February 2021 Gwern.net Newsletter
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- Gwern.net newsletter for February 2021 covers AI scaling, genetics, statistics, politics, psychology, technology, economics, and philosophy.
- AI section highlights advancements in neural text generation, language model fine-tuning, prompt programming, and brain-computer interfaces.
- Genetics topics include heritability of traits, recent evolution, and polygenic burden impacts on health and cognition.
- Statistics/meta-science discusses lessons from history, microCOVID risk calculator, and critiques of modern mathematics education.
- Politics/religion covers fashion cycles, lunar pandemic quarantine critique, and Lysenkoism in Russia.
- Psychology/biology focuses on semaglutide for weight loss, bat immune defenses, and placebo effects in psychedelic microdosing.
- Technology section mentions wringing gauge blocks as a mysterious physical phenomenon.
- Economics analyzes renewable energy cost reduction, IQ and trading performance, and genetic endowments in wealth inequality.
- Philosophy questions ethics experts' behavior, with studies showing they may not be more ethical than others.
- Key themes include scaling laws, biological plausibility of backprop, and the role of placebo in psychology.