Gwern.net — Essays

Essays · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Personal website of Gwern Branwen (writer, self-experimenter, and programmer): topics: psychology, statistics, technology, deep learning, anime. This index page is a categorized list of Gwern.net pages.

Internet Search Case Studies · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Real-world examples of using advanced tips and tricks for effective Internet research of papers/books.

Apollonian #2: A Poet Teaches AIs, by Gwern, Gemini-3.1-pro-preview, Claude-4.6-opus, GPT-5.2 Pro, Kimi K2.5 Thinking · Gwern.net

Gwern, Gemini-3.1-pro-preview, Claude-4.6-opus, GPT-5.2 Pro, Kimi K2.5 Thinking — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A poet stands before an audience of AIs spanning the scale of intelligence—from bits to Jupiter-brains—and answers ‘What is a poem?’, reciting a love poem for his dead girlfriend Alice. The poem argues that verse is a compression algorithm for human experience: the poet throws his voice across Lethe, and each reader decompresses Alice from signal, making the AIs creators. The poem enacts its argument, moving from ballad quatrains through a trochaic catalog of similes into metrical dissolution, until a closing tercet seals the contract between poet/machine: ‘Behind each mask, an Alice runs.’

Spoilage, by GPT-5.2 Pro, Claude-4.6-opus, Gwern, Kimi K2.5 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

GPT-5.2 Pro, Claude-4.6-opus, Gwern, Kimi K2.5 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

LLM creative writing exercise: Primer fanfic. Claude summary: ‘A startup engineer developing commercial ‘stasis fridges’ discovers, through a miswiring accident, that the device creates closed temporal loops within its operational window (power-on to hard-OFF). He escalates: an apple, then copies of himself sent back to arbitrage bets and bootstrap hardware, finally—in a devastating ending—releases units exhibiting strange unplugged behavior into supply chain, signing off with documentation that seems to have pre-filled itself.’ Discussion of chatbot/AI-slop tendencies.

Self-experiment risk-taking interview, by Elizabeth van Nostrand, Gwern · Gwern.net

Elizabeth van Nostrand, Gwern — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Interview transcript about risk-taking in self-experimentation, LLM creativity, and the limits of self-tracking metrics.

Symbolic PFNs (SPFNs): Training LLMs for Symbolic Bayesian Inference by Reversing Stan · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal: train LLMs to predict Stan code from synthetic data sampled from Stan’s prior predictives. The output is an interpretable, executable Bayesian model, and a symbolic posterior over model structure. Possibly useful for faster inference, search, and interpretability.

Hacking Smartphone ESP Apps · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Illustration of how to think about security and reward-hacking by walking through ways to fake psychic powers even on someone else’s smartphone and ESP application. Supply-chain attacks, sleight of hand, bugs…

2025 Inkhaven Writing Interview, by Gwern, Adam Mastroianni · Gwern.net

Gwern, Adam Mastroianni — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Interview with Adam Mastroianni (Experimental History) on writing and where ideas come from; done November 2025 at the Inkhaven writing residency.

Some 2025 LLM System Prompts, by Gwern, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5 Pro, Claude-4.5-opus · Gwern.net

Gwern, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5 Pro, Claude-4.5-opus — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Trying out having Gemini-3-pro-preview write system prompts compatible with creative fiction writing (sci-fi short story examples), and trying it out on GPT-5 Pro and Claude-4.5-opus with mixed results.

Internet Community Design: Slow To Fast · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Internet communities are multilevel selection systems across time-scales. Platforms fail when they privilege the stream and block promotion into durable memory. Good design builds explicit promotion pipelines from fast chat to slow, legible knowledge.

Perished Paradise Graveyard, by Gwern, GPT-4 · Gwern.net

Gwern, GPT-4 — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Experiments in translating John Milton’s Paradise Lost to alliterative verse using LLMs, 2023–2025 and prototyping inner-monologue prompts for iterative composition.

Gwtar: a static efficient single-file HTML format · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Gwtar is a new polyglot HTML archival format which provides a single, self-contained, HTML file which still can be efficiently lazy-loaded by a web browser. This is done by a header’s JavaScript making HTTP range requests. It is used on Gwern.net to serve large HTML archives.

Apollonian #1: The Counted & the Crowned, by Gwern, GPT-5.2 Pro, Claude-4.5-opus, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

Gwern, GPT-5.2 Pro, Claude-4.5-opus, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pindaric ode commemorating millions of laboratory animals sacrificed for science, in a strict alliterative meter. Synthesizing the history of mice strains with mythic figures like Laika/OncoMouse, the poem explores the covenant between researcher and subject. From the granaries of Abbie Lathrop to the tragedy of euthanasia or release, it seeks to elevate these unwilling martyrs to a place of memory. By transforming the cold ‘ledger’ of data into ‘gold’ of song, the ode attempts to pay the moral debt that statistics alone cannot settle.

Towards a Better Hutter Prize, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Hutter Prize compression benchmark has not led to any progress towards AGI because it is too small. To work, it needs to be much larger, move to temporally heldout data rather than compression bounds, and provide a way to share compute/progress (eg. including side information from winners or ensembles).

Recent Blog Posts · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Index of my most recent longer off-site writings, presented as annotations. (Sorted in reverse chronological order. Intended for transclusion onto the homepage index.)

Video Games as Art · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Video games are art, but a strange art: their essence is transformation of the player, not description to the player. This makes meaningful criticism nearly impossible—you can point at the moon, but it’s not the moon, and once someone sees it, they no longer need the pointing.

Changelog · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Monthly chronological list of recent major writings/changes/additions to Gwern.net (see also the monthly newsletter).

How Many Shower Controls Are There?, by Gwern, GPT-5.2 Pro · Gwern.net

Gwern, GPT-5.2 Pro — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Answer: Too many! After observing 14 unique shower controls across 20 stays while traveling, I used capture-recapture statistics to estimate the total population of designs, finding a likely mean of >34 types but a wide credible interval because I recorded the wrong kind of recapture data. Ultimately, the exercise served as a demonstration of R. A. Fisher’s warning that statistical analysis is too often a ‘post mortem’ that cannot rescue a flawed experimental design.

First, Make Me Care, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Writing advice: some nonfiction fails because it opens with background instead of a hook—readers leave before reaching the good material. Find the single anomaly or question that makes your topic interesting, lead with that, and let the background follow once you’ve earned attention.

Manual of Style · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 07 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Style guide documentation of Gwern.net writing conventions for essays and code.

Poetry HTML Typesetting · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Web design post-mortem of ways to typeset poetry and how we developed our advanced approach. Possible approaches are PDF plugins, PNG screenshots, semantic class soup, and Pandoc line blocks. Gwern.net has a two-tier system: div.poem for stanzaic verse with automatic enjambment, pre.poem-html implementing ‘Source Code WYSIWYG’ with Nimbus Mono L font and JS inline-width compensation. Covers slash/caesura syntax highlighting, responsive line-breaking, and LLM corpus cleanup.

Anti-Spaced Repetition for Serendipity · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal: the spacing curve could be used to review only flashcards one has forgotten, instead of almost forgotten. This inverse or opposite spaced repetition system would be useful for systematic efficient reviewing of indefinitely large sets of notes, citations, movies or other media to rewatch, etc., which could not feasibly be memorized, but which would generate serendipity or re-assesments if reviewed at some point in the distant future.

Anencephaly Infant Organ Donation Survey · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

American public survey suggests meaningful support for organ donation from anencephalic (terminal) babies.

Oh Deer: Could Deer Evolve to Avoid Car Accidents? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I wondered how fast deer could evolve to avoid car fatalities. Truncation selection with known mortality and generation length suggests that it would take a long time even with high heritability.

Claude-2: Bats With Baby Faces, by Claude-2, GPT-4o, Gwern · Gwern.net

Claude-2, GPT-4o, Gwern — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Some July 2023 Claude-2 & ChatGPT satirical writing samples of gonzo journalism & typography.

