January 2022 News
January 2022 Gwern.net newsletter with links on TODO
January 2022’s Gwern.net newsletter is now out; previous, 2021 (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
Links
AI
Examples of capability phase-transitions; discussion: et al2022, et al2022
“Performance reserves in brain-imaging-based phenotype prediction”, et al2022; “Reproducible brain-wide association studies require thousands of individuals”, et al2022
“CM3: A Causal Masked Multimodal Model of the Internet”, et al2022 (a native-HTML language model generating both HTML & images inside HTML pages)
Genetics
Everything Is Heritable:
Recent Evolution:
Engineering:
“Fundamental behaviors emerge from simulations of a living minimal cell”, et al2022
“Virgin Birth: A genetic basis for facultative parthenogenesis”, et al2022 (genetically engineering fruit flies partially capable of clonal reproduction)
Statistics/Meta-Science
“Causal and Associational Language in Observational Health Research: A systematic evaluation”, et al2021 (expert readers usually do think correlation = causation)
“A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies”, et al2022 (layman much better at prediction of rankings than scientists; all massively overestimate vaccination rate); “Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioral science”, et al2021 (experts unable to predict gym-attendance interventions)
Politics/Religion
“Criminalizing Poverty: The Consequences of Court Fees in a Randomized Experiment”, et al2022 (“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”, 1977 (the challenges of motion when very small)
“Australian Magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) cooperate to remove tracking devices”, et al2022 (birds are smart, but trapped in their niche)
“Assessing cats’ (Felis catus) sensitivity to human pointing gestures”, 2022 (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”, et al2021 (the scourge of microdosing claims another victim); “Earl Grey tea intoxication”, 2002 (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-1998)” which are salt-tolerant)
Chick sexing with jizz
Technology
Economics
Philosophy
Fiction
Miscellaneous
Books
Nonfiction:
Fiction:
Film/TV
Live-action:
Animated: