N/A
2014-10-31–2021-01-04
finished
certainty: log
importance: 0
This is the November 2014 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previously, October.
This is a summary of the revision-history RSS feed, overlapping with Changelog & including material from /
Writings
- A/
B indentation test : no real result, defaulted to 2em
Media
Links
Genetics:
Everything Is Heritable:
- “The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder”, Iossifov et al 2014 (media: 1, 2; discussion)
Engineering:
Politics/
- “Whither the Blank Slate? A Report on the Reception of Evolutionary Biological Ideas among Sociological Theorists”, Horowitz et al 2014 (media)
- “Transcript of secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt”
- “The Micro-sociology of Violent Confrontations”, Collins 2009
- “Aum Shinrikyo and a Panic About Manga and Anime”, Gardner 2008
- “A Few Bad Men: Why America doesn’t really have a terrorism problem”
- “Bottom of the Barrel: Today’s terrorists aren’t ‘sophisticated’. They’re stupider than ever.”
Statistics/
- “What’s to know about the credibility of empirical economics?”, Ioannidis & Doucouliagos 2013
- “The Ironic Effect of Significant Results on the Credibility of Multiple-Study Articles”, Schimmack 2012
- “Bayesian data analysis”, Kruschke 2010
- “What Teachers Should Know about the Bootstrap: Resampling in the Undergraduate Statistics Curriculum”, Hesterberg 2014 (nice comprehensible discussion of various kinds of bootstraps and resampling which helps put together everything I’d learned piecemeal)
- “The harm done by tests of significance”, Hauer 2004 (how p-values increase traffic fatalities)
- “The Mind of a Con Man”: Stapel
- Stein’s paradox
- “Tiny Data, Approximate Bayesian Computation and the Unpaired Socks of Karl Broman” (demonstration of ABC)
- “A Vast Graveyard of Undead Theories: Publication Bias and Psychological Science’s Aversion to the Null”
- “Unreliable neuroscience? Why power matters: Small studies with low power undermine the reliability of science and new evidence suggests that low power is the norm in neuroscience”
Psychology/
- “Is Psychometric g a Myth?”
- “Suppressing Intelligence Research: Hurting Those We Intend to Help”, Gottfredson 2005
- “Who Rises to the Top? Early Indicators”, Kell et al 2013 (does IQ cease to matter past 130? No.)
- “Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades Later”, Lubinski et al 2014 (graphs)
- “Annals of psychometry: IQs of eminent scientists”
- “Studies Highlight [Futility] of Early Education”
- “Don’t Know? Or Don’t Care?: Predicting Educational Attainment Using Survey Item Response Rates and Coding Speed Tests as Measures of Conscientiousness”, Hitt & Trivitt 2013
- “Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science”, Duarte et al 2015 (liberal ideological homogeneity in social sciences causing problems)
- “Travels in the New Psychedelic Bazaar: The synthetic drugs being invented, refined, and produced today—and often shipped in from China—would have blown Timothy Leary’s mind. Who knows what they’re doing to the brains of users.”
Technology:
- “Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like
qeadzcwrsfxv1331; For Ars, three crackers have at 16,000+ hashed passcodes—with 90% success” - “Crypto Rebels: It’s the FBIs, NSAs, and Equifaxes of the world versus a swelling movement of Cypherpunks, civil libertarians, and millionaire hackers. At stake: Whether privacy will exist in the 21st century”
- N-body choreographies
- “How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 ‘moon rocket’ engine back to life”
- “A history of the Amiga, part 8: The demo scene”
- “Reimplementing
git clonein Haskell from the bottom up”
Economics:
“Of Frightened Horses and Autonomous Vehicles: Tort Law and its Assimilation of Innovations”, Graham 2012
disability, immigration, globalization, and technological unemployment:
- “Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America”
- Murray’s Coming Apart
- Autor on disability
- “Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labor Markets”
- “The Effect of Intelligence on Job Performance is Intuitive”
- “Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature”, Borjas 2013
Philosophy:
- “Bayesian Informal Logic and Fallacy”, Korb 2003; “Fallacies as weak Bayesian evidence”
- “Privileging the Question”
- “Be Specific” (if you make an abstract claim, can you give at least 3 specific examples? if not, maybe you need to think about it more)
- “Taking Charity Seriously: Toby Ord talk on charity effectiveness”
Misc:
- Taikyoku shogi
- “Try To Praise The Mutilated World”, Adam Zagajewski
- “Morning Song of Senlin”, Conrad Aiken
- “When Dickens met Dostoevsky” (literary hoaxes; followup)
Books
Nonfiction:
- Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? (review)
- The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett, Bryne (review)
- Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, Jansen (review)
- The Art of Unix Usability, ESR (review)
Fiction:
- A Clockwork Orange, Burgess
- Lud-in-the-Mist, Mirrlees
- The Far Side Gallery 3 (I think I liked them better as a kid; re-reading, I realize Larson really only had a few jokes & characters which he permuted endlessly. It doesn’t grow up with you as much as some others like Calvin & Hobbes do.)
