--- title: August 2019 News description: August 2019 Gwern.net newsletter with 2 short essays, a major new site features, and links on AI, progress, and technology; 1 short book review, and 2 long movie reviews on 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Shin Godzilla'. created: 2019-07-21 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2019/07 next: /newsletter/2019/09 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... August 2019's [Gwern.net](/newsletter/2019/08 "'August 2019 News', Branwen 2019") [newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013") is now out; previous, [July 2019](/newsletter/2019/07 "'July 2019 News', Branwen 2019") ([archives](/doc/newsletter/index)). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my [Changelog](/changelog); brought to you by my donors on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/gwern). # Writings - [On the 'Mouse Utopia' experiment](/mouse-utopia "Did John Calhoun's 1960s Mouse Utopia really show that animal (and human) populations will expand to arbitrary densities, creating socially-driven pathology and collapse? Reasons for doubt.") - [Order Statistics: Sampling Gompertz Distribution Extremes](/order-statistic#sampling-gompertz-distribution-extremes "Random sampling of extreme order statistics (such as 1-in-10-billion) in R, with application to the Jeanne Calment lifespan anomaly") - **Gwern.net**: - [`popups.js`](/static/js/popups.js "'popups.js', Achmiz 2019"): a new JS library which reads link annotations and displays them in a popup (eg. WP displays title/summary, and papers display title/author/date/abstract); works on mobile; generalizes & obsoletes [`wikipedia-popups.js`](/static/js/old/wikipedia-popups.js "'wikipedia-popups.js', Achmiz 2019"): `popups.js` reads static annotations, removing the runtime spam, and importantly, annotations are now cached at compile-time, so additional sources can be included. It currently provides link annotations for Arxiv, bioRxiv, Pubmed Central, PLOS, Crossref, Gwern.net, and hand-written annotations, in-popup YouTube video support, with a fallback to Chrome/Ghostscript-generated screenshot previews for all other URLs - added more custom-SVG/text link icons for link icons (custom: arXiv/[BioRxiv](/static/img/icon/chi-dna.svg) (unofficial), [Google Scholar](/static/img/icon/google-scholar.svg), [Pubmed](/static/img/icon/nlm-ncbi.svg), [Internet Archive](/static/img/icon/internet-archive.svg), [Guardian](/static/img/icon/the-guardian.svg), [NYT](/static/img/icon/new-york-times.svg), [New Yorker](/static/img/icon/the-new-yorker.svg), [Washington Post](/static/img/icon/washington-post.svg), [DeepMind](/static/img/icon/deepmind.svg), [OpenAI](/static/img/icon/openai.svg), [MIRI](/static/img/icon/miri.svg), [Erowid](/static/img/icon/erowid.svg)) # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior"](https://geneticsexbehavior.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ganna190830.pdf), Ganna et al 2019 (as expected, except for the genetic heterogeneity between homosexuality & bisexuality?) - [Recent Evolution]{.smallcaps}: - ["Genomic Evidence for Local Adaptation of Hunter-Gatherers to the African Rainforest"](/doc/genetics/selection/natural/human/2019-lopez.pdf), Lopez et al 2019 - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - [5 Russian couples who are deaf want to try CRISPR so they can have a hearing child by fixing GJB2 gene mutations](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2208777-exclusive-five-couples-lined-up-for-crispr-babies-to-avoid-deafness/ "Russian biologist plans more CRISPR-edited babies: The proposal follows a Chinese scientist who claimed to have created twins from edited embryos last year") **AI**: - ["Reward Tampering Problems and Solutions in Reinforcement Learning: A Causal Influence Diagram Perspective"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.04734#deepmind), Everitt & Hutter 2019 (blog: ["Designing agent incentives to avoid reward tampering"](https://deepmindsafetyresearch.medium.com/designing-agent-incentives-to-avoid-reward-tampering-4380c1bb6cd){#everitt-et-al-2019-blog}; [LW](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pjzhmtivXd8zgKXDT/designing-agent-incentives-to-avoid-reward-tampering)) - ["Has dynamic programming improved decision making?"](https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-economics-080218-025721), Rust 2018 (some case-studies) - [Matters Of Scale]{.smallcaps}: - LM news: [MegatronLM](https://nv-adlr.github.io/MegatronLM "MegatronLM: Training Billion+ Parameter Language Models Using GPU Model Parallelism"), Nvidia (training a GPT-2-8.3B (!), which overfits on their dataset); ["GPT-2: 6-Month Follow-Up"](https://openai.com/research/gpt-2-6-month-follow-up), OpenAI (release of GPT-2-774M); ["OpenGPT-2: We Replicated GPT-2 Because You Can Too"](https://medium.com/@vanya_cohen/opengpt-2-we-replicated-gpt-2-because-you-can-too-45e34e6d36dc "'OpenGPT-2: We Replicated GPT-2-1.5b Because You Can Too', Gokaslan & Cohen 2019"), Gokaslan & Cohen 2019 (public release of an independently-trained GPT-2-1.5b model) **Statistics/Meta-Science**: - ["We Need a New Science of Progress: Humanity needs to get better at knowing how to get better"](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/), Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen - ["Is the FDA Too Conservative or Too Aggressive?: A Bayesian Decision Analysis of Clinical Trial Design"](/doc/statistics/decision/2019-isakov.pdf "'Is the FDA too conservative or too aggressive?: A Bayesian decision analysis of clinical trial design', Isakov et al 2019"), Isakov et al 2019 - ["Scott and Scurvy"](https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm "'Scott and Scurvy: How the Cure for Scurvy Was Lost', Ceglowski 2010") - [The Gambler's Fallacy in action at the Monte Carlo Casino, 1893-08-18](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy#Monte_Carlo_Casino) **Politics/religion**: - ["How Gullible are We? A Review of the Evidence from Psychology and Social Science"](/doc/psychology/cognitive-bias/2017-mercier.pdf), Mercier 2017 - ["Mass Shootings: Definitions and Trends"](https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/mass-shootings.html "There is no standard definition of what constitutes a mass shooting. Media outlets, academic researchers, and law enforcement agencies frequently use different definitions when discussing mass shootings, leading to different assessments of how frequently mass shootings occur and whether they are more common now than they were a decade or two ago."), RAND 2018 (what do statistics like "there were 371 mass shootings in 2015" actually mean?) - ["Dying the Christian Science way: the horror of my father's last days; The anti-medical dogma of Christian Science led my father to an agonising death. Now the church itself is in decline---and it can't happen fast enough"](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/06/christian-science-church-medicine-death-horror-of-my-fathers-last-days) - ["Why Don't Colleges Get Rid of Their Bad Fraternities? A yearlong investigation of Greek houses reveals their endemic, lurid, and sometimes tragic problems---and a sophisticated system for shifting the blame"](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/) - ["Why Men Love War"](https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28718/why-men-love-war/ "Like all lust, for as long as it lasts it dominates everything else"), Broyles 1984 - Review: [_From Third World to First: The Singapore Story---1965--2000_](https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/dp/0060197765 "'From Third World to First: The Singapore Story—1965–2000', Yew 2000"), by [Lee Kuan Yew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew): [part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/ceajmw/book_review_from_third_world_to_first_by_lee_kuan/ "'Book Review: From Third World to First, by Lee Kuan Yew [PART ONE]', TracingWoodgrains 2019")/, [2: "You are free to agree"](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/cgowu1/lee_kuan_yew_review_part_two_you_are_free_to_agree/ "'Lee Kuan Yew Review, Part Two: "You are free to agree"', TracingWoodgrains 2019"), [3: "Race, language, and uncomfortable questions"](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/cjqd9i/lee_kuan_yew_review_part_three_race_language_and/ "'Lee Kuan Yew Review, Part Three: Race, Language, and Uncomfortable Questions', TracingWoodgrains 2019"), [4: "The pathway to power"](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/cmoo25/lee_kuan_yew_review_part_four_the_pathway_to_power/ "'Lee Kuan Yew Review, Part Four: The Pathway to Power', TracingWoodgrains 2019") - ["Peter Thiel’s Religion"](https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/), David Perell (highly speculative but interesting) **Psychology/biology**: - ["Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment"](/doc/psychology/2019-letexier.pdf), Le Texier 2019 - ["A Silent Childhood"](/doc/psychology/linguistics/1992-rymer.pdf), Rymer 1992 (on the [Genie child abuse case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_\(feral_child\)) & origin of language; Genie's cognitive profile---strong nonverbal skills, weak verbal/social---reminds me of [chimpanzee vs children](https://sites.duke.edu/tomasellolabduke/files/2016/09/Herrmann_PsychScience_2010.pdf#page=4 "'The Structure of Individual Differences in the Cognitive Abilities of Children and Chimpanzees', Hermann et al 2010")) - ["What the voice inside your head says about you: We tend to assume that our internal monologue 'speaks' in words---but it turns out that, for many of us, it's much more complicated"](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190819-what-your-inner-voice-says-about-you) (see also ["Toward a phenomenology of inner speaking"](/doc/psychology/inner-voice/2013-hurlburt.pdf), Hurlburt et al 2013; ["The varieties of inner speech: Links between quality of inner speech and psychopathological variables