Links for 2022-05-27
"After showing a few examples, large language models can translate natural language mathematical statements into formal specifications." [...] "It handles the negation “there is no function” by proof-by-contradiction. It understands the phrase “into itself” and correctly formalizes the co-domain of f." [...] "Our finding hence shows a very surprising capability of these models. They learned very general and transferable knowledge that allows them to work with low-resource formal language." https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1529886847953870848.html
'Absolutely fascinating, a wild exploration of what it means for two mathematical objects to be equal, with the punchline being (roughly) "we don't entirely know, here's a bunch of different ways of thinking about it"' ― Michael Nielsen
https://www.ma.ic.ac.uk/~buzzard/xena/pdfs/grothendieck_equality.pdf
NVIDIA makes some efficient Factory simulation software (more progress on using simulated [synthetic] data to train artificial neural networks in settings in which empirical data is scarce) https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.03532
“…we propose a new technique for synthetically generating diverse and high-quality dialog data: dialog inpainting…we significantly advance state-of-the-art across three benchmarks (QReCC, OR-QuAC, TREC CAsT) yielding up to 40% relative gains on standard evaluation metrics.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.09073
“If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens Are Also Rare”: A review https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/05/20/if-loud-aliens-explain-human-earliness-quiet-aliens-are-also-rare-a-review/
"Selection for long and short sleep duration in Drosophila melanogaster reveals the complex genetic network underlying natural variation in sleep", Harbison et al 2017 (no life expectancy difference between flies bred to 10-hour daily sleep differences) https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1007098
New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/
How a Volcanic Bombardment in Ancient Australia Led to the World’s Greatest Climate Catastrophe https://singularityhub.com/2022/05/19/how-a-volcanic-bombardment-in-ancient-australia-led-to-the-worlds-greatest-climate-catastrophe/
He Was a World-Renowned Cancer Researcher. Now He's Collecting Unemployment. https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/he-was-a-world-renowned-cancer-researcher?s=r
US Defence Intelligence agency assess that less than 40% of Russian missiles fired during the war in Ukraine have hit their intended targets. 20-30% fail to launch or crash in flight and many miss aiming points. https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-russias-air-war-ukraine-total-failure-new-data-show-1709388
I don't disagree with this reasoning but it is why ordinary people dislike effective altruism. They choose a cause they can use for the purpose of signaling political affiliation or simply feeling good and effective altruists destroy it by coming up with causes that have increasingly higher expected value. This forces people to either shoot it down with arguments and data or confront the real reasons for pretending to care about their favorite cause.