Links for 2022-02-11
A closer look at OpenAI GLIDE AI and some previous results leading up to it. An amazing pace of progress.
Will Google be able to use machine learning and its vast computing power to speed up the advent of economically viable fusion energy? — “Optimisation, or tuning for best performance, is carried out when something on the device changes, such as new hardware being added. This process once took around two months, but with machine learning, "we can now optimise in fractions of an afternoon," Dr Binderbauer explained.” https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60319398
Heuristics That Almost Always Work: "Whenever someone pooh-poohs rationality as unnecessary, or makes fun of rationalists for spending zillions of brain cycles on “obvious” questions, check how they’re making their decisions. 99.9% of the time, it’s Heuristics That Almost Always Works. (but make sure to watch for the other 0.1%; those are the people you learn from!)" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work
Ocean acidification has a negligible direct impact on fish behavior (meta-analysis of 91 studies). Early papers that outlined the drastic consequences of ocean acidification were highly publicized and cited. But new studies call into question the reliability of initial reports. Quote: "We find that initial effects of acidification on fish behavior have all but disappeared over the past 5 years and present evidence that common biases influence reported effect sizes in this field." https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001511
A book about Conway’s Game of Life, which aims to “demystify the Game of Life by breaking down the complex patterns that have been developed in it into bite-size chunks that can be understood individually”. It’s available to download for free as a PDF. https://conwaylife.com/book/#download_pdf
"subjects accurately assessed upper-body strength in voices taken from eight samples across four distinct populations and language groups...the human voice—especially the male voice—contains cues of physical strength" https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2010.0769
British and German military report on human augmentation https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/986301/Human_Augmentation_SIP_access2.pdf
The Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bones, and the Roots of Chinese History. The Shang are China's first dynasty with written sources, but what kind of world do they reveal? The oracle bones are a unique window onto a Bronze Age society. https://art19.com/shows/tides-of-history/episodes/b2598765-3ad2-4d2f-8115-ece660c7d01d
For the first time ever, Toyota Research has successfully programmed a vehicle to autonomously drift around obstacles on a closed track. 📺⤵️ https://youtube.com/watch?v=MfU5_gzqPaM
Scientists engineer new material that can absorb and release enormous amounts of energy https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-material-absorb-enormous-amounts.html
In New York City Sewage, a Mysterious Coronavirus Signal — “For the past year, scientists have been looking for the source of strange coronavirus sequences that have appeared in the city’s wastewater.” [nytimes.com] https://archive.fo/MTk17
Lex Fridman vs Hamster: Who can suffer more? https://youtu.be/5MkbhDK8zsU
Synthetic NLP data? Using GPT-2 to Create Synthetic Data to Improve the Prediction Performance of NLP Machine Learning Classification Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10658
The Five Biggest Surprises From The History Of Timekeeping https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2022/02/03/the-five-biggest-surprises-from-the-history-of-timekeeping/?sh=1165fef1470e
France to build up to 14 new nuclear reactors:
“What our country needs is the rebirth of France’s nuclear industry,” Mr. Macron said at a nuclear turbine factory in the industrial city of Belfort in eastern France as throngs of workers and political officials gathered around. “The time has come for a nuclear renaissance,” he added.
This is how you fight climate change. Predictably, "environmental" groups are criticizing the move.
Meanwhile, the German foreign minister has appointed the ex-Greenpeace chief as an envoy; one of the organizations that have hampered humanity's ability to mitigate climate change by spreading misinformation about nuclear power.
Here is a reminder of how important nuclear weapons are for protecting your country's interests and for adding weight to what your politicians say.
Netherlands and Belgium together roughly have the same GDP as Russia. Russia would eventually lose a conventional war with the European Union. Eventually, because Europeans would first have to wake up. But if they were to turn their economy into a war machine, the tides would quickly turn.