Film/TV
Live-action:
- The Wire (review)
- The Shining (review)
- Blue Blazes (review)
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 remake); pretty decent, albeit very little like story, and a rather shoehorned in quest/
Blue Bird of Happiness which undermines original short story’s protagonist by implying he was a failure before & the core dreaming was escapism
Music
Touhou:
- “千年幻想郷 ~ History of the Moon” (Liverne (ゆう), Yu- (Phoenix Project), Tokunan; Touhou Gensou Shiten 2 “Canon” {C71}) [metal]
- “チルノ ／おてんば恋娘” (Yoshiki Ara; Charisma Lash Type-M {C86}) [orchestral]
- “ソリテス・パラドックス” (Ryuuha Mikaido; ティマイオス ～風の詩～ {C86}) [orchestral]
- “オッカムの剃刀” (Ryuuha Mikaido; ティマイオス ～風の詩～ {C86}) [orchestral]
- “Even if they say nothing in the night” (Machikado-Mapoze; Dancing Phantasmagoria {C86}) [waltz]
- “Library Rag” (Machikado-Mapoze; Dancing Phantasmagoria {C86}) [ragtime]
- “巫女みこ茶々々” (Machikado-Mapoze; Dancing Phantasmagoria {C86}) [Cha-cha-chá]
- “佐々木喜善はかく語りき ～ 願わくはこれを語りて平地人を戦慄せしめよ” (ジャム; DAYDREAM TUNES {C86}) [classical]
- “天空の花の都” (埼玉最終兵器; Cradle Re:BOOT -東方幻樂祀典- {C86}) [metal]
- “An Enlarging Story” (RD-Sounds; Slaughter {C86}) [orchestral]
- “Way to go Shinmyoumaru ~Battle with Titans~” (RD-Sounds; Slaughter {C86}) [orchestral]
- “Could She Know The Summer?” (setsugen; DAYDREAM TUNES {C86}) [classical]
Doujin:
- “Summer Dayz” (村瀬悠太; AD:HOUSE 3 {C86}) [instrumental]
- “またあした” (bacon8 feat. nijimine kakoi; luminous flux {C85}) [acoustic]
- “パラミシアの狼” (O-kei feat. ヤマイ; SONORA {2014}) [Jpop]
- “Call My Cell” (Hige Driver feat. ΦKushiΦ; Hige Dance {C86}) [electronic]
Vocaloid:
- “Back to You” (Luka; Planty; Planet Planty {2014}) [trance]
- “In Adversae” (Luka, Kaito; Planty; Planet Planty {2014}) [trance]
- “It was ten days ago.” (Miku; Toku-P; The Universe {2009}) [vocal]
- “魁!パンツメン☆ミ” (Miku; KASANE; sync-loid:05 {2014}) [Jpop]
- “Boku mo Kuzu Dakara” (Miku; PinnochioP; Yusei Masshirake {VM27}) [Jpop]
Link Bibliography
Bibliography of page links in reading order (with annotations when available):
“October 2014 News”, (2014-09-29):
N/A
“Changelog”, (2013-09-15):
This page is a changelog for Gwern.net: a monthly reverse chronological list of recent major writings/
changes/ additions. Following my writing can be a little difficult because it is often so incremental. So every month, in addition to my regular /
r/ subreddit submissions, I write up reasonably-interesting changes and send it out to the mailing list in addition to a compilation of links & reviews (archives).Gwern “/r/gwern subreddit”, (2018-10-01):
A subreddit for posting links of interest and also for announcing updates to gwern.net (which can be used as a RSS feed). Submissions are categorized similar to the monthly newsletter and typically will be collated there.
