Links for 2021-10-20
Time-tagged ticker tapes for intracellular recordings: “…we developed a protein “ticker tape” to write in living cells their history of biological processes (e.g., neural activity)! We believe this is the beginning of a journey to record longitudinal biological events in as many cells as possible across the whole organ of interest, which is heretofore unachievable.” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.13.463862v1
How learning unfolds in the brain: toward an optimization view — “We identify three key features of how neural population activity changes during learning that are not typically part of ANNs.” https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1dvKF3BtfGzkgq
How Animals Map 3D Spaces Surprises Brain Researchers https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-map-3d-spaces-surprises-brain-researchers-20211014/
“In donor families where children are genetically unrelated to the father, the association between paternal education and child test scores is close to zero. Once we take account of genes, we find that only the education of mothers matters…” https://ftp.iza.org/dp14708.pdf
Progress on Causal Influence Diagrams https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cd7Hw492RqooYgQAS/progress-on-causal-influence-diagrams
“I validate this as a nonfake alignment research direction that seems important.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k7oxdbNaGATZbtEg3/redwood-research-s-current-project
“When the Spanish crown forced Jews to convert to Christianity, the Jews tried to keep their traditions alive however they could. Purim became “the Festival of Santa Esterica”, on the grounds that there were so many saints that the Inquisition probably couldn’t keep track of all of them and would just assume it was a colorful local tradition. This worked so well that Christians in Latin America are still celebrating the festival today with no awareness of its Jewish roots.” (via Scott Alexander) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Santa_Esterica
They’re putting guns on robot dogs now https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22726111/robot-dogs-with-guns-sword-international-ghost-robotics