Links for 20210820
Transitive Tolerance Means Intolerance https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EQGcZr3vTyAe6Aiei/transitive-tolerance-means-intolerance
Brain-computer interfaces are making big progress this year https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/14/brain-computer-interfaces-are-making-big-progress-this-year/
Accelerating progress in brain recording tech: "Does this mean recording from every cell in the brain (10^11 cells) in the next 25 years? Probably not with electrodes – but if progress with light-based sensing continues at the same pace, perhaps" https://xcorr.net/2021/04/27/accelerating-progress-in-brain-recording-tech/
“As Leibniz suggested, we appear to live in the best of all possible worlds, where the computable functions make life predictable enough to be survivable, while the uncomputable functions make life (and mathematical truth) unpredictable enough to remain interesting, no matter how far computers continue to advance” — George Dyson https://www.privatdozent.co/p/turing-uncomputability
Pathfinder: A gamified measure to integrate general cognitive ability into the biological, medical, and behavioural sciences (Comment by Charles Murray: "The potential of this test is huge. It is an easily obtained cognitive measure to complement polygenic measures in the big genomic databases that are being assembled. Result: high-powered exploration of a wide range of important questions for which samples have been too small.") https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.10.430571v2
“10 years ago, clinical trials showed that patients who’d had the surgery had no statistical difference in improvement versus those who’d only been told that they’d had the operation. … Nevertheless, surgeons continue to repair roughly 700,000 torn menisci each year.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/health-care-sherman-sorensen-pfo-closures/619649/
Fructose in the diet allows intestinal cells to survive low oxygen, as at the tips of villi and in tumors. This lets the villi get longer, increasing absorption of all nutrients, so fructose promotes obesity beyond its own calorie contribution (in mice). https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02195-1
Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40% https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58266794
China’s super heavy rocket to construct space-based solar power station https://spacenews.com/chinas-super-heavy-rocket-to-construct-space-based-solar-power-station/