in a sample of young adults"](/doc/psychology/inner-voice/2011-mccarthyjones.pdf), McCarthy-Jones & Fernyhough 2011) - [Structured Procrastination](https://structuredprocrastination.com/) - ["The Generative Adversarial Brain"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7861215/), Gershman 2019 (on the origins of psychiatric disorders) - ["Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering"](https://qualiacomputing.com/2019/08/10/logarithmic-scales-of-pleasure-and-pain-rating-ranking-and-comparing-peak-experiences-suggest-the-existence-of-long-tails-for-bliss-and-suffering/), Qualia Computing - ["The Devil’s Bait: Symptoms, signs, and the riddle of Morgellons"](https://harpers.org/archive/2013/09/the-devils-bait/?single=1); ["Maybe It’s Lyme: What happens when illness becomes an identity?"](https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/what-happens-when-lyme-disease-becomes-an-identity.html) - ["Developmental antecedents of achieved eminence"](/doc/iq/high/1987-simonton.pdf), Simonton 1987 - ["The Efficacy of Modafinil as a Cognitive Enhancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis"](/doc/modafinil/2019-kredlow.pdf), Kredlow et al 2019 - ["Features of a successful therapeutic fast of 382 days’ duration"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/pdf/postmedj00315-0056.pdf), Stewart & Fleming 1973 **Technology**: - ["Atchafalaya"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya), John McPhee 1987 (on the [Old River Control Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_River_Control_Structure) & ultimately doomed attempt to keep the Mississippi River in place) - ["Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?"](https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle) - ["Hall’s Law: The Nineteenth Century Prequel to Moore’s Law"](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/03/08/halls-law-the-nineteenth-century-prequel-to-moores-law/ "'Hall's Law: The 19th Century Prequel to Moore's Law', Rao 2012") - ["Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks that Eavesdrop with a Synthesized Microphone"](/doc/technology/2019-kwong.pdf), Kwong et al 2019 - ["The Road to Clarity"](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html) (on the creation of the since-controversial [Clearview highway font](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_\(typeface\))) **Economics**: - ["The Launch: Inside the 'largest launch of a produce item in American history'"](https://story.californiasunday.com/cosmic-crisp-apple-launch/) (more on apple breeding & selling: the [Cosmic Crisp apple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp); finally became available in my area in late 2020---I thought they were decent enough, pretty, but too sweet and uncompetitively priced compared to Honeycrisp/SweeTango) - ["Bayesian Persuasion and Information Design"](/doc/statistics/decision/2019-kamenica.pdf), Kamenica 2019 - ["Can You Indemnify Against Dick Pics? The rise of scandal insurance in Hollywood"](https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/spottedrisk-scandal-insurance-hollywood.html) **Philosophy**: - ["Consider the Lobster: For 56 years, the Maine Lobster Festival has been drawing crowds with the promise of sun, fun, and fine food. One visitor would argue that the celebration involves a whole lot more"](/doc/philosophy/ethics/2004-wallace-considerthelobster.html), [David Foster Wallace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace) 2004 **Fiction**: - ["A science fiction writer of the Fifties"](https://newcriterion.com/issues/2006/4/a-science-fiction-writer-of-the-fifties), [Brad Leithauser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Leithauser) 2006 - ["How a Literary Prank Convinced Germany That ‘Hansel and Gretel’ Was Real: A 1963 book purported to prove that the siblings were murderous bakers"](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/is-hansel-and-gretel-real) **Misc**: - ["An Inside Look at the Surprisingly Violent Quidditch World Cup"](https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/inside-look-surprisingly-violent-quidditch-world-cup/ "The Quidditch World Cup sounds dorky, and make no mistake: it is. But these sorcery-loving Harry Potter fans play pretty rough, as Eric Hansen found out when he captained a bad-news team of ex-athletes, ultimate Frisbee studs, slobs, drunks, and some people he knows from Iceland. Brooms up, and may the best Muggles win.") ## Books **Fiction**: - [_Curves and Angles_](https://www.amazon.com/Curves-Angles-Brad-Leithauser/dp/0375711422), [Brad Leithauser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Leithauser) ([review](/review/book#curves-and-angles-poems-leithauser-2006)) ## Film/TV **Live-action**: -
[_Gone with the Wind_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_\(film\)) (1939; [review](/review/movie#gone-with-the-wind))
- [_Shin Godzilla_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Godzilla) (2016; [review](/review/anime#shin-godzilla))