N/A
2015-03-31–2021-01-04
finished
certainty: log
importance: 0
This is the April 2015 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previous, March 2015. This is a summary of the revision-history RSS feed, overlapping with Changelog & /
Writings
- Nothing finished
Media
Links
Genetics:
Everything Is Heritable:
- “Measure for Measure: The strange science of Francis Galton” (on Galton, statistics, regression to the mean, and eugenics.)
Politics/
- “A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare”
- “Before you study public opinion, you wonder why policy isn’t far better. After you study public opinion, you wonder why policy isn’t far worse.”
- “How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist”
- “Why Are There So Few Vegetarians? Most ‘vegetarians’ eat meat. Huh?”
- “The Live-and-Let-Live System in Trench Warfare in World War I”, Axelrod 1984
- Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50)
- “Abraham Lincoln, Necromancer”
Statistics/
- “The Non-parametric Bootstrap as a Bayesian Model”
- “Crowdsourcing data analysis: Do soccer referees give more red cards to dark skin toned players?” (61 analysts examine the same dataset for the same research question to see how much variation in approach determines results)
- “Using degrees of freedom to change the past for fun and profit”
- “The psychology of parapsychology, or why good researchers publishing good articles in good journals can still get it totally wrong”
- “Predictive modeling, data leakage, model evaluation”
Psychology/
- “Genetics and the placebo effect: the placebome”, Hall et al 2015
- “CRISPR/
Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygotes” , Liang et al 2015 - “Rising Plague”
- “Icing Organs: Why scientists are so near and yet so far from being able to cryopreserve organs”
- “Discrepancies between clinical and autopsy diagnosis and the value of post mortem histology; a meta-analysis and review”, Roulson et al 2005
- “When Daydreaming Replaces Real Life: Should elaborate fantasies be considered a psychiatric disorder?”
- “The Catastrophe: Spalding Gray’s brain injury” (medical ethics, dereliction of duty)
- “The Price of a Stolen Childhood: When Nicole was a child, her father took pornographic pictures of her that still circulate on the internet” (from the sound of it, the “restitution” has done far more damage to her than the abuse itself)
- “The Last Magic Show: A Blind Brain Theory of the Appearance of Consciousness”, Bakker
- “Nature makes no leaps”
Technology:
- “The Tail at Scale”, Dean & Barroso 2013
- “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons”, MacKenzie & Spinardi 1995
Economics:
- Children are net losses to parents, even in peasant or hunter-gatherer societies
- Arab slave trade
- Social impact bond
- “Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers”
- “What Happened with LEGO: The price of a brick”
- “So You Discovered an Anomaly … Gonna Publish It? An Investigation Into the Rationality of Publishing a Market Anomaly”, Doran & Wright 2007
- “Superiority” (Arthur C. Clarke, 1951)
Philosophy:
Fiction:
- “Birdless Country”, by Burton Watson
- “The Garden of Proserpine”, Swinburne 1866 (negative utilitarianism)
Books
Fiction:
- The Sagas of Icelanders
Nonfiction:
- The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays, Simon Leys (review)
Manga:
- Tsutomu Nihei: Blame!, Blame! Academy, Noise!: beautiful nonsense. Nihei cannot write plots, coherently world-build, or do dialogue, and I find myself regretting the commonness of manga written by mangaka whose strengths lie almost entirely in one domain (writing vs art); if he had been yoked to the same plow as a writer like Gen Urobuchi or Ryukishi07, what could they have created? As it is, Nihei remains a visual stylist only. Probably not good works to marathon, because after a few chapters in a row, the visual enjoyability of the architecture and the skulls starts to pall—he uses the same motifs over and over.
Film/TV
Live-action:
- Cinderella 2015 (review)
- Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014); an attempt to do a little worldbuilding in providing a backstory for all the antics, and close the franchise (temporarily?) with a theme of maturing and passing on the baton, closing the loop with the first movie; unfortunately it comes off as completely stale, with no gags we didn’t get tired of in the first two movies.
Anime:
- Atama Yama: curious short story about a greedy miser who grows a small sprout on his head apparently as punishment, is annoyed by the even smaller visitors to the tree, and then apparently drowns while trying to get rid of it. The story isn’t much, but it’s much more interesting to listen to the narrator recite it to the traditional music and watch the eccentric animation.