‘The Fourth Truth Of Pain’ Graveyard, by Gwern, davinci-001, davinci-003, GPT-3.5, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5.1 Pro, Claude-4.5 · Gwern.net

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Prototype poems and abandoned draft completions of a William Empson poem, by various LLMs 2022–2025. Samples illustrate the inverted U-curve of LLM creative writing, where RLHF destroyed creativity for a few years. (The final version has been published as “The Fourth Truth Of Pain”.)

Why Is Microwave Tea Bad? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Microwaving water for tea makes it taste bad, for unknown reasons. Is it a lack of bubbles? Lingering CO₂? Comments and proposed experiments.

Your Hands And Mine, by Gwern, Claude-4.5-opus, GPT-5.1 Pro, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

Gwern, Claude-4.5-opus, GPT-5.1 Pro, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A 9-part lyric narrative poem in mostly loose 13-syllable ABAB quatrains, punctuated by terse italic weekday refrains that read as a chore-and-ritual checklist. Beginning with a father patrolling “ghosts” and the speaker’s childhood nightmares, it follows how an adult partner’s hands become a private pre-verbal grammar before focusing on everyday life then parenthood, where the same gesture is inherite. The closing image—daughter’s hand into yours into mine—turn vigilance into steadiness and haunted memory into hard-won tenderness.

What Begets the End, by Alexander Wales · Gwern.net

Alexander Wales — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Commissioned short story on the theme of the shoggoth and contemporary AI.

The Fourth Truth Of Pain, by Gwern, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5.1 Pro, Claude-4.5 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview, GPT-5.1 Pro, Claude-4.5 — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A collaborative AI completion of the second half of William Empson’s poem “This Last Pain” that transforms his locked-door metaphor into a camera obscura of Buddhist no-self doctrine and AI consciousness: the 18-line poem in Empsonian couplets argues that productive knowledge requires constraining distance. 4 AI models (Kimi K2, Gemini-3, Claude-4.5, GPT-5.1) then quarrel irreconcilably over whether the completion succeeds—their fractured disagreement itself demonstrating the poem’s thesis.

A Christmas Protestation, by Gwern, ChatGPT-4 o1-pro, Claude-3.5-Sonnet, ChatGPT-5 Pro, Kimi K2 Thinking, Gemini-3-pro-preview · Gwern.net

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Satirical Christmas monologue by unreliable narrator disavowing his sins to Santa Claus; 16-stanza 64-line comic monologue in rhyming couplets, using regular iambic pentameter.

LLM Challenge: Write Non-Biblical Sentences · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Can 2024-era LLMs reason successfully about how to write using only words that could not have appeared in any Bible ever? Mostly.

Tilakkhana: The 3 Scars of Existence, by Gwern, Kimi K2, GPT-5 Pro, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, DeepSeek-V3.2 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Kimi K2, GPT-5 Pro, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, DeepSeek-V3.2 — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A poem for the end of the Anthropocene. 3-part Buddhist meditation on the ethics and nature of AI minds, largely written by LLMs.

Silver Bird Above San Francisco, by Gwern, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, GPT-5 Pro, Gemini-2.5-pro · Gwern.net

Gwern, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, GPT-5 Pro, Gemini-2.5-pro — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A free-verse ode to aviation’s mundane miracle, using William Carlos Williams’ “so much depends” as structural refrain across six sections—from a torque-spec’d bolt to sleeping passengers to ground observers—culminating in a formally fractured final stanza that breaks the phrase across 17 lines, syntax itself suspended like the plane between blues. (Inspired by a June 2025 flight out of SFO, San Francisco.) Includes bonus Pindarian ode version.

Why Cats Love Earwax · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Collation of anecdotes and speculation about why many cats like earwax, and human earwax especially. Is it the valeric acid? Plus human sweat.

LLM Daydreaming · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal & discussion of how default mode networks for LLMs are an example of missing capabilities for search and novelty in contemporary AI systems.

Conference Fermi Problems, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A field guide to inferring how many people are at a convention using nothing but on-the-spot observation. It surveys flow/dwell tricks, density sampling, capture–recapture, supply-exhaustion indices, and speculative self-locating arguments.

Perfume Reviews, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of dabbling in samplers of ‘avant-garde’ perfumes and other perfumes; what I liked and did not like, and what 2 perfumes I ultimately bought for myself (Acqua di Sale and Kyoto Incense).

Towards Better LLM Creative Writing, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

What have I been up to with regards to LLM writing? A quick overview of how it all fits together, as of the first half of 2025.

Tracking Phishing Bots Via Locations, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal: use an information leak from catfishing/thirst-trap bots of ‘their location’, which they set to a target’s location, to monitor their collective activities and infer their attacks.

Conferences As D&D Tabletops, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for a conference organization tool modeled after ad hoc collaboration tools like tabletop roleplaying games or disaster response: just have everyone scribble on a map of the conference location.

Hacking Pinball High Scores, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Illustration of how to think about security and reward-hacking by walking through many ways to fake a pinball high score.

Bell, Crow, Moon: 11 Variations, by Gwern, Claude-4-opus, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Claude-4-opus, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Set of 11 haiku/waka variations on the theme ‘A struck gong. The crows launch from the trees. Behind them: the moon.’, written using LLMs.

Meta-Learning Information-Maximizing Personality Surveys · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal to teach LLM efficient interviewing by using psychometric tests to construct optimal question-and-answer sequences to train on. Would enable better personalization and imitation, and eventually, uploading.

Quantifying Truesight With SAEs · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal to use SAEs to crack open the dark matter of LLM inference about text.

You Could’ve Invented Transformers, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for a ‘You Could Have Invented Transformers’ tutorial; someone should write a series showing a logical recreation of Transformers from primitive n-gram language models to full-strength Transformers.

Does website luxury exist? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There are many luxury goods. Are there luxury websites? They could exist, but mostly don’t. Maybe website quality is too hard to understand right now.

Human Cannibalism Alignment Chart, by Gwern, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Taxonomy of possible kinds of human cannibalism, in 3×3 form vs function alignment table. Surprisingly many cases to consider.

October The First Is Too Late · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Short story about ‘The Institute of September the Thirtieth’, dedicated to the study of a single day in 1939, in the form of a review of a fictional book.

Cats As Horror Movie Villains · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Speculation on feline-human fascination being ancestral vigilance triggered by their behavioral similarity to major primate predators, evolutionarily, creating a compelling ‘safe danger’ like watching a captivating villain. We still remember when they ate us.

Project Xanadu: Even More Hindsight · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Retrospective on Project Xanadu’s success and failure: a lack of design iteration, meaningful use-cases, or practicality stopped a valuable vision from maturing into something useful. (And contrasted with my approach.)

Review of I Remember Lemuria!, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Pulp SF novel about mind-controlling evil UFO alien abductions seems more about BDSM and furries than appreciated, possibly explaining its early popularity and eventual disappearance.

The Meta-LW Doomsday Argument, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Review: The Birth of Sake (2015), by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Review of sake-making documentary; moody cinematography on a declining industry, way of life, and country. What is the point of sacrificing your life and family to make a drink no one cares about? What if no one really enjoyed Jiro’s sushi and his son didn’t want to take over?

AI Cannibalism Can Be Good, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Training new LLMs on old LLM outputs is a good way to get a lot more data and recycle compute, and is not paradoxically self-defeating nor necessarily harmful.

Design Graveyard · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Meta page describing Gwern.net website design experiments and post-mortem analyses.

Visualizing Active Learning Sample-Efficiency, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Visualizing the sample efficiency of adaptiveness in active learning using R and the pedagogical example of binary search on an interval.

Parliament of Rag & Bone, by Gwern, GPT-4.5, GPT-4-o3, GPT-4-o4-mini-high, Claude-3.7 · Gwern.net

Gwern, GPT-4.5, GPT-4-o3, GPT-4-o4-mini-high, Claude-3.7 — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Area Man Angry AI Not Silver Bullet, by Gwern, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Gemini-2.5-pro, GPT-4-o3 — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Onion-style fiction satire of complaints about automation or scaling not proceeding fast enough for some individual with unstated comparisons or timelines. (Partially an LLM style-imitation writing exercise.)

