# Recent updates to gwern.net (2017–2019)

> Previously: [2011](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8kv/recent_updates_to_gwernnet/)/[2012–2013](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h0b/recent_updates_to_gwernnet_20122013/)/[2013–2014](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kgt/recent_updates_to_gwernnet_20132014/)/[2014–2015](http://lesswrong.com/lw/mxn/recent_updates_to_gwernnet_20142015/)/[2015–2016](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/nva/recent_updates_to_gwernnet_20152016/)/[2016–2017](http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/phz/recent_updates_to_gwernnet_20162017/).

_"Iram indeed is gone with all its Rose, / And Jamshyd's Seven-ring'd Cup where no one knows; / But still the Vine her Ancient Ruby yields / And still a Garden by the Water blows."_

An index of my [recent writings](https://www.gwern.net/Changelog), by topic:

- AI:

    - ["How To Generate Faces With StyleGAN"](https://www.gwern.net/Faces "A tutorial explaining how to train and generate high-quality anime faces with StyleGAN neural networks, and tips/scripts for effective StyleGAN use."); ["This Waifu Does Not Exist"](https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/index.html) ([background & implementation](https://www.gwern.net/TWDNE "I describe how I made a website displaying random anime faces generated by StyleGAN neural networks, and how it went viral."))
    - ["Finetuning the GPT-2-small Transformer for English Poetry Generation"](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2 "Retraining SOTA text-generation NNs on new corpuses, such as Project Gutenberg, for high quality English poetry generation")
    - [Danbooru2018: a dataset of 3.33m anime images (2.5tb) with 92.7m descriptive tags](https://www.gwern.net/Danbooru2018 "Danbooru2018 is a large-scale anime image database with 3.3m+ images annotated with 92.7m+ tags; it can be useful for machine learning purposes such as image recognition and generation.")
    - ["Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning"](https://www.gwern.net/Backstop "Speculation on links between Coase's theory of the firm, the socialist calculation debate, group selection, and meta reinforcement learning as two-layer optimization problems.")
    - [On the history of the tank/neural-net urban legend](https://www.gwern.net/Tanks "AI folklore tells a story about a neural network trained to detect tanks which instead learned to detect time of day; investigating, this probably never happened.")
- Genetics:

    - Embryo selection: [Overview of major current approaches](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#overview-of-major-approaches) [FAQ](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#faq-frequently-asked-questions), [multi-stage selection](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#multi-stage-selection), [chromosome/gamete selection](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#gamete-selection), [optimal search of batches](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#optimal-stoppingsearch), & [robustness to error in utility weights](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#robustness-of-utility-weights); sub-essays: ["Glue Robbers: Sequencing Nobelists Using Collectibles"](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#glue-robbers-sequencing-nobelists-using-collectible-letters "Motivated by forensics/genealogy, DNA can now be recovered from historical artifacts like letters/stamps; this would enable GWASes of the greatest minds in human history"), ["Dynasties and Embryo Selection"](https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection#embryo-selection-and-dynasties "A toy model of dynastic succession as order statistics in a liability-threshold model suggests that full-strength multiple embryo selection could make a meaningful difference in ensuring perpetuation of powerful families."),

        - ["Multi-Stage Selection Bean Machine Demo"](https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/order/beanmachine-multistage/index.html "An interactive JS visualization of Galton quincunxes demonstrating the compounding power/ratchet effect of iterative selection rather than a single selection step.")
    - [_Cat Sense_, Bradshaw 2013: Are We Good Owners?](https://www.gwern.net/Cat-Sense "On cat psychology, genetics, domestication, & dysgenics")
    - ["Origins of Innovation: Bakewell & Breeding"](https://www.gwern.net/Bakewell "A review of Russell 1986's _Like Engend'ring Like: Heredity and Animal Breeding in Early Modern England_, describing development of selective breeding and discussing models of the psychology and sociology of innovation.")
    - ["Genetics and Eugenics in Frank Herbert's _Dune_"](https://www.gwern.net/Dune-genetics "Discussion of oddities in the fictional breeding program in _Dune_ which may be explained by an agricultural focus.")
- Psychology:

    - [SMPY bibliography](https://www.gwern.net/SMPY "An annotated bibliography of publications on the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), a longitudinal study of high-IQ youth")
    - ["Everything Is Correlated"](https://www.gwern.net/Everything "Anthology of sociology, statistical, or psychological papers discussing the observation that all real-world variables have non-zero correlations and the implications for statistical theory such as 'null hypothesis testing'.")
    - [What is the morning-writing effect?](https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing "Writing in the Morning: Many writers anecdotally report they write best first thing early in the morning, apparently even if they are not morning people. Do they, and why?")
    - Cordwainer Smith's ["'Scanners Live in Vain' as realistic SF"](https://www.gwern.net/Scanners "Discussion of Cordwainer Smith SF story, arguing that the pain-of-space is based on forgotten psychological issues in air travel, and concerns about worse ones in space travel, which were partially vindicated by the existence of interesting psychological changes in astronauts.")
    - ["The Gift of the Amygdali"](https://www.gwern.net/fiction/Batman "'Batman' short story in the style of a 1980s comic book script about the Scarecrow and the gifts no one appreciates: pain/guilt/fear/anxiety.")
- Tech:

