Links for 2022-10-24
“A new #OriginOfCovid pre-print claims that the SARS-CoV-2 genome has fingerprints indicating synthetic origin. It's been called both "uninformed nonsense" and "the smoking gun". How is that possible? What are people even arguing about? A thread with a simplified overview for the curious.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1583932933572014080.html
“Differences between adult male and female human brains have been observed in numerous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies and confirmed on increasingly larger populations.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16763-y
“24 hours ago, I tried an experiment - I tweeted a thread with 15 productivity hacks. It’s become one of my highest performing tweets of all time, with over 1 million impressions and 23,648 engagements. The truth is - the entire thread was written by an AI.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1583203039967850497.html
Counterarguments to the basic AI x-risk case https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LDRQ5Zfqwi8GjzPYG/counterarguments-to-the-basic-ai-x-risk-case
A conversation about Katja's counterarguments to AI risk https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/iXuJLARFBZbaBGxW3/a-conversation-about-katja-s-counterarguments-to-ai-risk
Response to Katja Grace's AI x-risk counterarguments https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GQat3Nrd9CStHyGaq/response-to-katja-grace-s-ai-x-risk-counterarguments
Assessing Natural Global Catastrophic Risks https://gcrinstitute.org/assessing-natural-global-catastrophic-risks/
73 teams tested the same hypotheses with the same data. Some found negative results, some positive, some nada. No effect of expertise or confirmation bias. "Idiosyncratic researcher variability is a threat to the reliability of scientific findings." https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/cd5j9/ [Further reading: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]
“In @SenatorLeahy's new memoir, there's a wild story in it that I haven't ever seen before—a rare glimpse into the shadowy way that the intel agencies interact with Members of Congress. It feels ripped from a political thriller movie...” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1580949199151325184.html
Astronaut – YouTube videos with almost zero previous views [a window into the lives of ordinary people] http://astronaut.io/
“The cerebellum, for example, reaches full size at the age of 11 for girls, but not until age 15 for boys.” https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-boys-fall-behind