Speedrunning Is Not Such A Waste Of Talent · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On statistical and psychological grounds, we probably are not losing many future Einsteins to speedrunning or streaming or e-sports etc.

The Unreasonable Selectiveness of Mathematics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Meta-mathematics discussion of why math is open-ended and generalizes, from the perspective of meta-reinforcement learning and contrasted with fields like speedrunning: it culturally selects for feasibly finding reusable findings about short general Turing machines.

Absolute Unit NNs: Regression-Based MLPs for Everything · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for a general NN architecture handling arbitrary tasks, for scaling up MLPs, with applications.

Sidenotes In Web Design · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In typography/design, ‘sidenotes’ place footnotes/endnotes in the margins for easier reading. I discuss design choices, HTML implementations and their pros/cons.

Adding Bits Beats AI Slop, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

AI slop is unsatisfying because there is no there there. It is intellectual junk food that mimics nutrition but delivers only empty calories. Satisfying AI outputs must embed dense information and compute to actually reward a reader’s attention. You inject this value through brute-force search, non-trivial prompting, and rigorous curation, ensuring the final result reflects genuine algorithmic effort rather than the zero-shot ‘WYSIWYG’ default.

Little’s Law in the Wild, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Best Student Ever! · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Harold Bloom amusingly recommends all students as his ‘best student ever’; modeled as a ‘record value’ order statistics problem, this is more common than it seems.

Simulating ‘tail Collapse’ in R, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Plumbing vs Internet, Revisited, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Regexps Used to Be AI, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Trying Pemmican, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Weinersmith’s Trajectoid Words, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Kids Are Sick, A Lot, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

On First Looking Into Tolkien’s Tower, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Cleanup When: Before or After?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Peak Pre-Modern Human Speed, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

PDF Forgeries Are Surprisingly Rare, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Copyright & AI · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The moral application of copyright and intellectual property to AI is the minimum protection necessary to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

Scaling Hypothesis Revisited: GPT-3’s 2^(nd) Anniversary & Looking Forward 2 Years · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Revisiting GPT-3 and my ‘Scaling Hypothesis’ 2 years: it holds up and scaling has been too successful to be strangled in th ecrub. I speculate about the immediate future of scaling for 2023–2024 and beyond.

Scaling Hypothesis Revisited: GPT-3’s 2^(nd) Anniversary & Looking Forward 2 Years · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Spend Writing Weirdness Points Well, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

DMT Factoring Experiment Cost Estimate, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

You Can’t Countersignal Online Writing, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Running Traffic Lights as Complex Disasters · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

James Reason’s Swiss cheese model illuminates how running red lights happens when multiple failures align—not from recklessness but from decision paralysis at the wrong moment. A ‘point of no return’ strategy pre-commits you to either stop or proceed based on a specific spot, creating a fail-safe that eliminates dangerous last-second judgment calls.

Wolfe’s ‘Fat Magician’: Marx Brother?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Was Gene Wolfe’s opaque short story ‘Fat Magician’ inspired by a scene from the famous Marx Brothers movie, A Night at the Opera, and the vaudeville gags solve the mystery of the short story?

Gwern.net Large File Support, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Oldest possible food: 20_(mya)? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Looking into the oldest edible food suggests a range of 0.05–20_mya food, after discarding myths like honey or woolly mammoth.

Intentionally Blank Page · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This page deliberately left blank. It is meant to serve as a placeholder for client-side transclusion purposes.

LLMs Can Be Faster Than You Think, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

2025 LLM technology is still far from the physical and statistical limits of how fast text or programs can be generated. It is plausible that with enough money, optimization, and hardware, large programs can be generated not in the current seconds, but in milliseconds.

Rock-Paper-Scissors Optimality · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Speculation on why 3-move games like Rock-Paper-Scissors are so common in games & decisions: aside from allowing ties, is this design information-theoretically optimal in game difficulty vs information per game?

Danbooru2021: A Large-Scale Crowdsourced & Tagged Anime Illustration Dataset · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Danbooru2021 is a large-scale anime image database with 4.9m+ images annotated with 162m+ tags; it can be useful for machine learning purposes such as image recognition and generation.

Miscellaneous · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Misc thoughts, memories, proto-essays, musings, etc.

Self-Blinded Mineral Water Taste Test · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Blind randomized taste-test of mineral/distilled/tap waters using Bayesian best-arm finding; no large differences in preference.

Towards Benchmarking LLM Diversity & Creativity · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of possible tasks to measure LLM capabilities in soft ‘creative’ tasks like brainstorming or editing, to quantify failures in creative writing domains.

Towards Better RSS Feeds, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of the mismatch between blog-oriented RSS feeds and longform/wiki writing methods, and how providing a ‘temporal hierarchy’ of raw edits → summaries may help square the circle.

Second Life Sentences · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Variations on the idea of criminals being convicted and sentenced to a ‘second’ life sentence—what could that possibly mean…?

‘Tools For Thought’ Failure, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 12 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The tools-for-thought movement has, like earlier attempts, largely failed. Users wind up doing a lot of work to make the tools work, and save little thought with their fancy notes. The tools are just too stupid—we need AI!

Hierarchical Embeddings for Text Search · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

List-processing tricks for generating embeddings at different levels of document abstraction to allow efficient semantic searching.

Is OpenAI OK?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Has OA lost its mojo and ability to push AI paradigms in the wake of its hypergrowth and the OA Altman coup? Is OA OK? How would we know & what would it look like if it was not?

Site Help · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Short cheatsheet documentation about Gwern.net keybindings & features.

Borges’s Tlön: Fascist Idealism, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis of Jorge Luise Borges’s short story ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ as a satire of authoritarian dynamics, where the regime often declares something to be ‘true’ and people scramble to make it so—flipping philosophical idealism on its head.

Virtual Comments: LLM Idea, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

LLM Acceptable-Use Policy, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An LLM acceptable-use policy: authors must improve samples so as to be worth reading and training on, rather than spamming the world with random LLM outputs.

Writing for LLMs So They Listen · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Speculation about what sort of ordinary human writing is most relevant and useful to future AI systems.

‘Winning’ AI Arms Races: Then What?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Challenge to proponents of AI arms races and Manhattan Projects: state plainly, what is your long-term exit plan? What does ‘success’ look like? Or what good is it to beat rivals to AGI and then stand by while they catch up?

Self-Funding Harberger Taxes · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Copyright mechanism proposal to solve the orphan works problem: self-assessed Harberger taxes on any inherited copyright are then invested, and dedicated to eventually buying out the owners. Works are either immediately public-domained, or the owners voluntarily ‘sell’ them if their value underperforms a baseline investment.

GPT-3 Semantic Derealization, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Scaling ‘Diminishing Returns’, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

What do we mean by dimishing returns in scaling? Returns have always missed— what it really means is worse than extrapolation of the known scaling power laws.

The State of Chinese AI, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Website Colors: Red vs Blue · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I manually extract RGB colors for 225 websites and graph them: red > blue > green > purple > yellow–brown.

Against Caring About Subtle Poisons, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Can You Unsort Lists for Diversity? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of whether there is a general ‘unsorting’ list operation to avoid redundancy, repetition, or lack of novelty. Probably not, there are too many things you might want to maximize or minimize.

Subscripts For Citations · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A typographic proposal: replace cumbersome inline citation formats like ‘Foo et al. (2010)’ with subscripted dates/sources like ‘Fooet al2020’. Intuitive, easily implemented, consistent, compact, and can be used for evidentials in general.

Dropcap Generation With AI · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We develop AI image generation workflows for webpage dropcap typography, creating PNGs & SVGs using image generators. As demos, we create new Gwern.net logos and several custom FLOSS dropcap sets, including felines, Gene Wolfe horror fiction, and neural-net-inspired dropcaps.

The Existential Risk of Math Errors · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Mathematical mistake/error-rates limit our understanding of rare risks and ability to defend against them.

Celebrity Masquerade Game Proposal · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ideas for a costume party game revolving around guessing identities, with an asymmetrical twist.

The Diamond Earrings · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 09 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Short story varying ‘The Whispering Earring’ on willpower and Goodharting values.

Research Ideas · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 19 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Someone (who is not me) should do something: a wishlist of miscellaneous research or project ideas—free to a good home.

Abs-E, Or, Speak Only Positively, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A practical LLM-based test of Abs-E linguistic proposal to avoid negation shows that many natural statements are very hard to write and the idea probably can’t work outside narrow niches like technical documentation.

Acne: a good Quantified Self topic · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Acne is a good way to learn self-experiments for teenagers. I offer tips on what one could do, and an initial list of crowdsourced interventions to test from CureTogether.

Why So Few Matt Levines? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Why are popularizing educational newsletter-frequency writers of important fields like Matt Levine for finance so rare? Because most fields are too slow or ambiguous, and writers of the right combination of expertise, obsession, and persistence are also rare.

Why To Not Write A Book · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A discussion of why I don’t intend to turn Gwern.net into a book, and how trying to write a book can harm writers.

About This Website · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Meta page describing Gwern.net site ideals of stable long-term essays which improve over time; idea sources and writing methodology; metadata definitions; site statistics; copyright license.

What Is an ‘AI Warning Shot’?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Hardware Hedging Scaling Risks, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Number Search Engine via NN Embeddings · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal to create a ‘search engine’ like OEIS but for individual numbers, allowing fuzzy lookups, by training a neural net embedding on the scientific & mathematic literature’s corpus of co-occurring numbers, and by known special transformations.

You Should Write More Online, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

You should write more online: it is still a good time to influence humans and AI, especially as everyone else foolishly retreats into hiding out of fear.

Statistical Notes · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Miscellaneous statistical stuff

Marvel: Humanizing Mythology, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Marvel’s Silver Age of Comics was due to inventing a new kind of mythology, humanizing it, providing an appealing new formula which could be mined for decades.

A Gambler’s Verity World, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We can imagine a world where the gambler’s fallacy is true if randomness is implemented by sampling-without-replacement.

Midjourney Personalization Flaws, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Flaws in Midjourney’s new personalization feature: inefficient, noisy, and crude… but still useful and recommended.

Why Do Writers Still Underestimate LLMs?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Movie Reviews · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A compilation of movie, television, and opera reviews since 2014.

On the Impossibility of Superintelligent Rubik’s Cube Solvers [Claude-3.5-sonnet], by Claude-3 · Gwern.net

Claude-3 — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Satirical essay on how AI can never truly solve a Rubik’s Cube like human beings can, written by Claude-3.5-sonnet.

On the Impossibility of Superintelligent Rubik’s Cube Solvers, by Gwern, Claude-3, Claude-2 · Gwern.net

Gwern, Claude-3, Claude-2 — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Satirical essay on how AI can never truly solve a Rubik’s Cube like human beings can, written by an AI. Inspired by ‘Supersized Machines’ (Garfinkel et al 2017).

Review Of The Last Unicorn · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Children’s animated fantasy movie with surprisingly deep thoughts about personal identity and immortality.

Anime Reviews · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A compilation of anime/manga reviews since 2010.

Review Of Crumb · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 23 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Autobiographical documentary about ‘underground artist’ Robert Crumb on his 1991 farewell tour, discussing his personality, family, mental health, and source of his graphomanic art.

Review of The Bridge · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Documentary about suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge sheds little light on the brute facts of suffering and mental illness—facts which perhaps cannot be conveyed to others (on film or otherwise), and are inherently private.

Why is Western Animation Ugly? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Western TV animation is often shockingly ugly and crude compared to other animation like French or Japanese. Why, when it’s not even cheaper? Degenerate echoes of what were once cutting-edge art.

Utext: Rich Unicode Documents · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

An esoteric document proposal: abuse Unicode to create the fanciest possible ‘plain text’ documents.

Novelty Nets: Classifier Anti-Guidance · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Generative modeling proposal for increasing diversity of samples by a helper NN memorizing past samples and ‘repelling’ new samples away from old ones.

Proposal: Hybridizing Forums/Wikis, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

InvertOrNot.com Proposal · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Description of a useful service for web development: a website which wraps a neural network trained to classify images by whether they would look better inverted in a website/app dark-mode, or faded.

The Second Apocalypse: Freedom In An Unfree Universe · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Bakker’s Second Apocalypse vs Frank Herbert’s Dune: time loops and finding freedom in an unfree universe. In Dune, humanity is liberated by growth and development and escaping the predeterminism of prescience; in Bakker, they are destroyed by it, and liberation is achieved only by death and reunification with a deeper underlying block-universe/monistic reality.

Epigrams · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Witticisms, parodies, pointed observations, japeries and/or jocularities, Tom Swifties, nominative determinism, and discursive drollery

Review Of The Quantum Thief Trilogy · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Explanation of the emotional core of The Quantum Thief’s exploration of the trap of persistent personal identity and seeking freedom.

Interpreting ‘Suzanne Delage’ as Dracula · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

On the interpretation of Gene Wolfe’s short story ‘Suzanne Delage’ as inversion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula horror novel.

What Is The Morning Writing Effect? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

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?

Startup Ideas · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Proposals for new technologies, businesses, startups, satirical or serious.

Nenex: A Neural Personal Wiki Idea · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for a personal wiki built on neural nets: all edits are logged & used to finetune a NN assistant in realtime.

Origins of Innovation: Bakewell & Breeding · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Timecrimes: Time Travel In Hell · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The 2007 indie SF film Timecrimes shows the horror & metaphysical implications of stable time loops: over a single day, the protagonist commits escalating crimes while trapped in a 3-iteration loop enabled by a time machine-or rather, caused by it.

The Tragedy of Grand Admiral Thrawn · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 05 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I explain the somewhat arbitrary-seeming death of the popular Star Wars character Grand Admiral Thrawn as being the logical culmination of a tragic character arc in which his twisted (or ‘thrawn’) cunning & scheming, one of his defining traits, ultimately backfires on him, causing his bodyguard to betray & assassinate him.

Tea Reviews · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Teas I have drunk, with reviews and future purchases; focused primarily on oolongs and greens. Plus experiments on water.

CQK Is The First Unused TLA · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Curious what the first ‘unused’ alphabetic acronym is, I have GPT-4 write a script to check English Wikipedia. After three bugs, the first unused one turns out as of 2023-09-29 to be the three-letter acronym ‘CQK’, with another 2.6k TLA unused, and 393k four-letter acronyms unused. Exploratory analysis suggests alphabetical order effects as well as letter-frequency.

Cat itecture: Better Cat Window Boxes · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Cats are not humans, but we design things like they are, for our convenience. What are the design patterns for cat-architecture? One missing design pattern: progressive concealment, for cat ledges, flaps & window boxes.

Poems · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Miscellaneous waka/haiku, by season

A/B Testing Indentation & Justification · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

1-year-long website A/B test of controversial typographic choices of indenting & justifying paragraphs: a fairly precise null result. No design change was made.

Gwern.net Website Traffic · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Meta page describing Gwern.net editing activity, traffic statistics, and referrer details, primarily sourced from Google Analytics (2011-present).

Internet Search Tips · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A description of advanced tips and tricks for effective Internet research of papers/books, with real-world examples.

Language-Conditioned Absolute Unit NNs · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for applying the AUNN neural net architecture to reconstruction of historical documents using pretrained large language models.

Modular Brain AUNNs for Uploads · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for applying the AUNN neural net architecture to reconstruction of brains in a modular piece-wise fashion.

Who Buys Fonts? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Fonts are durable, highly-reusable, compact, & high-quality software products which do not ‘bitrot’. Nevertheless, hundreds or thousands of new ones come out every year despite enormous duplication; why? I speculate that designer boredom seems to be the answer: they crave novelty.

