Month: January 2017

Extended evolutionary synthesis

EES argues that while the existing framework of evolutionary theory, known as the “modern synthesis,” is basically solid, it needs to be expanded to account for newly recognized drivers of evolution. One such driver is epigenetics — gene-expression changes that stem from exposure to, say, pesticides. While these epigenetic changes are not encoded in an organism’s genes, they do give rise to physical and behavioral differences that natural selection can act upon. We now have a better picture of the regulatory process on genes. Epigenetics changes the landscape in genetics because it’s not only the pure DNA sequence which influences what’s going on at the level of proteins and enzymes. There’s this whole other stuff, the other 95 percent of the genome, that acts like rheostats — you slide this thing up and down, you get more or less of this protein. It’s a critical thing in how much of this protein is going to be made. It’s interesting to think about the way in which cultural phenomena, which we used to think were things by themselves, can have this effect on how much messenger RNA is made, and therefore on many aspects of gene regulation.

Undercover AlphaGo

The account is simply called “Master”, and since the start of the new year it has made a habit out of trashing some of the world’s best Go professionals. It’s already beaten Ke Jie twice, who is currently the highest ranked Go player in the world. AlphaGo, incidentally, is #2. Ke Jie was “a bit shocked … just repeating ‘it’s too strong'”. By January 3, the number of probably-but-we-can’t-officially-say AI sanctioned beatings had risen to 41-zip

2017-01-04: It’s alphago

Trump Batman Effect

So based on these 2 strategies, we are in for 4 years of sham Trump victories which look really convincing on a first glance. Every couple of weeks, until it gets boring, another company is going to say Trump convinced them to keep jobs in the United States. The total number of jobs saved this way will never be more than a tiny fraction of the jobs that could be saved by (eg) good economic policy, but nobody knows anything about economic policy and Trump will make sure everybody hears about Ford keeping jobs in the US. Every one of these victories will actively make the world worse, in the sense that these big companies will get taxpayer subsidies or favors they can call in later to distort government priorities, but nobody’s going to notice these either.

Millimeter GPS

BeiDou’s current accuracy is ~10 meters compared to the US GPS’s 1 meter. China aims to improve the system 100x that it would be more accurate than the popular American GPS. China is developing ground based augmentation to achieve centimeter realtime accuracy and millimeter accuracy for post processing within cities like Beijing

Deadly posing

On his blog, Adventures of Justin, videos, podcasts, and photos chronicled his excursions, with Shetler’s long, sinewy frame posed artfully against spectacular backdrops: blurred, chalky stretches of shimmering desert; hulking green mountain ranges rippled with white snow. “I’m a nomad, adventurer, and ninja of sorts,” his Instagram bio read, “currently living in a cave in India.” The sporting tone of his prose drew a motley of envious followers on social media.

Derek Parfit

What makes me the same person throughout my life, and a different person from you? And what is the importance of these facts? You are in a terrible accident. Your body is fatally injured, as are the brains of your 2 identical-triplet brothers. Your brain is divided into 2 halves, and into each brother’s body one half is successfully transplanted. After the surgery, each of the 2 resulting people believes himself to be you, seems to remember living your life, and has your character. (This is not as unlikely as it sounds: already, living brains have been surgically divided, resulting in 2 separate streams of consciousness.) What has happened? Have you died, or have you survived? And if you have survived who are you? Are you 1 of these people? Both? Or neither? What if 1 of the transplants fails, and only 1 person with half your brain survives? That seems quite different—but the death of 1 person could hardly make a difference to the identity of another. The philosopher Derek Parfit believes that neither of the people is you, but that this doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that you have ceased to exist, because what has happened to you is quite unlike ordinary death: in your relationship to the 2 new people there is everything that matters in ordinary survival—a continuity of memories and dispositions that will decay and change as they usually do. Most of us care about our future because it is ours—but this most fundamental human instinct is based on a mistake, Parfit believes. Personal identity is not what matters.

Moon Base Alpha

an economically self-sustainable lunar base could be established for $5B. This price point is surprising and significant for the space community. Not only could this be achievable within current space program budgets, it offers the tantalizing possibility that a single passionate donor could fund the entire program

State

In physics, math, and computer science, the state of a system is an encapsulation of all the information you’d ever need to predict what it will do, or at least its probabilities to do one thing versus another, in response to any possible prodding of it. In a sense, then, the state is a system’s “hidden reality,” which determines its behavior beneath surface appearances. But in another sense, there’s nothing hidden about a state—for any part of the state that never mattered for observations could be sliced off with Occam’s Razor, to yield a simpler and better description.

When put that way, the notion of “state” seems obvious. So then why did Einstein, Turing, and others struggle for years with the notion, along the way to some of humankind’s hardest-won intellectual triumphs?