Links

AI:

• Matters Of Scale:

  • GPT-3: see above; for GPT-3 compared to humans on the absolute scale of character prediction, see Scaling Hypothesis, footnote 18
  • “Measuring the Algorithmic Efficiency of Neural Networks”, Hernandez & Brown2020 (blog⁠/​interview⁠; the first prototype is never the best one, but given enough compute & time, you can refine it and figure out how it should have been done all along, and this paper quantifies the neural net hardware overhang just since 2012: “it now takes 44× less compute to train…to the level of AlexNet”. Unsurprising—eg the experience curve in linear programming: Bixby2002⁠; see Grace2013⁠/​Yudkowsky2013⁠. We don’t know how to train the right kind of neural nets and make huge mistakes with the simplest things, as capability jumps like resnets or EfficientNet or R2D2 occasionally remind us.)
  • “IntelliCode Compose: Code Generation Using [GPT-2] Transformer”, Svyatkovskiy et al 2020 (unclear if application of ZeRO-2⁠; see also the GPT-3 few-shot code completion abilities)
  • “GrokNet: Unified Computer Vision Model Trunk and Embeddings For Commerce” (blog⁠; one model, 7 datasets, 89m images, 83 losses/​tasks, and +8% search quality boost worldwide)

• “Deep neuroethology of a virtual rodent”, Merel et al 2019 (media)

• “Go-Explore 2: First return then explore”, Ecoffet et al 2021

• “Learning to Simulate Dynamic Environments with GameGAN”, Kim et al 2020 (project page⁠, code⁠; an unexpected appearance of a Neural Turing Machine)

• “Exploring Bayesian Optimization: Breaking Bayesian Optimization into small, sizeable chunks”, Agnihotri & Batra2020

• “This Word Does Not Exist” (GPT-2); “This Fursona Does Not Exist (TFDNE)” editor (a simple but high-quality StyleGAN 2 face model of furries⁠, also available on Artbreeder⁠; interesting for how the fur flew due to legal fuzziness & some artists acting like animals, howling about ‘theft’ & free fursonas being a wolf in sheep’s clothing upsetting their pecking order¹—though the creator has outfoxed the paper tiger threats, these kittlesome questions will dog ML as DL models multiply like rabbits)

Genetics:

• Everything Is Heritable:

  • “Local genetic correlation analysis reveals heterogeneous etiologic sharing of complex traits”, Zhang et al 2020 (“autism/​IQ r_g…could be explained by 2 etiologically-distinct genetic signatures w/​bidirectional local genetic correlations”)
  • “Identification of 370 loci for age at onset of sexual and reproductive behaviour, highlighting common aetiology with reproductive biology, externalizing behaviour and longevity”, Mills et al 2020
  • “Genome-wide association study of school grades identifies a genetic overlap between language ability, psychopathology and creativity”, Rajagopal et al 2020 (“math performance was severely affected whereas language performance (Danish and English) was relatively unaffected or enhanced in those with psychiatric disorders”)
  • “GWAS of Depression Phenotypes in the Million Veteran Program and Meta-analysis in More than 1.2 Million Participants Yields 178 Independent Risk Loci”, Levey et al 2020
  • “A Single Gene Causes Thelytokous Parthenogenesis, the Defining Feature of the Cape Honeybee Apis mellifera capensis”, Yagound et al 2020
  • “Insights into the genetic architecture of the human face”, White et al 2020

• Recent Evolution:

  • “Sex-biased reduction in reproductive success drives selective constraint on human genes”, Gardner et al 2020; “Genome-wide analysis identifies genetic effects on reproductive success and ongoing natural selection at the FADS locus”, Mathieson et al 2020 (previously: Barban et al 2016⁠/​Tropf et al 2016⁠/​Verweij et al 2017)
  • “Disentangling selection on genetically correlated polygenic traits using whole-genome genealogies”, Stern et al 2020

• Engineering:

  • “Recent advances in bovine in vitro embryo production: reproductive biotechnology history and methods”, Ferré et al 2020
  • Atomic garden mutation breeding

Statistics/​Meta-Science:

• “Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams”, Botvinik-Nezer et al 2020
• “Remembering John Conway’s FRACTRAN, a ridiculous, yet surprisingly deep language”⁠, Reginald Braithwaite (how does the recently-deceased John Conway’s 1980 esolang lead to the Collatz conjecture?)
• “Tumbling toast, Murphy’s Law and the fundamental constants”, Matthews1995 (overview⁠; anthropics size argument from Press1980⁠; see also Bacon et al 2001⁠/​Borghi2012)

Politics/​religion:

• “The Voluntariness of Voluntary Consent: Consent Searches and the Psychology of Compliance”, Sommers & Bohns2019 (people are bad at predicting resistance to police requests; see also Christin et al 2012)
• Operation INFEKTION (see also Gordon1997)
• “Progress Studies for Aspiring Young Scholars” (experimental online summer class for high school students by Jason Crawford on development)

Psychology/​biology:

• “Understanding immunity through the lens of disease ecology”, Hedrick2017² (“…for the past few thousand years, we human beings have been the most diseased species on earth”; followup to Hedrick2004)
• “How sanitation conquered disease long before vaccines or antibiotics”⁠, Jason Crawford
• “Everyday Life as an Intelligence Test: Effects of Intelligence and Intelligence Context”, Gordon1997
• “Objective and subjective experiences of child maltreatment and their relationships with psychopathology”, Danese & Widom2020 (nothing in psychology makes sense except in the light of individual-differences)
• “Brainless but Multi-Headed: Decision Making by the Acellular Slime Mould Physarum polycephalum”, Beekman & Latty2015
• “I’m paid biweekly, just not by leprechauns: Evaluating valid-but-incorrect response rates to attention check items”, Curran & Hauser2019 (how do “lizardman constant” responders justify it? Or, ‘free response is the devil’)

Technology:

• “Reflections on How Designers Design with Data”, Bigelow et al 2014 (why are data visualizations so bad—superficially pretty but misleading or useless? Because many designers don’t look at the data, avoid automation & create manually so they can focus on pretty shapes/​colors & enjoying fiddling with it, and ignore readers)
• “Do Ads Harm News Consumption?”, Yan et al 2020 (“Users who adopt ad blockers subsequently consume 20% more news articles corresponding to 10% more categories. The effect persists over time…”; see my ad page)
• “The 1-Bit Instrument: The Fundamentals of 1-Bit Synthesis, Their Implementational Implications, and Instrumental Possibilities”, Troise2020

Economics:

• “In Ohio, the Amish Take On the Coronavirus” (supply and demand: masks can be easily made anywhere if prices are allowed to rise & they are not illegal to sell)
• “The Story of America’s Most Prolific Counterfeiter” (how Frank Bourassa tricked a Swiss mill into selling him the unique U.S. dollar linen-paper to create $329.9^$250.0₂₀₁₂m in perfect counterfeit money & mostly got away with it)

Fiction:

• “My Immortal As Alchemical Allegory”⁠, SSC

Misc:

• “Dead Reckoning: The 18^th century misadventures of HMS Wager and her reluctant crew” (the Wager Mutiny)

Books

Fiction:

• The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice: A Tiny Homeric Epic, translated Stallings2009 (review)

Nonfiction:

• Review of The Cultural Revolution

Music

Touhou:

• “Sept Jours sans Elle (Vocal)” (Raven’s Jig; Une Semaine chez les Écarlates {2018}) [classical]
• “Un Jour Joueur” (Raven’s Jig; Une Semaine chez les Écarlates {2018}) [classical]
• “Bons et mauvais Jours” (Raven’s Jig; Une Semaine chez les Écarlates {2018}) [classical]

MLP:

• “Morning in Baltimare” (Mane in Green; II. The Journey [The Quest of the Lost Sapphire—Ep. 2] {2017}) [instrumental rock]
• “Love and Reflection” (Dionte George; Ignite {2020}) [jazz]
• “Second Prances (Vocal VIP)” (Etherium Apex ft. Nicole Carino {2020}) [electronic]
• “Spun” (The Wasteland Wailers feat. Brittany Church & Haymaker; Ignite {2020}) [country]
• “Equiterian Empire” (Carbon Maestro; Celestial Divide OST) [orchestral]
• “The Storm Is Coming VIP [Single Purpose Remix]” (UndreamedPanic feat. Metajoker; Ignite {2020}) [rock]
• “Mare Cognitum” (Idyllia feat. Velvet R. Wings; Ignite {2020}) [orchestral rock]
• “Fire City (Day & Night)” (Wandering Artist; Ignite {2020}) [orchestral]
• “What Remains” (Totalspark; Ignite {2020}) [Liquid Drum & Brass]

Doujin:

• “Come, Sweet Death [Komm, süsser Tod]” (Platina Jazz feat. Niklas Gabrielsson; Anime Standards Vol. 6 {2019}) [jazz]
• “Hope” (Simpsonill {2017}) [electronic]