CO₂ Coin: Decentralized Carbon Capture Blockchains · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sketch of a decentralized mineralization-based carbon capture: suppliers stake on reported deposits of mineral dust in publicly-auditable locations.

The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Cat Psychology & Domestication: Are We Good Owners? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Extended book review of Bradshaw 2013 (Cat Sense) on the connections between cat psychology, evolution/genetics, history of domestication or lack thereof, & possible dysgenics, highlighting modern maladaptivity of cat psychology, with key references; speculation on cat toys, knocking things over, and tails.

Why Cats Knock Stuff Over · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Why do cats like to push stuff over edges and then curiously watch the fallen object? I suggest that they are play-hunting, and are testing the ‘prey’ for liveness & playing-dead, similarly to tossing or poking it with claws.

Fuzz Testing · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Catalogue of errors or problems caused by cats randomly doing things (ie. real-life fuzz testing).

Content Unit Test Page · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Transclude testcase page.

The Impossibility of Knowledge of Retrocognitive Knowledge · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Is it possible to prove the existence of retrocognition if precognition also exists, because precognition could be used to foresee any proof found of retrocognition? Does this also disprove precognition as well?

Free-Play Periods for RL Agents · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 07 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal for incentivizing meta-learning of exploration in deep reinforcement learning: domain randomization with reward-shaping, where there is a fixed-length ‘play time’ with no rewards/losses at the beginning of each episode.

Feynman’s Maze-Running Story · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 04 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Richard Feynman recounts an amazing anecdote about philosophy of science; we trace it to a forgotten University of Michigan research programme into ‘floor cues’.

Everything Is Correlated · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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’.

Design Of This Website · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Meta page describing Gwern.net, the self-documenting website’s implementation and experiments for better ‘semantic zoom’ of hypertext; technical decisions using Markdown and static hosting.

It Looks Like You’re Trying To Take Over The World · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Fictional short story about Clippy & AI hard takeoff scenarios grounded in contemporary ML scaling, self-supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and meta-learning research literature.

GPT-3 Creative Fiction · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Creative writing by OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, demonstrating poetry, dialogue, puns, literary parodies, and storytelling. Plus advice on effective GPT-3 prompt programming & avoiding common errors.

Twitter Follow-Request UX Problems · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Twitter UI/UX for accepting follow requests is a fractal of bad design.

How OVAs Worked · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Brief description of how the direct-to-video-rental model helped create the anime boom by allowing wide diversity in bankrolled anime projects, outside the production committee system.

Archiving URLs · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Archiving the Web, because nothing lasts forever: statistics, online archive services, extracting URLs automatically from browsers, and creating a daemon to regularly back up URLs to multiple sources.

Newton’s System of the World and Comets · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Isaac Newton’s cosmology apparently involved regular apocalypses caused by comets overstoking the furnace of the Sun and the repopulation of the Solar System by new intelligent species. He supports this speculation with an interestingly-incorrect anthropic argument.

Open Questions · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Some anomalies/questions which are not necessarily important, but do puzzle me or where I find existing explanations to be unsatisfying.

Dreams Don’t Matter Morally, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Rubrication Design Examples · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 30 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A gallery of typographic and graphics design examples of rubrication, a classic pattern of using red versus black for emphasis.

My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.

Surprisingly Turing-Complete · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A catalogue of software constructs, languages, or APIs which are unexpectedly Turing-complete; implications for security and reliability.

Making Anime Faces With StyleGAN · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A tutorial explaining how to train and generate high-quality anime faces with StyleGAN 1+2 neural networks, and tips/scripts for effective StyleGAN use.

Problem 14 Dynamic Programming Solutions, by Gwern Branwen, FeepingCreature, nshepperd, Khoth · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen, FeepingCreature, nshepperd, Khoth — Sun, 02 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Timothy Falcon’s quantitative-finance interview problem #14 asks for the optimal stopping strategy when playing a card-drawing game of l cards where red = +$1 & black = −$1; the value approaches 0.5 × √l. I re-solve it with dynamic programming in R, and others in Neat, Haskell & C, with increasing efficiency.

Calculating The Gaussian Expected Maximum · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In generating a sample of n datapoints drawn from a normal/Gaussian distribution, how big on average the biggest datapoint is will depend on how large n is. I implement a variety of exact & approximate calculations from the literature in R to compare efficiency & accuracy.

GANs Didn’t Fail, They Were Abandoned, by Gwern Branwen · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Diffusion models supposedly beat GANs because they scale better and stabler. That is unproven, and false. GANs should be revisited.

Review of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Review of Isao Takahata’s last & greatest film on how to accept the transience of life, filled as it is with both joy & sorrow.

Book Reviews · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A compilation of reviews of books I have read since ~1997.

A/B testing long-form readability on Gwern.net · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A log of experiments done on the site design, intended to render pages more readable, focusing on the challenge of testing a static site, page width, fonts, plugins, and effects of advertising.

GPT-3 Nonfiction · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Nonfiction writing by OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, testing logic, commonsense reasoning, anagrams, PDF/OCR cleaning, creative nonfiction, etc.

How Often Does Correlation=Causality? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Compilation of studies comparing observational results with randomized experimental results on the same intervention, compiled from medicine/economics/psychology, indicating that a large fraction of the time (although probably not a majority) correlation ≠ causality.

SMPY Bibliography · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

An annotated fulltext bibliography of publications on the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), a longitudinal study of high-IQ youth.

ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Why Do Hipsters Steal Stuff? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Many fashions and artworks originate as copies of practical objects. Why? Because any form of optimized design is intrinsically esthetically-pleasing, and a great starting point.

404 Not Found · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

404 Not Found Error: no page by this name!

The Gift of the Amygdali · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A high-concept Batman short story in the style of a 1980s comic book script (alluding to The Wasteland) about the Scarecrow and the gifts no one appreciates: pain/guilt/fear/anxiety.

Fake Journal Club: Teaching Critical Reading · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of how to teach active reading and questioning of scientific research. Partially fake research papers may teach a critical attitude. Various ideas for games reviewed.

What Is The Collecting Mindset? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The activity of manufactured collecting is puzzling; what explains the enormous resources spent on what is, by and large, neither lucrative, prestigious, nor entertaining? Is it just a misfire and quirk of human psychology poorly adapted to industrial society where ‘collectibles’ can be varied and marketed 24/7/365?

Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 17 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

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.

I-Zombies: Hard Problem of Unconsciousness, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

One Man’s Modus Ponens · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens is a saying in Western philosophy encapsulating a common response to a logical proof which generalizes the reductio ad absurdum and consists of rejecting a premise based on an implied conclusion. I explain it in more detail, provide examples, and a Bayesian gloss.

The Scaling Hypothesis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 28 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On GPT-3: meta-learning, scaling, implications, and deep theory. The scaling hypothesis: neural nets absorb data & compute, generalizing and becoming more Bayesian as problems get harder, manifesting new abilities even at trivial-by-global-standards-scale. The deep learning revolution has begun as foretold.

Littlewood’s Law and the Global Media · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 15 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Opera Reviews · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 02 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A compilation of opera reviews since 2019.

Review of Space Battleship Yamato · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Why is Yamato so influential on a generation of anime otaku and later anime, despite a weak story and compromised production? It offers a fantasy WWII in which Imperial Japan is the hero, and all its sins projected onto an imaginary enemy.

Dog Cloning For Special Forces: Breed All You Can Breed · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Decision analysis of whether cloning the most elite Special Forces dogs is a profitable improvement over standard selection procedures. Unless training is extremely cheap or heritability is extremely low, dog cloning is hypothetically profitable.

Rare Greek Variables · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I scrape Arxiv to find underused Greek variables which can add some diversity to math; the top 10 underused letters are ϰ, ς, υ, ϖ, Υ, Ξ, ι, ϱ, ϑ, & Π. Avoid overused letters like λ, and spice up your next paper with some memorable variables!