“The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder”, (2014):
Whole exome sequencing has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the genetic architecture of human disease. Here we apply it to more than 2,500 simplex families, each having a child with an autistic spectrum disorder. By comparing affected to unaffected siblings, we show that 13% of de novo missense mutations and 43% of de novo likely gene-disrupting (LGD) mutations contribute to 12% and 9% of diagnoses, respectively. Including copy number variants, coding de novo mutations contribute to about 30% of all simplex and 45% of female diagnoses. Almost all LGD mutations occur opposite wild-type alleles. LGD targets in affected females significantly overlap the targets in males of lower intelligence quotient (IQ), but neither overlaps significantly with targets in males of higher IQ. We estimate that LGD mutation in about 400 genes can contribute to the joint class of affected females and males of lower IQ, with an overlapping and similar number of genes vulnerable to contributory missense mutation. LGD targets in the joint class overlap with published targets for intellectual disability and schizophrenia, and are enriched for chromatin modifiers, FMRP-associated genes and embryonically expressed genes. Most of the significance for the latter comes from affected females.
http:/
/ www.spring.org.uk/ 2014/ 11/ autism-new-studies-identify-dozens-more-associated-genes.php https:/
/ old.reddit.com/ r/ science/ comments/ 2l9dpi/ two_new_studies_published_in_nature_provide/ http:/
/ www.washingtonpost.com/ blogs/ wonkblog/ wp/ 2014/ 10/ 28/ liberals-deny-science-too/ “Aum Shinrikyo and a Panic About Manga and Anime”, (2008):
In the midst of the accolades, it is important to recall that there have been moments in recent history when manga and anime have been regarded as potentially dangerous or as emblems of what is wrong with Japan.
Such was the case in the months following the release of sarin gas in several Tokyo subway lines by members of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo on the morning of March 20, 1995. As the extent of the Aum's crimes gradually became clear, Japanese journalists, scholars, intellectuals, and commentators of every sort attempted to explain the origin and rise of Aum, the reasons for the group's turn to violence, and what the appearance of such a group might mean about Japan. In the various theories and explanations presented, nearly every aspect of Japanese society, culture, and religion has been held to be at least partially accountable for the rise of Aum and the turn to violence by some of its members (see Gardner 1999, 221–222; 2002a, 36–42). In the efforts to explain Aum, considerable attention was given to the roles that manga and anime might have played. This resulted in what might be described as a panic about their possible negative influence on Japanese culture and society. Rather than attempting to explain precisely how manga and anime might have contributed to the rise of Aum and its vision of 'Harumagedon', or Armageddon, this chapter will simply present an overview of the ways in which both members of Aum and commentators on Aum understood the role of manga and anime in relation to Aum. Attention will be given, in particular, to how these perceptions were linked with broader concerns about the possible negative influence of various forms of media, technology, and 'virtual reality'.
“What's to know about the credibility of empirical economics?”, (2013):
The scientific credibility of economics is itself a scientific question that can be addressed with both theoretical speculations and empirical data. In this review, we examine the major parameters that are expected to affect the credibility of empirical economics: sample size, magnitude of pursued effects, number and pre-selection of tested relationships, flexibility and lack of standardization in designs, definitions, outcomes and analyses, financial and other interests and prejudices, and the multiplicity and fragmentation of efforts. We summarize and discuss the empirical evidence on the lack of a robust reproducibility culture in economics and business research, the prevalence of potential publication and other selective reporting biases, and other failures and biases in the market of scientific information. Overall, the credibility of the economics literature is likely to be modest or even low. [Keywords: Bias; Credibility; Economics; Meta-research; Replication; Reproducibility]
“What Teachers Should Know about the Bootstrap: Resampling in the Undergraduate Statistics Curriculum”, (2014-11-19):
I have three goals in this article: (1) To show the enormous potential of bootstrapping and permutation tests to help students understand statistical concepts including sampling distributions, standard errors, bias, confidence intervals, null distributions, and p-values. (2) To dig deeper, understand why these methods work and when they don’t, things to watch out for, and how to deal with these issues when teaching. (3) To change statistical practice—by comparing these methods to common t tests and intervals, we see how inaccurate the latter are; we confirm this with asymptotics. n >= 30 isn’t enough—think n >= 5000. Resampling provides diagnostics, and more accurate alternatives. Sadly, the common bootstrap percentile interval badly under-covers in small samples; there are better alternatives. The tone is informal, with a few stories and jokes.
