“Nothing in Moderation” (Worth remembering in discussions of the Middle East that even in the USA, the masses are deeply illiberal, pro-statist, against rights, and extremist.)
“The Acquired Immune System: A Vantage from Beneath”, Hedrick 2004 (immune systems as parasites; excerpts)
I absolutely loved this. The concept of the adaptive immune system as something that gives the ability to get a slight advantage over your conspecifics, at the expense of selecting your pathogens to be more virulent such that loss of the adaptive system becomes fatal, reminds me forcefully of all sorts of things in prokaryotic and eukaryotic genome structure. Things that happen because they can and then get locked in place by other things built on top of them even though they themselves are harmful, or sheer selfish elements. Like poison/antidote pairs of genes in bacteria that stick around even though they increase average generation time because fluctuations in the levels of the two make a small fraction of bacteria grow extra slowly and be stress-resistant, or the evolution of the spliceosome to make sure self-splicing introns always leave leading to vertebrate genes that are 90% spliceosome-requiring introns, or the sheer abundance of transposons that make up more than half of our genomes...
Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been stealing links from previous months to pad out the compilations, compensate for month to month variance, and create a sort of link directory.
I thought the Dominic Cummings post, in particular, was excellent. Perhaps the best blogpost I’ve read this year. I’ve already recommended it to several other people. But, warning:
It is perhaps over-long
If you are not British, it is possible you will be missing important context
The Sports Gene—debunks some of the research—there’s a lot of variation, not a simple requirement of 10K hours. Also, elite achievement in at least some sports requires very specific physical qualities.
Effortless Mastery—a jazz musician develops a system of deliberate practice on his own in the 80s/early 90s. He works earlier in the process of taking action by teaching a meditative state, then teaching how to maintain it as one plays. This isn’t easy—the first challenge is maintaining a meditative state while touching one’s instrument.
Also, even if it’s true that all masters have put in 10K hours of deliberate practice, this is not equivalent to the idea that anyone who puts in 10K hours of deliberate practice can become a master, nor is it equivalent to the idea that anyone can become a master at anything (or anything physically plausible) with 10K hours.
This being said, I still believe (without evidence) that putting in some deliberate practice on whatever you care about is a good idea.
Everything is heritable:
“Common DNA Markers Can Account for More Than Half of the Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities”, Plomin et al 2013
“The high heritability of educational achievement reflects many genetically influenced traits, not just intelligence”, Krapohl et al 2014
“Growth, efficiency, and yield of commercial broilers from 1957, 1978, and 2005”, Zuidhof et al 2014 (media; excerpts)
“Estimating the Inbreeding Depression on Cognitive Behavior: A Population Based Study of Child Cohort”
“Korea’s Sooam Biotech Is the World’s First Animal Cloning Factory”
Politics/religion:
“Kim Philby and the Age of Paranoia”
“The Hollow Men II: Some reflections on Westminster and Whitehall dysfunction”, Dominic Cummings
“In Front of Your Nose”
“Nothing in Moderation” (Worth remembering in discussions of the Middle East that even in the USA, the masses are deeply illiberal, pro-statist, against rights, and extremist.)
Newton and alchemy
“I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup”
“An Examination of Stereotype Threat Effects on Girls’ Mathematics Performance”, Ganley et al 2013
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
“How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data”
“In half of the [placebo-controlled] studies, the results provide evidence against continued use of the investigated surgical procedures.” (media)
“How to Make More Published Research True”, Ioannidis 2014
“Khan Academy: machine learning → measurable learning”
“Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics”
Survivorship bias
Writing math papers
“Against optimism about social science”
Classification through compression: PAQClass
“How often does it happen that the oldest person alive dies?”
“Is long-term calorie restriction in humans worth it?”
“learnfun & playfun: A general technique for automating NES games” (paper)
How often does correlation=causality?