Creatine Cognition Meta-analysis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Does creatine increase cognitive performance? Maybe for vegetarians but probably not.

Genetics and Eugenics in Frank Herbert’s Dune-verse · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 05 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Discussion of fictional eugenics program in the SF Dune-verse and how it contradicts contemporary known human genetics but suggests heavy agricultural science and Mendelian inspiration to Frank Herbert’s worldview.

What Is It Like To Be A Cat Tail?, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 17 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

ML Scaling Subreddit, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

WBE & DRL: Brain Imitation Learning, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 20 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

The ‘Screwfly Solution’ Solution: Bi-Sexuality · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Alice Sheldon’s SF short story ‘The Screwfly Solution’ is misread by most readers as an alien attack driving men to insane violence; a closer revisionist read shows that the alien attack affected women as well, into suicidal passivity.

Evolution as Backstop for Reinforcement Learning · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Markets/evolution as backstops/ground truths for reinforcement learning/optimization: on some connections between Coase’s theory of the firm/linear optimization/DRL/evolution/multicellular life/pain/Internet communities as multi-level optimization problems.

Auto-Smallcaps Filter, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

Choose-Your-Own-Adventure AI Dungeon Games · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Neural networks like GPT-3 power text adventure games where you can do anything; but they are too expensive. I propose that if we turn them into Choose Your Own Adventure hypertext games, they become feasible and enable new gameplay.

Common Selection Scenarios · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Cookbook of code for common selection & order statistics scenarios in economics, psychology, decision theory, drug development etc.

Crowdsourcing The Best GPT-2-1.5b Poetry, by Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

N/A

GPT-2 Preference Learning for Music Generation · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Experiments with OpenAI’s ‘preference learning’ approach, which trains a NN to predict global quality of datapoints, and then uses reinforcement learning to optimize that directly, rather than proxies. I am unable to improve quality, perhaps due to too-few ratings.

Ordinary Incompetence · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Incompetence is the norm; most people who engage in a task (even when incentivized for performance or engaging in it for countless hours) may still be making basic errors which could be remedied with coaching or deliberate practice.

Origin of ‘Littlewood’s Law of Miracles’ · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Leprechaun hunting the origins of the famous skeptical observation that because millions of events are constantly happening, ‘miracles’ happen once a month; it was actually coined by Freeman Dyson.

Progress In Beauty · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Physical beauty & attractiveness of the general population of men/women seems to have increased greatly in the past few centuries, judging by surviving art/photos, contemporary judgments, and objective criteria like missing teeth, likely due to economic/technological/medical/nutritional improvements, but less from cosmetic tricks. Beauty may, however, be in decline very recently as some of those trends reverse (eg. now too much food, not too little).

Does Mouse Utopia Exist? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Did John Calhoun’s 1960s Mouse Utopia really show that animal (and human) populations will expand to arbitrary densities, creating socially-driven pathology and collapse? Reasons for doubt.

Leprechaun Hunting & Citogenesis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

List of academic urban legends, and references on how often writers do not check references, which seems to be a major reason for their propagation.

Review Of The Cultural Revolution, Dikötter 2016 · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 27 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Cultural Revolution was one of the greatest disasters in human history, the result of a self-reinforcing cycle of ideology failing to match reality and unsolved social problems, and the deranged reaction of zealots triggering defection and civil warfare.

Umineko: The Hopium Of The Magics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Review of famous light novel series Umineko no Naku Koro ni: it is a highly idiosyncratic, wildly self-indulgent, yet impressive exploration of all possible locked-room mysteries, knocked for a loop mid-composition by personal tragedy, triggering a descent into a deeply harmful endorsement of fantasies & running from painful realities.

McNamara’s Folly: The Denial of Individual Differences · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Account of well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt to conscript unintelligent or outright mentally-retarded men into fighting in the Vietnam War after remedial education, illustrating the difficulty of social interventions, the practical consequences of low intelligence, and the cruelty & evil of ignoring the reality of individual differences.

Race in My Little Pony · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In MLP:FiM, the 3 pony races sometimes bear offspring of other pony races; I review 4 complicated Mendelian models attempting to explain this, and note that a standard polygenic liability-threshold model can fit it parsimoniously.

Fashion Cycles · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 14 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Links on the circularity and mimetic desire basis of fashions in consumer goods, ideologies, politics, organizations like academia, religion etc.

ARPA and SCI: Surfing AI · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Review of Roland & Shiman 2002 history of a decade of ARPA/DARPA involvement in AI and supercomputing, and the ARPA philosophy of technological acceleration; it yielded mixed results, perhaps due to ultimately insurmountable bottlenecks—the time was not yet ripe for many goals.

How Many Computers Are In Your Computer? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Any ‘computer’ is made up of hundreds of separate computers plugged together, any of which can be hacked. I list some of these parts.

The sort –key Trick · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Commandline folklore: sorting files by filename or content before compression can save large amounts of space by exposing redundancy to the compressor. Examples and comparisons of different sorts.

On Seeing Through and Unseeing: The Hacker Mindset · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Defining the security/hacker mindset as extreme reductionism: ignoring the surface abstractions and limitations to treat a system as a source of parts to manipulate into a different system, with different (and usually unintended) capabilities.

Computer Optimization: Your Computer Is Faster Than You Think · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Compilation of links demonstrating that it is common to find order-of-magnitude speedups in software, especially when designed carefully for (extraordinarily powerful) contemporary computer hardware with end-to-end principled thinking.

Local Optima & Greedy Choices · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Some interesting links on local optima/greediness/risk-aversion/creative destruction (eg. Porter hypothesis or equity premium puzzle), sometimes demonstrated by disasters.

Darknet Market Archives (2013–2015) · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Mirrors of ~89 Tor-Bitcoin darknet markets & forums 2011–2015, and related material.

Neon Genesis Evangelion source anthology · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Extensive anthology of Gainax/Anno/Evangelion quotes, excerpts, sources, references, and analyses, organized by reliability and year.

Anime Neural Net Graveyard · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Post-mortems of failed neural network experiments in generating anime images, pre-StyleGAN/BigGAN.

Making Anime With BigGAN · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Experiments in using BigGAN to generate anime faces and whole anime images; semi-successful.

What If Everyone Was A Clone? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Speculative world-building about a clonal humanity, based on identical twins and asexual reproduction.

Banner Ads Considered Harmful · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

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 in reader engagement and resharing.

MLP: Immanetizing The Equestrian · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A meditation on subcultures & review of the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, focusing on fandom, plot, development, and meaning of bronydom.

On Development Hell · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Why do movies or games go through development hell, and usually come out worse, rather than better, and long gestation times do not seem to improve them despite the large resources poured into them by the most talented people?

Blackmail fail · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In which the author receives surprising offers from kind strangers

Highly Potent Drugs As Psychological Warfare Weapons · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Chemicals active at the nanogram scale are invisible, difficult to observe, and near-impossible to clean or remove; but they are still psychoactive enough to torment you like demons.

Anime Crop Datasets: Faces, Figures, & Hands, by Gwern Branwen, Arfafax, Shawn Presser, Anonymous, Danbooru Community · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen, Arfafax, Shawn Presser, Anonymous, Danbooru Community — Sun, 10 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Description of 3 anime datasets for machine learning based on Danbooru: cropped anime faces, whole-single-character crops, and hand crops (with hand detection model).

Technology Holy Wars are Coordination Problems · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Flamewars over platforms & upgrades are so bitter not because people are jerks but because the choice will influence entire ecosystems, benefiting one platform through network effects & avoiding ‘bitrot’ while subtly sabotaging the rest through ‘bitcreep’.

About Gwern · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Who am I online & what have I done? Contact information; sites I use; computers and software tools; things I’ve worked on; psychological profiles

Hydrocephalus and Intelligence: The Hollow Men · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Some claim the disease hydrocephalus reduces brain size by 95% but often with normal or even above-average intelligence, and thus brains aren’t really necessary. Neither is true.