    - ["Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement"](https://www.gwern.net/Complement "A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples.")
    - ["How many computers are in your computer?"](https://www.gwern.net/Turing-complete#how-many-computers-are-in-your-computer)
    - [The most common error in technological forecasting: conjunctive vs disjunctive reasoning](https://www.gwern.net/Complexity-vs-AI#technology-forecasting-errors-functional-fixedness-in-assuming-dependencies)
    - ["Banner Ads Considered Harmful"](https://www.gwern.net/Ads "9 months of daily A/B-testing of Google AdSense banner ads on gwern.net indicates banner ads decrease total traffic substantially, possibly due to spillover effects.")
    - ["Internet Research Tips"](https://www.gwern.net/Search "Effective use of Google/Google Scholar/Libgen & other resources for papers/books/pages")
    - ["Littlewood's Law and the Global Media"](https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood "Selection effects in media become increasingly strong as populations and media increase, meaning that rare datapoints driven by unusual processes such as the mentally ill or hoaxers are increasingly unreliable as evidence of anything at all and must be ignored. At scale, anything that can happen will happen a small but nonzero times.")
    - [Small ways in which ordinary life has been getting better since the late '80s/early '90s](https://www.gwern.net/Notes#ordinary-life-improvements)
- QS:

    - [Acne: a good Quantified Self topic for self-experimentation](https://www.gwern.net/Statistical-notes#acne-a-good-quantified-self-topic)
    - [ZMA sleep self-experiment](https://www.gwern.net/zeo/ZMA "A randomized blinded self-experiment of the effects of ZMA (zinc+magnesium+vitamin B6) on my sleep; results suggest small benefit to sleep quality but are underpowered and damaged by Zeo measurement error/data issues; inconclusive but suggestive of benefits")
    - [Bacopa quasi-experiment](https://www.gwern.net/Bacopa "A small 2014-2015 non-blinded self-experiment using Bacopa monnieri to investigate effect on memory/sleep/self-ratings in an ABABA design; no particular effects were found.")
- Misc:

    - [On the Existence of Powerful Natural Languages](https://www.gwern.net/Language)
    - ["_My Little Pony_: Immanetizing The Equestrian"](https://www.gwern.net/MLP "A review of the cartoon series 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic', focusing on fandom, plot, development, and meaning of bronydom.; MLP revisited & considered 8 years later")
    - [A list of open questions](https://www.gwern.net/Questions "Some questions which are not necessarily important, but do puzzle me or where I find standard answers to be unsatisfying")
    - ["Origin of 'Littlewood's Law of Miracles'"](https://www.gwern.net/Littlewood#origin-of-littlewoods-law-of-miracles "Freeman Dyson probably invented what is called 'Littlewood's Law of Miracles'")
    - jailbreaking [Frank P. Ramsey's](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecisionTheory/comments/aj6v87/frank_p_ramseys_papers/) & [Arthur Jensen's](http://arthurjensen.net/?page_id=9) papers
- `gwern.net` changes: [Obormot](https://wiki.obormot.net/) has done a thorough redesign & implemented a number of new features, analogous to his work on replacing LW2 with [GreaterWrong.com](https://www.greaterwrong.com/).

    The major changes:

    - moved from MailChimp to TinyLetter; minimalist monochrome 'responsive' redesign, particularly for mobile; [Tufte-style sidenotes](https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/comments/b13p93/sidenotesjs_new_gwernnet_feature_for_turning/) via [`sidenotes.js`](https://www.gwern.net/static/js/sidenotes.js); collapsible sections; [static compilation of MathJax](https://joashc.github.io/posts/2015-09-14-prerender-mathjax.html "Prerendering MathJax [for Hakyll blogs]") of MathML math via [`mathjax-node-page`](https://github.com/pkra/mathjax-node-page/); [prototype inflation-adjuster](https://www.gwern.net/Inflation.hs); click-to-zoom images (`image-focus.js`); Tufte-style tables & [epigraphs](https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/#epigraphs); font improvements (eg [drop caps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial), smallcaps, numerals, better Mac rendering); 'dark mode'

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This will be the last gwern.net changelog I post on LW, as it seems increasingly redundant with [my newsletter](https://tinyletter.com/gwern) & [subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/gwern/), and my occasional regular LW link submissions. Please subscribe to those for future updates.