https:/
/ normaldeviate.wordpress.com/ 2013/ 05/ 18/ steins-paradox/ http:/
/ www.sumsar.net/ blog/ 2014/ 10/ tiny-data-and-the-socks-of-karl-broman/ “Approximate Bayesian computation”, (2020-12-22):
Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) constitutes a class of computational methods rooted in Bayesian statistics that can be used to estimate the posterior distributions of model parameters.
http:/
/ humanvarieties.org/ 2013/ 04/ 03/ is-psychometric-g-a-myth/ http:/
/ citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/ viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.138.3468&rep=rep1&type=pdf “Who Rises to the Top?: Early Indicators”, (2013-03-26):
Youth identified before age 13 (n = 320) as having profound mathematical or verbal reasoning abilities (top 1 in 10,000) were tracked for nearly three decades. Their awards and creative accomplishments by age 38, in combination with specific details about their occupational responsibilities, illuminate the magnitude of their contribution and professional stature. Many have been entrusted with obligations and resources for making critical decisions about individual and organizational well-being. Their leadership positions in business, health care, law, the professoriate, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) suggest that many are outstanding creators of modern culture, constituting a precious human-capital resource. Identifying truly profound human potential, and forecasting differential development within such populations, requires assessing multiple cognitive abilities and using atypical measurement procedures. This study illustrates how ultimate criteria may be aggregated and longitudinally sequenced to validate such measures. [Keywords: cognitive abilities, creativity, human capital, intelligence, profoundly gifted, STEM]
http:/
/ infoproc.blogspot.com/ 2014/ 11/ gender-differences-in-preferences.html http:/
/ infoproc.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 07/ annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html https:/
/ www.nytimes.com/ 2013/ 04/ 03/ business/ studies-highlight-benefits-of-early-education.html http:/
/ www.uaedreform.org/ site-der/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2013/ 08/ Hitt_Trivitt_EDRE_2013_05.pdf http:/
/ rhodesdiversity.org/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2017/ 04/ Haidt-Diversity-2015.pdf http:/
/ nymag.com/ news/ features/ synthetic-drugs-2013-4/ #print http:/
/ arstechnica.com/ security/ 2013/ 05/ how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/ http:/
/ archive.wired.com/ wired/ archive/ 1.02/ crypto.rebels_pr.html http:/
/ www.wired.co.uk/ news/ archive/ 2013-04/ 16/ f-1-moon-rocket/ viewall http:/
/ arstechnica.com/ gadgets/ 2013/ 04/ a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-demo-scene/ http:/
/ stefan.saasen.me/ articles/ git-clone-in-haskell-from-the-bottom-up/ http:/
/ digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/ cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=facpubs http:/
/ www.amazon.com/ Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/ dp/ 030745343X http:/
/ www.econtalk.org/ archives/ 2012/ 04/ autor_on_disabi.html http:/
/ econlog.econlib.org/ archives/ 2013/ 04/ the_effect_of_i.html http:/
/ cis.org/ immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-literature “Bayesian Informal Logic and Fallacy”, (2004:01:01):
Bayesian reasoning has been applied formally to statistical inference, machine learning and analysing scientific method. Here I apply it informally to more common forms of inference, namely natural language arguments. I analyse a variety of traditional fallacies, deductive, inductive and causal, and find more merit in them than is generally acknowledged. Bayesian principles provide a framework for understanding ordinary arguments which is well worth developing.
