AI

• “Why concepts are (probably) vectors”, Piantadosi et al 2024

Matters Of Scale:

• Introducing OpenAI GPT-4 o1; OpenAI co-founder Sutskever’s new safety-focused AI startup SSI raises $1 billion

Genetics

Everything Is Heritable:

Recent Evolution:

• “Pervasive findings of directional selection realize the promise of ancient DNA to elucidate human adaptation”, Akbari et al 2024

• “Spatial cognitive ability is associated with longevity in food-caching chickadees”, Welklin et al 2024

Engineering:

• “In vitro reconstitution of epigenetic reprogramming in the human germ line”, Murase et al 2024

Statistics/Meta-Science

• “Is economics self-correcting? Replications in the American Economic Review”, Ankel-Peters et al 2024 (no)

• “The global pattern of centenarians highlights deep problems in demography”, Newman 2024

• Picture imperfect: Scores of papers by Eliezer Masliah, prominent neuroscientist and top NIH official, fall under suspicion (more Alzheimers research fraud problems)

• “An Unconventional Case Study of Neoadjuvant Oncolytic Virotherapy for Recurrent Breast Cancer”, Forčić et al 2024

• “The importance of stupidity in scientific research”, Schwartz 2008

• “Does Your iPod Really Play Favorites?”, Froelich et al 2009_17ya (no; you’re just fooled by the randomness of shuffles)

• Standard deviations are surprisingly hard to unbiasedly estimate

Politics/Religion

• “Conceptions & Misconceptions”, Hiatt 1996_30ya (to what extent did Australian Aborigines understand human sex & reproduction?)

• “The inefficacy of land titling programs: homesteading in Haiti, 1933^–₁₇1950_76ya”, Palsson & Porter 2024

• “Things You Can’t Countersignal” (why popular writing often can’t be good writing)

• “The Deserter: He didn’t want to fight in Putin’s war—he just wanted to survive. But to make it back to his family and live in peace, he would have to run.” (working the Russian system)

Psychology/Biology

• “How Not To Commit Suicide”, Kleiner 1981

• “Yes, Everyone Really Is Sick a Lot More Often After Covid: It’s not your imagination: At least 13 communicable diseases are surging past pre-pandemic levels”

• “A case of severe anterograde amnesia in the era of smartphone technology”, Annese et al 2024

• “Digging for Dyar: the man behind the myth”, Epstein & Henson 1992

• Edible honey has never been found in Egyptian tombs

• “Honey bee sting pain index by body location”, Smith 2014

• Are humans the only animal to sleepwalk?

Technology

• Dynamicland

• Profile of Christopher Mark’s work on coal mining safety: Mark 2024

• “Communication And The Role Of The Medieval Tower In Greece: A Re-Appraisal”, Blackler 2022

• “Song Pong: Synchronizing Pong to music with constrained optimization”, Victor Tao

• Friendly Floatees spill (extreme rubber-ducking)

• “Carpentopod: A walking table project”

Economics

• “Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened: Creating and Sustaining Process Improvement”, Repenning & Sterman 2001

• On the UBI paper; “The Economic Impact of Depression Treatment in India: Evidence from Community-Based Provision of Pharmacotherapy”, Angelucci & Bennett 2024

• “The Virtue of Complexity in Return Prediction”, Kelly et al 2023 (scaling up overparameterized models is useful in finance too? has been heavily criticized, though)

• “The Ant and the Grasshopper: Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture”, Matranga 2024

• “11 Reasons Not to Become Famous (or ‘A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007’)”, Tim Ferriss

• “America Must Free Itself from the Tyranny of the Penny” (why were there COVID coin shortages, of all things? because people receive coins when spending, but don’t spend them—only deposit them at then-closed banks, while coin manufacturing wasn’t allowed to keep up due to the losses involved)

Philosophy

• Sullivan 1794_232ya on why the Sun & comets must be inhabited by aliens

• “Water Cannot Return”, Amichai (trans. Sager 2013_13ya)

Fiction

• “Heart of the Backlog”, Robert Penn Warren 1978

• “The Psychologist Who Empathized with Rats: James Tiptree Junior as Alice B. Sheldon, PhD”, Elms 2004

Miscellaneous