“Randomized versus historical controls for clinical trials”, Sacks et al 1982 (excerpts)
“The Adequacy of Comparison Group Designs for Evaluations of Employment-Related Programs”, Fraker & Maynard 1987 (excerpts)
“Choosing between randomised and non-randomised studies: a systematic review”, Britton et al 1998 (excerpts)
“A systematic review of comparisons of effect sizes derived from randomised and non-randomised studies”, MacLehose et al 2000 (excerpts)
“Randomisation to protect against selection bias in healthcare trials (Cochrane Methodology Review)”, Kunz et al 2002 (excerpts)
“A weight of evidence approach to causal inference”, Swaen & van Amelsvoort 2009 (circular reasoning & how not to do causal inference; excerpts/discussion)
Psychology/biology:
“Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert?”, Hambrick et al 2013 (excerpts)
“Decision Making Following a Prenatal Diagnosis of Down Syndrome: An Integrative Review”, Choi et al 2012 (excerpts; connection to embryo selection)
“Do We Believe Everything We’re Told?”
“The Acquired Immune System: A Vantage from Beneath”, Hedrick 2004 (immune systems as parasites; excerpts)
The Pursuit of Noninvasive Glucose Blood Tests: “Hunting the Deceitful Turkey”, John Smith
Fertility and intelligence
Technology:
“The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation” (WP)
“Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums”
Advanced factory manufacturing in America
“A history of the Amiga, part 8: The demo scene”
“Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0”
“Carding Forums, Ponzi Schemes and Law Enforcement: A background on Evolution Marketplace”, by the_avid
“Fusion Power by Magnetic Confinement Program Plan”, Dean 1998
Text of SXSW2013 closing remarks by Bruce Sterling
“We need to get a lot better at imagining the future”
“2000, the Year Formerly Known as the Future”
Successful tech companies’ business models reviewed
I absolutely loved this. The concept of the adaptive immune system as something that gives the ability to get a slight advantage over your conspecifics, at the expense of selecting your pathogens to be more virulent such that loss of the adaptive system becomes fatal, reminds me forcefully of all sorts of things in prokaryotic and eukaryotic genome structure. Things that happen because they can and then get locked in place by other things built on top of them even though they themselves are harmful, or sheer selfish elements. Like poison/antidote pairs of genes in bacteria that stick around even though they increase average generation time because fluctuations in the levels of the two make a small fraction of bacteria grow extra slowly and be stress-resistant, or the evolution of the spliceosome to make sure self-splicing introns always leave leading to vertebrate genes that are 90% spliceosome-requiring introns, or the sheer abundance of transposons that make up more than half of our genomes...
Do you actually read that amount of links every month? If so, can I borrow your time-turner?
Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been stealing links from previous months to pad out the compilations, compensate for month to month variance, and create a sort of link directory.
I thought the Dominic Cummings post, in particular, was excellent. Perhaps the best blogpost I’ve read this year. I’ve already recommended it to several other people. But, warning:
It is perhaps over-long
If you are not British, it is possible you will be missing important context
The deliberate practice link is dead for me, but this works.
Two more about deliberate practice:
The Sports Gene—debunks some of the research—there’s a lot of variation, not a simple requirement of 10K hours. Also, elite achievement in at least some sports requires very specific physical qualities.
Effortless Mastery—a jazz musician develops a system of deliberate practice on his own in the 80s/early 90s. He works earlier in the process of taking action by teaching a meditative state, then teaching how to maintain it as one plays. This isn’t easy—the first challenge is maintaining a meditative state while touching one’s instrument.
Also, even if it’s true that all masters have put in 10K hours of deliberate practice, this is not equivalent to the idea that anyone who puts in 10K hours of deliberate practice can become a master, nor is it equivalent to the idea that anyone can become a master at anything (or anything physically plausible) with 10K hours.
This being said, I still believe (without evidence) that putting in some deliberate practice on whatever you care about is a good idea.
A fun link: this guy is racking up 10000 hours golfing, with no previous experience.