http:/
/ lesswrong.com/ lw/ aq2/ fallacies_as_weak_bayesian_evidence/ http:/
/ lesswrong.com/ r/ lesswrong/ lw/ hba/ privileging_the_question/ http:/
/ lesswrong.com/ r/ discussion/ lw/ h6c/ taking_charity_seriously_toby_ord_talk_on_charity/ “Taikyoku shogi”, (2020-12-28):
Taikyoku shōgi lit. "ultimate chess" is the largest known variant of shogi. The game was created around the mid-16th century and is based on earlier large board shogi games. Before the rediscovery of taikyoku shogi in 1997, tai shogi was believed to be the largest playable chess variant ever. It has not been shown that taikyoku shogi was ever widely played. There are only two sets of restored taikyoku shogi pieces and one of them is held at Osaka University of Commerce. One game may be played over several long sessions and require each player to make over a thousand moves.
http:/
/ www.poemhunter.com/ poem/ try-to-praise-the-mutilated-world/ http:/
/ www.the-tls.co.uk/ articles/ public/ when-dickens-met-dostoevsky/ https:/
/ www.theguardian.com/ books/ 2013/ jul/ 10/ man-behind-dickens-dostoevsky-hoax http:/
/ library.sciencemadness.org/ library/ books/ gergel_isopropyl_bromide.pdf /
Book-reviews#excuse-me-sir-would-you-like-to-buy-a-kilo-of-isopropyl-bromide-gergel-1979 http:/
/ www.amazon.com/ The-Many-Worlds-Hugh-Everett/ dp/ 0199659249 /
Book-reviews#the-many-worlds-of-hugh-everett-iii-byrne-2010 “A Clockwork Orange (novel)”, (2020-12-28):
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English. According to Burgess, it was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
“Lud-in-the-Mist”, (2020-12-28):
Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) is the third and final novel by British writer Hope Mirrlees. It continues the author's exploration of the themes of Life and Art, by a method already described in the preface of her first novel, Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists (1919): "to turn from time to time upon the action the fantastic limelight of eternity, with a sudden effect of unreality and the hint of a world within a world".
“The Wire”, (2020-12-28):
The Wire is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002 and ended on March 9, 2008, comprising 60 episodes over five seasons. The idea for the show started out as a police drama loosely based on the experiences of his writing partner Ed Burns, a former homicide detective and public school teacher.
“The Shining (film)”, (2020-12-28):
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with novelist Diane Johnson. The film is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel of the same name and stars Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd.
“Aoi Honō”, (2020-12-28):
Aoi Honō is a Japanese coming-of-age manga series written and illustrated by Kazuhiko Shimamoto. It is a fictionalized account of his time as a student at the Osaka University of Arts, which he attended alongside Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Takami Akai. It was adapted into a Japanese television drama that aired in July 2014 and ended in October 2014. The live action drama is legally streaming on Viki with English subtitles.
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 film)”, (2020-12-28):
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a 2013 American adventure comedy-drama film directed, co-produced by and starring Ben Stiller and written by Steve Conrad. The film also stars Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn, and Sean Penn.
https:/
/ www.dropbox.com/ s/ zxfturz83ro6ss2/ machikadomapoze-dancingphantasmagoria-libraryrag.ogg https:/
/ dl.dropboxusercontent.com/ u/ 5317066/ music/ setsugen-daydreamtunes-couldsheknowthesummer.ogg https:/
/ dl.dropboxusercontent.com/ u/ 5317066/ music/ higedriver-higedance-callmycell.ogg “Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)”, (2013-12-01):
Subscription page for the monthly gwern.net newsletter. There are monthly updates, which will include summaries of projects I’ve worked on that month (the same as the changelog), collations of links or discussions from my subreddit, and book/movie reviews. You can also browse the archives since December 2013.
“Gwern.net newsletter archives”, (2013-12-01):
Newsletter tag: archive of all issues back to 2013 for the gwern.net newsletter (monthly updates, which will include summaries of projects I’ve worked on that month (the same as the changelog), collations of links or discussions from my subreddit, and book/movie reviews.)