?”⁠)

Politics/religion:

• “The most predictable disaster in the history of the human race: This is what Bill Gates is afraid of”⁠, Vox2015; “‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response”⁠ (the Noble Lie⁠ & Tragedy Of The Anticommons⁠: how regulators, paperwork, IRBs, privacy, and bioethics controlled, censored, and shut down US & global pandemic prevention efforts—extra Ecclesiam nulla salus)

• SSC Book Review⁠: Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times⁠, Whyte2018 (how Herbert Hoover⁠ became one of history’s greatest philanthropists, then one of the most hated presidents—‘Quakers (and Ashkenazi Jews) are the skeleton key to history’ etc; apropos of recent events, “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again”?)

• “Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy”, Healy & Malhotra2009; “How Near-Miss Events Amplify or Attenuate Risky Decision Making”⁠, Tinsleyet al2012

• “Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet: How do we fix life online without limiting free speech?”⁠ (chilling account of how Reddit employees actually moderate)

• “Inside the Soviet Union’s secret pornography collection: Off limits to the public but enjoyed by Soviet-era leaders, the Lenin Library collection grew out of erotica confiscated from aristocrats after the revolution”⁠; “Russia’s House of Shadows: My apartment building was made to house the first generation of Soviet élite. Instead, it was where the revolution went to die”⁠ (“rank hath its privileges”, but “La révolution, comme Saturne, dévore ses propres enfants”…)

• “In the 1980s, a Far-Left, Female-Led Domestic Terrorism Group Bombed the U.S. Capitol”⁠ (WP⁠)

• The Burned House Horizon⁠

• “Radical Solutions: French mathematician Évariste Galois lived a full life. When he wasn’t trying to overthrow the government, he was reinventing algebra” (the short & unlucky life of a genius⁠)

Psychology/biology:

• “Going Critical”⁠, Kevin Simler (An explorable⁠ interactive discussion of how stuff spreads in networks)

• “Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918_107ya influenza pandemic”⁠, Hatchettet al2007 (the key finding: “cities with ≤3 nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)…experienced a median total excess death rate of 551/100,000, compared with a median rate of 405/100,000 in cities with four or more NPIs (p = 0.03)”; media⁠)

• “Is the 1918_107ya Influenza Pandemic Over? Long-Term Effects of In Utero Influenza Exposure in the Post-1940 U.S. Population”⁠, Almond2006 (MR⁠)

• “Why do dozens of diseases wax and wane with the seasons—and will COVID-19?”⁠ (on Martinez2018⁠ & Priceet al2019⁠)

• “Tripping on nothing: placebo psychedelics and contextual factors”⁠, Olsonet al2020 (“12% were certain that they had taken a psychedelic…Before leaving, she…asked where she could get the placebo drug again”)

• “Beliefs About Human Intelligence in a Sample of Teachers and Nonteachers”⁠, Warne & Burton2020 (radical overestimation of the power of IQ-boosting interventions—even made-up ones)

• “Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo” (orangutans⁠ like Ken “the hairy Houdini” Allen⁠ are brilliant escape artists)

Technology:

• “The History of the URL”, Zack Bloom (the winding path that gave us the confusing modern DNS/URL system; similar to Eevee’s history of CSS)

• “Zip Files: History, Explanation and Implementation”, Hans Wennborg2020 (compression/decompression accounts for 5% of Google computer cycles⁠)

• “Seeing the World in a Bag of Chips”⁠, Parket al2020 (media⁠)

Economics:

• “How Cameo Turned D-List Celebs Into a Monetization Machine” (WP⁠; see also “How Cameo Blew Up During Quarantine”⁠ & “Status as a Service”)

• The unsolved Chicago Tylenol murders⁠

Fiction:

• “The Master of the Curators”⁠, The Book Of The New Sun⁠: The Shadow of the Torturer⁠, Wolfe⁠ 1980_45ya (homage to Jorge Luis Borges⁠)

Film/TV

Animated:

• Golden Kamuy⁠ (⁠review)