Links for 2022-05-29
It is now possible to generate hour-long videos from a few frames: “This is simply the most impressive AI result I have personally seen in my career. Long range coherence is a challenge even for modern language models with massive parameter counts. Will, Saeid, Vaden, and Christian have taken a huge step forward by being able to stably generate coherent, photo-realistic 1hour+ long videos; 70x’s longer than their longest training video, and more than 2000x’s longer than the maximum of 20 frames they ever look at at once during training. There is something very special in the training procedure they have developed and the architecture they employ. Never have we been closer to being able to formulate AI agents that plan visually in domains with life-like complexity.” https://plai.cs.ubc.ca/2022/05/20/flexible-diffusion-modeling-of-long-videos/
Science fiction short-story: The Last Paperclip https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/igxS7re8nfihpbTo5/the-last-paperclip
Meta-analysis of 96 studies looking at 177,000 participants from around the world finds that the traits that best predict men's mating and reproductive success are strength and muscularity. https://realclearscience.com/articles/2022/05/18/the_trait_that_best_predicts_mens_mating_success_832788.html
“When trying to weigh up pro & con arguments re some X, you should consider selection biases that differ between pro- & anti-X arguments. Discount the side favored by selection, & sometimes even refuse to listen to people good at arguing.” https://overcomingbias.com/2022/05/argument-selection-bias.html
Puzzling Quantum Scenario Appears Not to Conserve Energy https://www.quantamagazine.org/puzzling-quantum-scenario-appears-not-to-conserve-energy-20220516/
Seeking entropy: complex behavior from intrinsic motivation to occupy action-state path space https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.10316
The geometry of domain-general performance monitoring in the human medial frontal cortex https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm9922
The geometrical/mathematical ideas behind the "Conical Spiral" https://javaddevlog.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-conical-spiral-was-made.html
“We introduce UViM, a unified approach capable of modeling a wide range of computer vision tasks. In contrast to previous models, UViM has the same functional form for all tasks; it requires no task-specific modifications which require extensive human expertise.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.10337
‘Biggest fake news story in Canada’: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics? https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/kamloops-mass-grave-debunked-biggest-fake-news-in-canada/
The people who make a big fuss about the Russian advances in the Donbas should consider what they would have made of it back on 24 February.
Three months later, and some 700 kilometers away from Kyiv, they advance a few kilometers per day under heavy losses and after losing 15,000+ soldiers.
Have people been overconfident about Ukraine or Russia? Let's take a look at some predictions:
1. Will Kyiv be under Russian control before 2023?
March 15: 45%
March 20: 35%
Today: 3%
Source: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/10269/kyiv-under-russian-control-before-2023/
2. Will one half of currently threatened Ukrainian cities be under Russian military control by June 2022?
February 25: 85%
March 20: 55%
Today: 1%
Source: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9941/russia-takeover-of-ukrainian-cities-by-june/
3. Will Russia control Kharkiv on June 1, 2022?
March 5: 90%
March 20: 55%
Today: 1%
Source: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/10056/russia-controls-kharkiv-on-june-1-2022/
4. Will Mariupol be under Russian control on June 1?
April 1: 77%
April 20: 95%
Today: 99%
Source: https://www.metaculus.com/questions/10492/mariupol-under-russian-control-on-june-1/
There are more predictions: https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/ukraine-conflict/
Except for the prediction about Mariupol, which was mildly overconfident in favor of Ukraine, in the beginning, people were clearly very biased in favor of Russia.
At its peak, the U.S. Navy was operating 6,768 ships on V-J Day in August 1945, including 28 aircraft carriers, 23 battleships, 71 escort carriers, 72 cruisers, over 232 submarines, 377 destroyers, and thousands of amphibious, supply and auxiliary ships.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_history_of_World_War_II