AI

• “Self-Distilled StyleGAN: Towards Generation from Internet Photos”, Mokady et al 2022

Matters Of Scale:

• Examples of capability phase-transitions; discussion: Ganguli et al 2022, Wei et al 2022

• “Performance reserves in brain-imaging-based phenotype prediction”, Schulz et al 2022; “Reproducible brain-wide association studies require thousands of individuals”, Marek et al 2022

• “CM3: A Causal Masked Multimodal Model of the Internet”, Aghajanyan et al 2022 (a native-HTML language model generating both HTML & images inside HTML pages)

Genetics

• “An RNA-based theory of natural universal computation”, Akhlaghpour2022

Everything Is Heritable:

• “Multivariate genetic analysis of personality and cognitive traits reveals abundant pleiotropy and improves prediction”, Hindley et al 2022

Recent Evolution:

Engineering:

• “Fundamental behaviors emerge from simulations of a living minimal cell”, Thornburg et al 2022

• “Virgin Birth: A genetic basis for facultative parthenogenesis”, Braun et al 2022 (genetically engineering fruit flies partially capable of clonal reproduction)

Statistics/Meta-Science

• “Causal and Associational Language in Observational Health Research: A systematic evaluation”, Haber et al 2021 (expert readers usually do think correlation = causation)

• “A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies”, Milkman et al 2022 (layman much better at prediction of rankings than scientists; all massively overestimate vaccination rate); “Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science”, Milkman et al 2021 (experts unable to predict gym-attendance interventions)

Politics/Religion

• “Criminalizing Poverty: The Consequences of Court Fees in a Randomized Experiment”, Pager et al 2022 (“relief from fees does not affect new criminal charges, convictions, or jail bookings after 12 months.”)

• “Quantifying Bias from Measurable & Unmeasurable Confounders Across 3 Domains of Individual Determinants of Political Preferences”, Ahlskog & Oskarsson (observed correlates are at least half confounded on average)

Psychology/Biology

• “Life at low Reynolds number”, Purcell1977 (the challenges of motion when very small)

• “Australian Magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) cooperate to remove tracking devices”, Crampton et al 2022 (birds are smart, but trapped in their niche)

• “Assessing cats’ (Felis catus) sensitivity to human pointing gestures”, Maeses & Wascher2022 (like copying actions, some cats are smart enough to, dog-like, understand pointing)

• “A ‘Trip’ to the Intensive Care Unit: An Intravenous Injection of Psilocybin”, Giancola et al 2021 (the scourge of microdosing claims another victim); “Earl Grey tea intoxication”, Finsterer2002 (more proof black tea = worst tea)

• Operation Sailor Hat (“The remaining crater left by the blast is called the Sailor’s Hat crater and holds an anchialine pool containing Halocaridina rubra shrimp (Brock & Bailey-Brock1998)” which are salt-tolerant)

• Chick sexing with jizz

Technology

• “Finding Mona Lisa in Conway’s Game of Life—with JAX”

• Smell-O-Vision

Economics

• “Theory of the Nudnik: The Future of Consumer Activism and What We Can Do to Stop It”, Arbel & Shapira2020

Philosophy

Fiction

Miscellaneous