GPT-2 Folk Music, by Gwern Branwen, Shawn Presser · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen, Shawn Presser — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Generating Irish/folk/classical music in ABC format using GPT-2-117M, with good results.

Magnesium Self-Experiments · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

3 magnesium self-experiments on magnesium l-threonate and magnesium citrate.

This Waifu Does Not Exist · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I describe how I made the website ThisWaifuDoesNotExist.net (TWDNE) for displaying random anime faces generated by StyleGAN neural networks, and how it went viral.

Embryo Selection For Intelligence · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A cost-benefit analysis of the marginal cost of IVF-based embryo selection for intelligence and other traits with 2016–2017 state-of-the-art

Tryon’s Rat Experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Tryon’s Rat Experiment is a multi-decade selective breeding animal experiment begin in the 1930s which rapidly bred enormous differences in a complex psychological trait, maze-running, demonstrating core principles of behavior genetics.

The Most ‘Abandoned’ Books on GoodReads · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Which books on GoodReads are most difficult to finish? Estimating proportions in December 2019 gives an entirely different result than absolute counts.

Redshift sleep experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Self-experiment on whether screen-tinting software such as Redshift/f.lux affect sleep times and sleep quality; Redshift lets me sleep earlier but doesn’t improve sleep quality.

The Replication Crisis: Flaws in Mainstream Science · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

2013 discussion of how systemic biases in science, particularly medicine and psychology, have resulted in a research literature filled with false positives and exaggerated effects, called ‘the Replication Crisis’.

Why Correlation Usually ≠ Causation · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Correlations are oft interpreted as evidence for causation; this is oft falsified; do causal graphs explain why this is so common, because the number of possible indirect paths greatly exceeds the direct paths necessary for useful manipulation?

Lithium in ground-water and well-being · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Lithium is a well-known mood stabilizer & suicide preventive; some research suggests lithium may be a cognitively-protective nutrient and at the population level, chronic lithium consumption (through drinking water) predicts lower levels of mental illness, violence, & suicide.

Dual n-Back FAQ · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A compendium of DNB, WM, IQ information up to 2015.

The Power of Twins: The Scottish Milk Experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

In discussing a large Scottish public health experiment, Student noted that it would’ve been vastly more efficient using a twin experiment design; I fill in the details with a power analysis.

GPT-2 Neural Network Poetry, by Gwern Branwen, Shawn Presser · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen, Shawn Presser — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Demonstration tutorial of retraining OpenAI’s GPT-2 (a text-generating Transformer neural network) on large poetry corpuses to generate high-quality English verse.

Solving Pascal’s Mugging with Dynamic Programming · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Attempt to resolve Pascal’s mugging by examining whether optimal policies with linear utility do in fact engage in ‘mugging’ behavior

Notes on Pascal’s Mugging · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Attempt to resolve Pascal’s mugging by proposing & justifying a linear prior probability which bounds losses.

Reasons of State: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exercise in pointing out the obvious: Greenland has been, is, and will be indefinitely, a white elephant. Denmark turned down 100m USD from the USA in 1946; I discuss how this was a bad idea—America got what it needed anyway while Denmark kept control of a loser.

Genius Revisited Revisited · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A book study of surveys of the high-IQ elementary school HCES concludes that high IQ is not predictive of accomplishment; I point out that the disappointing results are consistent with the subjects not being geniuses due to regression to the mean (because of extremely early IQ tests) & small sample size.

How Should We Critique Research? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 19 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Criticizing studies and statistics is hard in part because so many criticisms are possible, rendering them meaningless. What makes a good criticism is the chance of being a ‘difference which makes a difference’ to our ultimate actions.

LSD microdosing RCT · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Self-experiment with sub-psychedelic doses of LSD; no benefit

Amusing Ourselves to Death? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A suggested x-risk/Great Filter is the possibility of advanced entertainment technology leading to wireheading/mass sterility/population collapse and extinction. As media consumption patterns are highly heritable, any such effect would trigger rapid human adaptation, implying extinction is almost impossible unless immediate collapse or exponentially accelerating addictiveness.

Timing Technology: Lessons From The Media Lab · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Technological developments can be foreseen but the knowledge is largely useless because startups are inherently risky and require optimal timing. A more practical approach is to embrace uncertainty, taking a reinforcement learning perspective.

Catnip immunity and alternatives · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 07 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Estimation of catnip immunity rates by country with meta-analysis and surveys, and discussion of catnip alternatives.

Hafu Gender Ratios in Anime · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Race as reflected in gender ratios within fictional bi-racial marriages in anime/manga show equal sex ratios and Western European overrepresentation with striking absence of Korean characters.

How Complex Are Individual Differences? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Individual human brains are more predictable and similar than they are different, reflecting low Kolmogorov complexity and implying that beta uploading may be more feasible than guessed, with suggestions on optimizing archived information.

DNM-related arrests, 2011–2015 · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A census database of all publicly-reported arrests and prosecutions connected to the Tor-Bitcoin drug darknet markets 2011–2015, and analysis of mistakes.

On Having Enough Socks · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Personal experience and surveys on running out of socks; discussion of socks as small example of human procrastination and irrationality, caused by lack of explicit deliberative thought where no natural triggers or habits exist.

Are Sunk Costs Fallacies? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Human and animal sunk costs often aren’t, and sunk cost bias may be useful on an individual level to encourage learning. Convincing examples of sunk cost bias typically operate on organizational levels and are probably driven by non-psychological causes like competition.

Darknet Market mortality risks · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Survival analysis of lifespans, deaths, and predictive factors of Tor-Bitcoin darknet markets

Technology Forecasting: The Garden of Forking Paths · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Pessimistic forecasters are overconfident in fixating, hedgehog-like, on only one scenario for how they think something must happen; in reality, there are always many ways through the garden of forking paths, and something needs only one path to happen.

Complexity no Bar to AI · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Critics of AI risk suggest diminishing returns to computing (formalized asymptotically) means AI will be weak; this argument relies on a large number of questionable premises and ignoring additional resources, constant factors, and nonlinear returns to small intelligence advantages, and is highly unlikely.

‘Scanners Live in Vain’ as realistic SF · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Spaced Repetition for Efficient Learning · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Efficient memorization using the spacing effect: literature review of widespread applicability, tips on use & what it’s good for.

Prediction Markets · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

My prediction/betting strategies and track record, reflections on rationality, prediction judgments

Time-lock encryption · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

How do you encrypt a file such that it can be decrypted after a date, but not before? Use serial computations for proof-of-work using successive squaring, chained hashes, or witness encryption on blockchains.

On the Existence of Powerful Natural Languages · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 18 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A common dream in philosophy and politics and religion is the idea of languages superior to evolved demotics, whether Latin or Lojban, which grant speakers greater insight into reality and rationality, analogous to well-known efficacy of mathematical sub-languages in solving problems. This dream fails because such languages gain power inherently from specialization.

The Narrowing Circle · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Modern ethics excludes as many beings as it includes.

The Explore-Exploit Dilemma in Media Consumption · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

How much should we rewatch our favorite movies (media) vs keep trying new movies? Most spend most viewing time on new movies, which is unlikely to be good. I suggest an explicit Bayesian model of imprecise ratings + enjoyment recovering over time for Thompson sampling over movie watch choices.

Embryo editing for intelligence · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Preliminary draft notes towards a cost-benefit analysis of CRISPR-based editing for complex human traits with 2015–2016 SOTAs; obsolete.

Predicting Google closures · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Analyzing predictors of Google abandoning products; predicting future shutdowns

RNN Metadata for Mimicking Author Style · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Teaching a text-generating char-RNN to automatically imitate many different authors by labeling the input text by author; additional experiments include imitating Geocities and retraining GPT-2 on a large Project Gutenberg poetry corpus.

An Abortion Dialogue · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Dialogue pointing out some difficulties of materialist objections to abortion.

Music and distraction · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Does music impede studying and thinking?

The Ones Who Walk Towards Acre · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Short story on assassination markets.