- Ben-to (review)
Music
Doujin:
- “Lost my music” (TAM, Gensou Gakudan, Satoru Kousaki; Suzumiya Haruhi no Kyouen {2007}) [classical]
- “Rider /
The Distant Sea and Holy Land” (TAM×Aruna Ryuki; Fate Violin Zero {M3-29}) [instrumental rock]
Touhou:
- “少女” (KD feat.瑶山百霊; SEEKING {C81}) [trance]
- “少女 -Ryutsuki Version-” (暗猪 feat.流月; SEEKING {C81}) [trance]
- “鏡に映らない闇 ~sorairo no tabi~” (暗猪 feat.流月; SEEKING {C81}) [vocal]
- “月笹船” (Jersey to Yukaina Nakamatachi; 涼風至 {C86}) [folk]
- “Bom dia” (だ feat. ごんだくたー; TOHO BOSSA NOVA {R9}) [bossa nova]
- “Bonus Track” (うんちく商事; Land der Illusionen {TK10}) [orchestral]
- “Eastern Mystical Dream ~ Ancient Temple” (うんちく商事; Land der Illusionen {TK10}) [piano]
- “IQ69” (Sound of Swing; In Walked Cat’s {C86}) [jazz]
- “Afternoon tea in Tunisia” (Sound of Swing; In Walked Cat’s {C86}) [jazz]
Kantai Collection:
- “全艦娘、突撃!(艦隊決戦アレンジ)” (TAMUSIC; 艦これメタル {C87}) [metal]
- “母港” (TAMUSIC; 艦これメタル {C87}) [metal]
- “昼戦〜戦乙女の行進〜” (伊藤 翼; Kantai Philharmonic Orchestra {C86}) [orchestral] (PV)
Vocaloid:
- “Yume Rockets” (Miku; OKUMEIKIBOUNOTOKYOTOZAIJYUU; Virtual Songs {2009}) [electronic/
Jpop]
Link Bibliography
Bibliography of page links in reading order (with annotations when available):
“March 2015 News”, (2015-02-14):
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.
http:/
/ www.newyorker.com/ magazine/ 2005/ 01/ 24/ measure-for-measure-5?currentPage=all http:/
/ econlog.econlib.org/ archives/ 2011/ 04/ top_40_things_i.html https:/
/ www.psychologytoday.com/ blog/ animals-and-us/ 201109/ why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians /
docs/ economics/ 1984-axelrod-theevolutionofcooperation-ch4-theliveandletlivesysteminwwi.html “Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950)”, (2020-12-28):
During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled or were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and the former German provinces of Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia, which were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. In 1957, Walter Schlesinger discussed reasons for these actions, which reversed the effects of German eastward colonization and expansion: he concluded, "it was a devastating result of twelve years of National Socialist Eastern Policy." The idea to expel the Germans from the annexed territories was proposed by the Polish and Czechoslovak exile governments in London at least since 1942. In late 1944 the Czechoslovak exile government pressed the Allies to espouse the principle of German population transfers. On the other hand, Polish prime minister Tomasz Arciszewski, in an interview for The Sunday Times on 17 December 1944, supported the annexation of Warmia-Masuria, Opole Regency, north-east parts of Lower Silesia, and parts of Pomerania, but he opposed the idea of expulsion. He wanted to naturalize the Germans as Polish citizens and to assimilate them.
https:/
/ slatestarcodex.com/ 2013/ 02/ 14/ abraham-lincoln-necromancer/ http:/
/ www.sumsar.net/ blog/ 2015/ 04/ the-non-parametric-bootstrap-as-a-bayesian-model/ http:/
/ lesswrong.com/ lw/ a9f/ using_degrees_of_freedom_to_change_the_past_for/ “Genetics and the placebo effect: the placebome”, (2015-05-01):
- Predisposition to respond to placebo treatment may be in part a stable heritable trait.
- Candidate placebo response pathways may interact with drugs to modify outcomes in both the placebo and drug treatment arms of clinical trials.
- Genomic analysis of randomized placebo and no-treatment controlled trials are needed to fully realize the potential of the placebome.
Placebos are indispensable controls in randomized clinical trials (RCTs), and placebo responses significantly contribute to routine clinical outcomes. Recent neurophysiological studies reveal neurotransmitter pathways that mediate placebo effects. Evidence that genetic variations in these pathways can modify placebo effects raises the possibility of using genetic screening to identify placebo responders and thereby increase RCT efficacy and improve therapeutic care. Furthermore, the possibility of interaction between placebo and drug molecular pathways warrants consideration in RCT design. The study of genomic effects on placebo response, 'the placebome', is in its infancy. Here, we review evidence from placebo studies and RCTs to identify putative genes in the placebome, examine evidence for placebo-drug interactions, and discuss implications for RCTs and clinical care.
