Links for 2022-04-08
Jack Clark from Import AI reports that well-resourced government-linked researchers in China want to build some *really* big neural network models. [Speculation by me: A bunch of those researchers (all of them seemingly ethnic Chinese) are affiliated with Western institutions and use the knowledge to gained there to possibly win the AI arms race against the West. Again: We are possibly already in an AI arms race with China and they are planning a Manhattan-style project to potentially solve AGI! That all of this plays out in the open might be in order to appear innocuous.] Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.14101
Newly Measured Particle Seems Heavy Enough to Break Known Physics β A new analysis of W bosons suggests these particles are significantly heavier than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. https://www.quantamagazine.org/fermilab-says-particle-is-heavy-enough-to-break-the-standard-model-20220407/
Did Fermilabβs new result blow a hole in the Standard Model? https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/hole-in-the-standard-model/
βThere is a lot of excitement around partial reprogramming...But how promising is it exactly? I spent the last three months reading almost all the papers in the field.β https://www.adanguyenx.com/blog/partial-reprogramming
The fourth wave of genome-wide association study of educational attainment is out, increasing the explanatory power of polygenic predictors and with no clear sign that the maximum attainable predictive validity has been achieved yet. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z
German Intelligence Intercepts Radio Traffic Discussing the Murder of Civilians in Bucha β It appears that such atrocities were part of the plan. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/possible-evidence-of-russian-atrocities-german-intelligence-intercepts-radio-traffic-discussing-the-murder-of-civilians-in-bucha-a-0a191c96-634f-4d07-8c5c-c4a772315b0d
The Qin dynasty decided to punish two generals with death for being late. Since they were going to die anyway, they were incentivized to start a rebellion (obviously, the punishment for that is also death). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Sheng_Wu_Guang_uprising
Elbit to provide 'swarming droneβ capability for British Army https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/elbit-to-provide-swarming-drone-capability-for-british-army
Formative experiences matter over long periods of time https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/04/formative-experiences-matter-over-long-periods-of-time.html
Fish Doing Math? Scientists Teach Zebra mbuna Fish and Stingrays To Add and Subtract https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-07552-2
The claim that personality is more important than intelligence in predicting important life outcomes has been greatly exaggerated https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289622000125?dgcid=rss_sd_all
βWhen a high voltage is applied to pure water filling 2 beakers kept close to each other, a connection forms spontaneously, giving the impression of a floating water bridge.β https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1505207032336592898
Article from 2007: On a phone call, the author offhandedly mentions that his wife is good at Game Boy Tetris β βShe can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem.β β and learns that the current world record for Game Boy Tetris is 327 lines. They go to New Hampshire and she becomes the new world record holder with a total of 841 lines. https://archive.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2007/08/19/bizarro_world/
The evidence is convincing that oncoviruses account for about 20% of human cancers worldwide [published 01 July 2014] https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/CMR.00124-13
We've long known COVID is airborne. So why did it take the World Health Organization two years to say so? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7