Links for 2022-01-08
New study finds causal evidence linking the Default Mode Network to creative (divergent) thinking, using direct brain stimulation. DMN stimulation decreases the quantity but not the quality of ideas. A significant discovery for creativity neuroscience. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01403-8
Transcranial stimulation of alpha oscillations up-regulates the default mode network https://www.pnas.org/content/119/1/e2110868119
Peter Scholze, one of the most respected mathematicians in the world, completed an important proof entirely in his head and hungover. A computerized proof assistant has now confirmed that his work is correct. https://www.quantamagazine.org/lean-computer-program-confirms-peter-scholze-proof-20210728/
Conscientiousness predicts job performance for all occupations. Other Big 5 traits do for just some: Agreeableness: Healthcare; Emotional stability: Skilled/semiskilled, law enforcement, military; Extraversion: Sales, management; Openness: Professional. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001879121001275
Large-scale neural recordings call for new insights to link brain and behavior https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00980-9
"I am genuinely shocked that the actual real-world emergence of SARS-Cov-2 has not caused more people to care about pandemic risk" https://www.slowboring.com/p/dont-look-up
Rapid repurposing of pulp and paper mills, biorefineries, and breweries for lignocellulosic sugar production in global food catastrophes: https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960308521001620?dgcid=author
Two charts tweeted to show that COVID is a Republican problem tell a very different story when re-created today using up-to-date data https://polimath.substack.com/p/the-case-of-the-abandoned-metrics
All polynomials of degree 3 or greater factor over the reals https://blog.plover.com/2022/01/04/#quartics-factor
How realistic is it to deflect a comet heading towards Earth? Comment by John Schilling: “On a time scale of one year or less, there's realistically nothing we could do against anything big enough to be a real problem. We don't have the right specialized systems standing ready, our spaceship-building tools are all designed for one- to two-year lead times, and if you try to rush the process or use e.g. automobile-building tools to build spaceships, too much will go wrong to recover from in that short a time.” Another user adds: “...nuclear-scale impactors hit earth every couple of years! A 170 kt tnt-equivalent asteroid blew up over the Bering sea in 2019. They generally miss populated areas (or, more rarely, air-burst high enough up to avoid mass casualties, as in the case of the Chelyabinsk Oblast bolide, which was about a half megaton and injures a bunch of people). But we are just sort of blithely rolling the dice every few years that one of these things isn't going to hit Manhattan and kill three or four million people in five seconds.” https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-dont
The blue and red lines are all the same length; none is moving or changing size, and they’re all at the same level. Only the arrowheads are moving.
Animated sinusoidal Müller-Lyer illusion: https://github.com/csaid/Illusion
More:
The Müller-Lyer illusion works on bearded dragons. Evidence: Scientists presented dragons with the standard illusion, but with the central lines made out of food. The dragons more often chose the "longer" line. [https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/2020-santaca.pdf]
"Contrary to the idea that the Müller-Lyer illusion requires familiarity with carpentered corners, children born blind who have their sight restored can immediately see the illusion." [https://twitter.com/chazfirestone/status/1311013056713875456]
The Muller-Lyer illusion affects Westerners much more than non-Westerners. [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/primate-diaries/the-weird-evolution-of-human-psychology/ (bypass paywall: https://archive.fo/whNXL)]
If we found a way to translate medical interventions in mice to humans we could reach longevity escape velocity this decade.
Examples:
- A drug that reverses age-related mental decline within days in mice https://ucsf.edu/news/2020/12/419201/drug-reverses-age-related-mental-decline-within-days
- A major lifespan increase in mice, and multi-organ functional improvement https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8674
- "Whole‐body senescent cell clearance alleviates age‐related brain inflammation and cognitive impairment in mice" https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-020-00914-w
- "In the lab, we have demonstrated that various anti-aging approaches can extend healthy lifespan in many model organisms including yeast, worms, fish, flies, mice and rats. Life extension of model organisms using anti-aging approaches ranges from 30% to 1000%" https://lesswrong.com/posts/RcifQCKkRc9XTjxC2/anti-aging-state-of-the-art