http:/
/ link.springer.com/ content/ pdf/ 10.1007%2Fs13238-015-0153-5.pdf https:/
/ entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/ 2013/ 02/ 11/ rising-plague/ http:/
/ www.the-scientist.com/ ?articles.view/ articleNo/ 34190/ title/ Icing-Organs/ http:/
/ www.pathkids.com/ autopsy/ hasleton%20on%20discrepancies.pdf http:/
/ www.newyorker.com/ magazine/ 2015/ 04/ 27/ the-catastrophe-oliver-sacks http:/
/ scienceblogs.com/ evolvingthoughts/ 2008/ 01/ 26/ nature-makes-no-leaps/ http:/
/ www.cs.duke.edu/ courses/ compsci590.4/ fall13/ 838-CloudPapers/ dean_longtail.pdf “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons”, (1995):
Tacit Knowledge, embodied in people rather than words, equations, or diagrams, plays a vital role in science. The historical record of the development and spread of nuclear weapons and the recollections of their designers suggest that tacit knowledge is also crucial to nuclear weapons development. Therefore, if design ceases, and if there is no new generation of designers to whom that tacit knowledge can be passed, then in an important (though qualified) sense nuclear weapons will have been uninvented. Their renewed development would thus have some of the characteristics of reinvention rather than simply copying. In addition, knowledge may be lost not only as a result of complete disarmament, but also as a consequence of likely measures such as a nuclear test ban.
“Barbary slave trade”, (2020-12-28):
The Barbary slave trade refers to slave markets on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century. The Ottoman provinces in North Africa were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in reality they were mostly autonomous.
“Social impact bond”, (2020-12-28):
A social impact bond, also known as pay-for-success financing, pay-for-success bond, social benefit bond or simply a social bond, is one form of outcomes-based contracting. Although there is no single agreed definition of social impact bonds, most definitions understand them as a partnership aimed at improving the social outcomes for a specific group of citizens. The term was originally coined by Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of the Young Foundation. The first SIB was launched by UK-based Social Finance Ltd. in September 2010.
http:/
/ jonmillward.com/ blog/ studies/ deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/ “So You Discovered an Anomaly … Gonna Publish It? An Investigation Into the Rationality of Publishing a Market Anomaly”, (2007-01-11):
If publishing an anomaly leads to the dissipation of its profitability, a notion that has mounting empirical support, then publishing a highly profitable market anomaly seems to be irrational behavior. This paper explores the issue by developing and empirically testing a theory that argues that publishing a market anomaly may, in fact, be rational behavior. The theory predicts that researchers with few (many) publications and lesser (stronger) reputations have the highest (lowest) incentive to publish market anomalies. Employing probit models, simple OLS regressions, and principal component analysis, we show that (a) market anomalies are more likely to be published by researchers with fewer previous publications and who have been in the field for a shorter period of time and (b) the profitability of published market anomalies is inversely related to the common factor spanning the number of publications the author has and the number of years that have elapsed since the professor earned his Ph.D. The empirical results suggest that the probability of publishing an anomaly and the profitability of anomalies that are published are inversely related to the reputation of the authors. These results corroborate the theory that publishing an anomaly is rational behavior for an author trying to establish his or her reputation.
https:/
/ slatestarcodex.com/ 2015/ 04/ 21/ universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/ “Cinderella (2015 Disney film)”, (2020-12-28):
Cinderella is a 2015 romantic fantasy film directed by Kenneth Branagh, with a screenplay written by Chris Weitz, and co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures, Kinberg Genre, Allison Shearmur Productions, and Beagle Pug Films. The film is based on the folk tale and is a live action adaptation of Walt Disney's 1950 animated film of the same name. It features Lily James as Cinderella, and includes Cate Blanchett, Richard Madden, Stellan Skarsgård, Holliday Grainger, Derek Jacobi, and Helena Bonham Carter.
“Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb”, (2020-12-28):
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is a 2014 American comedy adventure film directed by Shawn Levy and written by David Guion and Michael Handelman. It is the third and final installment in the Night at the Museum film series, and a sequel to Battle of the Smithsonian. The film stars Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Dan Stevens, and Ben Kingsley. In Secret of the Tomb, security guard Larry Daley must travel to London to return the tablet of Ahkmenrah, an Egyptian artifact which causes the exhibits to come to life, before the magic disappears.
“Ben-To”, (2020-12-28):
Ben-To is a Japanese light novel series written by Asaura, with illustrations by Kaito Shibano. Shueisha published 15 novels from February 2008 to February 2014. Shibano also illustrates three manga adaptations, and a fourth manga is drawn by Sankaku Head. A 12-episode anime television series adaptation produced by David Production aired in Japan between October and December 2011. Funimation has licensed the anime in North America.
https:/
/ www.dropbox.com/ s/ jz9exbzdzrhv79b/ soundofswing-inwalkedcats-iq69.ogg https:/
/ www.dropbox.com/ s/ fx0o8lyexy0x70s/ soundofswing-inwalkedcats-afternoonteaintunisia.ogg https:/
/ www.youtube.com/ watch?v=p7rnjXM0PNU&index=1&list=TL9NoML31R1c0yNzA3MjAxNQ “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.)