Links

Genetics:

• Everything Is Heritable:

  • “Repurposing large health insurance claims data to estimate genetic and environmental contributions in 560 phenotypes”⁠, Lakhani et al 2019 (56k twin pairs & 724k sibling pairs; see also Polubriaginof 2016)
  • “Multivariate genome-wide analyses of the well-being spectrum”⁠, Baselmans et al 2019
  • “Identification of 12 genetic loci associated with human healthspan”⁠, Zenin et al 2019
  • “Genome-wide analysis reveals extensive genetic overlap between schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and intelligence”⁠, Smeland et al 2019 (why is BPD only slightly negatively genetically correlated with IQ? lots of positive SNPs canceling out most of the negatives)
  • “A global view of pleiotropy and genetic architecture in complex traits”⁠, Watanabe et al 2018
  • “Genome-wide meta-analysis [n = 807k] of depression identifies 102 independent variants and highlights the importance of the prefrontal brain regions”⁠, Howard et al 2019
  • “Association studies of up to 1.2 million individuals yield new insights into the genetic etiology of tobacco and alcohol use”⁠, Liu et al 2019
  • “Genome wide meta-analysis identifies genomic relationships, novel loci, and pleiotropic mechanisms across eight psychiatric disorders”⁠, PGC Cross-Disorder Group et al 2019
  • “I Was a 4-Year-Old Trapped in a Teenager’s Body” (toxic masculinity: the devastating consequences of “familial male-limited precocious puberty”)

• Recent Evolution:

  • “Highly Heritable and Functionally Relevant Breed Differences in Dog Behavior”⁠, MacLean et al 2019; “Absolute brain size predicts dog breed differences in executive function”⁠, Horschler et al 2019
  • “An evolutionary compass for detecting signals of polygenic selection and mutational bias”⁠, Uricchio et al 2019 (long-term net selection for higher EA, lower BMI)
  • “Cat of the Pharaohs: The African Wild Cat from Past to Present”⁠, Smithers 1968 (short account of raising tamed African wild cats and their differences from domesticated cats; with cute photos)

• Engineering:

  • “Livestock 2.0—genome editing for fitter, healthier, and more productive farmed animals”⁠, Tait-Burkard et al 2018
  • “Synthetic glycolate metabolism pathways stimulate crop growth and productivity in the field”⁠, South et al 2019
  • “Super-Mendelian inheritance mediated by CRISPR-Cas9 in the female mouse germline”⁠, Grunwald et al 2019 (media⁠; gene drive demonstrated in mammals)
  • “The Century-Long Scientific Journey of the Affordable Grocery Store Orchid”
  • A short history of the idea of ‘iterated embryo selection’ (independently invented at least 4 times since 1998)
  • “Linking a mutation to survival in wild mice”⁠, Barrett et al 2019 (media⁠; reverse-engineering the response to selection in mice evolved in wild enclosures)

AI:

• “AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II” (discussion⁠; AmA)
• “Designing neural networks through neuroevolution”⁠, Stanley et al 2019 (review of recent competition & crossover with DL/​DRL)
• “Forecasting Transformative AI: An Expert Survey”⁠, Gruetzemacher et al 2019 (ICML/​IJCAI/​HLAI conference surveys: substantial acceleration of AI timelines)
• “ChauffeurNet: Learning to Drive by Imitating the Best and Synthesizing the Worst”⁠, Bansal et al 2018 (Google/​Waymo on imitation learning for self-driving cars: RNNs for trajectory planning + prediction of object trajectories, works on test track; weak out of sample, as usual for imitation learning)
• “Measuring the Intrinsic Dimension of Objective Landscapes”⁠, Li et al 2018 (blog⁠/​video⁠; measuring absolute difficulties of tasks: inverted pendulum⁠, 4; MNIST⁠, 290; Humanoid, 700; CIFAR-10, 2990; ALE Pong, 6000.)
• “2018 AI Alignment Literature Review and Charity Comparison”
• Ganbreeder “Featured Images” (Ganbreeder has been upgraded to 512px BigGAN, 2x upscaling using waifu2x⁠, accounts to save images, best-of gallery; deliciously uncanny)

Statistics/​Meta-Science:

• “What’s Wrong with Psychology Anyway?”⁠, Lykken 1991
• “Notes on a New Philosophy of Empirical Science”⁠, Burfoot 2011 (the ‘compression as inference’ paradigm of intelligence for application to science; stupid gzip tricks⁠, Cilibrasi 2006; stupid zpaq tricks with paqclass)
• “The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use”⁠, Orben & Przybylski 2019 (SCA: brute-forcing the ‘garden of forking paths’ to examine robustness of results—the poor man’s Bayesian model comparison)
• “ActiveRemediation: The Search for Lead Pipes in Flint, Michigan”⁠, Abernethy et al 2018 (optimal search problem; efficient approach abandoned due to local politics)

Politics/​religion:

• “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”⁠, Tom Wolfe 1970 (the Western activist ecosystem)
• “Those Who Stayed: Individualism, Self-Selection and Cultural Change during the Age of Mass Migration”⁠, Knudsen 2019 (potentially genetic)
• “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System”⁠, Donella Meadows 1999 (systems analysis)
• “The Economics of the Baby Shortage”⁠, Landes & Posner 1978

Psychology/​biology:

• “Doing Despite Disliking: Self-regulatory Strategies in Everyday Aversive Activities”⁠, Hennecke et al 2018
• “No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime”
• The boy who convinced his friend to murder him via false online identities
• “Self-management of Fatal Familial Insomnia. Part 2: Case Report”⁠, Schenkein & Montagna 2006 (a remarkable case-study of one man’s efforts to control his sleep & stave off death, allowing him to report interesting hallucinations from the end-stage; background: “One Couple’s Tireless Crusade to Stop a Genetic Killer: When Sonia Vallabh lost her mother to a rare disease, she and her husband, Eric Minikel, set out to find a cure”)
• Pornhub Insights 2018: year in review
• “How Do People Communicate Before Death? Insights into the little-studied realm of last words” (who by slow decay…)
• “Marijuana intoxication in a cat”⁠, Janeczek et al 2018
• The Asian giant hornet (anti-hornet defense mechanisms are interesting)

Technology:

• “Construction of arbitrarily strong amplifiers of natural selection using evolutionary graph theory”⁠, Pavlogiannis et al 2018 (creating subpopulations with topologies designed for much more efficient natural selection—implications for evolutionary RL or online ‘plazas and warrens’-style community design?)
• “TV or not TV? The Impact of Subtitling on English Skills”⁠, Micola et al 2018 (every Scandinavian I’ve asked agrees that subtitling helped them learn English; it’s also interesting that one’s comfort seems to depend on growing up with it—my normal-hearing siblings grew up with subtitles because of me, and now say they prefer subtitles)
• Advice: “Photograph Your Work” (HN)

Economics:

• “The Price of Nails since 1700: Even Simple Products Experienced Large Price Declines”⁠, Sichel 2017
• Unusual occupations in France

Philosophy:

• “Possible Girls”⁠, Sinhababu 2008 (on modal realism)
• “The tale of Phyllis and Aristotle”

Fiction:

• “Giant Killer”⁠, A. Bertram Chandler (Astounding⁠, 1946; a cross between Shin Sekai Yori⁠/​Watership Down)

Misc:

• David Walsh’s MONA museum: “a secular temple and a subversive adult Disneyland”
• “Total Eclipse”⁠, Dillard 1982

Books

Nonfiction:

• Solid Fool’s Gold: Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom⁠, James 2011 (review)

Film/TV

Live-action:

• The Dark Knight Rises (2012; bombastic & unconvincing sequel. The only thing more boring than the poorly-reheated French Revolution shtick are the fights between Bane & Batman and the unconvincing twist at the end.)

Animated:

• The Thief and the Cobbler (review)

Music

Touhou:

• “いつかの空の下で” (VALLEYSTONE feat. 空音; デジウィ NEXT {R15}) [electronic]

MLP:

• “Going Far” (Jyc Row & PegasYs feat. Michelle Creber; Jyc Row Orchestral Compilation Vol. 3—SOLAR {2018}) [rock]
• “Sunshine and Celery Stalks” (PinkiePieSwear; PPS 2011 {2011}) [electronic]
• “Embraced By The Fields of The Lagalume” (Lectoblix; The Night Shall Last Forever {2015}) [ambient]
• “A Pale Lit Sanctuary” (Lectoblix; The Night Shall Last Forever {2015}) [metal]