Links for 2022-02-18
Capabilities of large generative models can emerge abruptly and unpredictably: "For example, the percentage of generated synthetic programs that solve a given programming problem jumps substantially from 6% to 13% when the model size increases by ∼ 2x from 68B to 138B parameters, despite very small increases over the previous two orders of magnitude." https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.07785
Cantor's Diagonal Argument (1891) https://www.privatdozent.co/p/cantors-diagonal-argument-1891
Creating jobs is a means to the ultimate end of economic activity, which is creating wealth: “This is the point of the apocryphal story of an engineer who, while visiting China, came across a large crew of men building a dam with picks and shovels. When the engineer pointed out to the supervisor that the job could be completed in a few days, rather than many months, if the men were given motorized earthmoving equipment, the supervisor said that such equipment would destroy many jobs. “Oh,” the engineer responded, “I thought you were interested in building a dam. If it’s more jobs you want, why don’t you have your men use spoons instead of shovels.”” https://fee.org/articles/creating-jobs-vs-creating-wealth/
Most likely is not likely: "You roll a 120-faced die. If it falls on one, you stop. If it gives any other number, you re-roll until you get a one. How many times do you think you will have to roll the die? Let’s do the math: you have a 1/120 chance of rolling the die only once, a 119/120 × 1/120 chance of rolling it twice, and so on. So a single roll is the most likely outcome, any other number of rolls will happen less often. Yet, a 1/120 chance is not even 1%. In this case, “most likely” is actually pretty unlikely." https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hAwnpA5JKYeQLAFG/most-likely-is-not-likely
A Bayesian approach to pricing: “…when you want to measure the distance to the moon, you know not to pick up a yard stick.” https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2022/02/12/bayesian-pricing/
The High Fraction of Thin Disk Galaxies Continues to Challenge ΛCDM Cosmology https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac46ac
The journey of galaxy clusters in billions of years https://www.zmescience.com/science/astronomy/the-journey-of-galaxy-clusters-in-billions-of-years/
Magnetic control of tokamak plasmas through deep reinforcement learning https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04301-9 [see also Links for 2021-11-08 #4]
The unintentional creation of “sturddlefish” hybrids may illuminate the genomic mechanisms that govern whether species can interbreed. https://www.quantamagazine.org/extra-dna-may-make-unlikely-hybrid-fish-possible-20200805/
BA.2 variant seems to be more contagious and pathogenic than BA.1 variant. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1
"Shoplifting has gotten so bad nationally that chains like Rite Aid are closing hard-hit stores, sending terrified employees home in Ubers and locking up aisles of seemingly mundane items like deodorant and toothpaste." https://www.axios.com/shoplifting-retail-crisis-online-resale-9031ced5-04c9-4e88-84f8-1c93e39e7afd.html
Russian military deception: "Once America had become aware of Soviet intentions, deception continued in the form of outright denial, as when, on 17 October 1962, the embassy official Georgy Bolshakov gave President John F. Kennedy a "personal message" from the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reassuring him that "under no circumstances would surface-to-surface missiles be sent to Cuba."" [...] "The Czechoslovak authorities thus did not suspect anything when two Aeroflot airliners made unscheduled landings at night, full of "fit young men"...The men cleared customs and travelled to the Soviet Embassy in the centre of Prague. There they picked up weapons and returned to the airport, taking over the main buildings...Reinforcements were then brought in by road, in complete radio silence..." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
"Until recently, South Korean politics followed a conventional demographic pattern. The younger generation leaned liberal and the older generation leaned conservative...[but now]... men in their 20s are more conservative than men in their 70s." A survey found "only 58% of men in 20s said they had had sex in past year, a lower rate than for men in their 60s.. While most celibate men said they didn’t have sex because they couldn’t find a partner, most celibate women said it was because they had no interest in sex." https://unherd.com/2022/02/will-incels-decide-koreas-election/?=frlh
Whistleblower Gives Evidence The Pentagon Holds Female Soldiers To Lower Standards https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/11/whistleblower-gives-evidence-the-pentagon-holds-female-soldiers-to-lower-standards/
Eli Dourado @elidourado
Another NEPA delay strikes human expansion into the cosmos. God, it would be depressing to learn that environmental review is the Great Filter. https://t.co/D9CsOXUBVa
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