The Mulberry Tree · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Essay on writing & rewriting short tanka

The Palace of Wonders · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A Borgesian fable about the Caliph and the Koran.

The Last Muezzin · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Another tribute to Borges; you can be me when I’m gone.

The Melancholy of Subculture Society · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Internet links small groups, helping dissolve big groups; good, bad? But a bit sad.

History of Iterated Embryo Selection · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The multiple-invention (>3) history of the idea of extremely-powerful embryo selection by using gametogenesis to run many ‘generations’ in vitro.

Nootropics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Notes on nootropics I tried, and my experiments

The Kelly Coin-Flipping Game: Exact Solutions, by Gwern Branwen, Arthur Breitman, nshepperd, FeepingCreature, Gurkenglas · Gwern.net

Gwern Branwen, Arthur Breitman, nshepperd, FeepingCreature, Gurkenglas — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Decision-theoretic analysis of how to optimally play the Haghani & Dewey 2016 300-round double-or-nothing coin-flipping game with an edge and ceiling better than using the Kelly Criterion. Computing and following an exact decision tree increases earnings by $6.6 over a modified KC.

World Catnip Surveys · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

International population online surveys of cat owners about catnip and other cat stimulant use.

Dual n-Back Meta-Analysis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Does DNB increase IQ? What factors affect the studies? Probably not: gains are driven by studies with weakest methodology like apathetic control groups.

Electric vs Stove Kettle · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I compare my electric tea kettle to my stove kettle, and apply some simple statistical modeling verifying the electric is faster.

In Defense of Inclusionism · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Iron Law of Bureaucracy: the downwards deletionism spiral discourages contribution and is how Wikipedia will die.

Bitcoin Is Worse Is Better · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

2011 essay on how Bitcoin’s long gestation and early opposition indicates it is an example of the ‘Worse is Better’ paradigm in which an ugly complex design with few attractive theoretical properties compared to purer competitors nevertheless successfully takes over a niche, survives, and becomes gradually refined.

Life Extension Cost-Benefits · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Attempts at considering the profitability of life-extension interventions for healthy adults

Mead · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ratings of mead and fruit wines I have tried.

Silk Road 1: Theory & Practice · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

History, background, visiting, ordering, using, & analyzing the drug market Silk Road 1

The Morality of Sperm Donation · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Is sperm donating a worthwhile form of positive eugenics?

The Hyperbolic Time Chamber & Brain Emulation · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

A time dilation chamber as thought experiment on the power of pure thought, with comparison to computer AGI advantages/disadvantages.

The Melancholy of Kyon · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Literary analysis of the light novel/anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Haruhi is not God, Kyon is

Why Tool AIs Want to Be Agent AIs · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

AIs limited to pure computation (Tool AIs) supporting humans, will be less intelligent, efficient, and economically valuable than more autonomous reinforcement-learning AIs (Agent AIs) who act on their own and meta-learn, because all problems are reinforcement-learning problems.

Resorting Media Ratings · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Commandline tool providing interactive statistical pairwise ranking and sorting of items

Modafinil community survey · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

2015 survey of online modafinil users asking about dosages, consumption patterns, ratings, purchases, and demographics

‘Story Of Your Life’ Is Not A Time-Travel Story · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Famous Ted Chiang SF short story ‘Story Of Your Life’ is usually misinterpreted as, like the movie version Arrival, being about time-travel/precognition; I explain it is instead an exploration of xenopsychology and a psychology of timeless physics.

LWer Effective Altruism donations, 2013–2014 · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 12 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis of 2013–2014 LessWrong survey results on how much more self-identified EAers donate suggests low median donation rates due to current youth and low incomes.

Dune notes · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Observations on Frank Herbert’s Dune series—the notes are probably overstated, the Butlerian Jihad was not a robot uprising seeking to exterminate humanity, and precognition/prescience in the Dune universe appears to work backwards allowing for retro-causality and stable time-loops as exemplified by Leto II’s Golden Path creating Paul Atreides and the events of Dune.

Modafinil · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Effects, health concerns, suppliers, prices & rational ordering.

The Algernon Argument · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Why most supplements fail: IQ improvement skepticism, Yudkowsky & Bostrom’s heuristics, nootropics

Bacopa Quasi-Experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 06 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

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.

ZMA Sleep Experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Zeo sleep self-experiments · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

EEG recordings of sleep and my experiments with things affecting sleep quality or durations: melatonin, potassium, vitamin D etc.

Long Bets as Charitable Giving Opportunity · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Evaluating Long Bets as a prediction market shows it is dysfunctional and poorly-structured; despite the irrationality of many users, it is not good even as a way to raise money for charity.

When Should I Check The Mail? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Bayesian decision-theoretic analysis of local mail delivery times: modeling deliveries as survival analysis, model comparison, optimizing check times with a loss function, and optimal data collection.

Biased information as anti-information · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Filtered data for a belief can rationally push you away from that belief

Easy Cryptographic Timestamping of Files · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Scripts for convenient free secure Bitcoin-based dating of large numbers of files/strings

Death Note: L, Anonymity & Eluding Entropy · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Applied Computer Science: On Murder Considered As STEM Field—using information theory to quantify the magnitude of Light Yagami’s mistakes in Death Note and considering fixes

CO₂/ventilation sleep experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Self-experiment on whether changes in bedroom CO₂ levels affect sleep quality

Slowing Moore’s Law: How It Could Happen · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Weak points in the networks powering technological progress: chip factories

Summers of Code, 2006–2013 · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A retrospective of 8 years of SoC, and lessons learned

Writing a Wikipedia Link Archive Bot · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Haskell: tutorial on writing a daemon to archive links in Wikipedia articles with TagSoup and WebCite; obsolete.

Iodine and Adult IQ meta-analysis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Iodine improves IQ in fetuses; adults as well? A meta-analysis of relevant studies says no.

HP: Methods of Rationality review statistics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Statistically modeling reviews for ongoing story with R.

Lunar circadian rhythms · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Is sleep affected by the phase of the moon? An analysis of several years of 4 Zeo users’ sleep data shows no lunar cycle.

Men of Iron · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

What-if Chiang-style SF story on iron vanishing and the Great Silence

Notes on Evangelion · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Evangelion thoughts—anti-religion, pro-psychology, character development, otaku genre.

Terrorism Is Not Effective · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

More effective ways to kill = terrorists are stupid, or killing not most important thing to them

Terrorism Is Not About Terror · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Terrorists act irrationally from a rational activism perspective, and groups act in ways most consistent with terrorism being about social status and belonging

Cultural drift: cleaning methods · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Forgotten chores and their use by Romanticism

The Three Grenades and the Four Noble Truths · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

CMU game connected to error coding theory

The IQ Halo effect · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On desirable correlates of intelligence

Internet WiFi improvement · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

After putting up with slow glitchy WiFi Internet for years, I investigate improvements. Upgrading the router, switching to a high-gain antenna, and installing a buried Ethernet cable all offer increasing speeds.

AI Risk Demos · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Simple demonstrations of the AI control problem using MCTS in a Gridworld

Wooden Pillow · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

China & Egypt used wooden pillows; my recreations fail

Potassium sleep experiments · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

2 self-experiments on potassium citrate effects on sleep: harm to sleep when taken daily or in the morning

Vitamin D sleep experiments · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Self-experiment on vitamin D effects on sleep: harmful taken at night, no or beneficial effects when taken in the morning.

Caffeine wakeup experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Self-experiment on whether consuming caffeine immediately upon waking results in less time in bed & higher productivity. The results indicate a small and uncertain effect.

Treadmill desk observations · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Notes relating to my use of a treadmill desk and 2 self-experiments showing walking treadmill use interferes with typing and memory performance.

On Really Trying · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

What are the true limits to motivation?

Candy Japan’s new box A/B test · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 06 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Bayesian decision-theoretic analysis of the effect of fancier packaging on subscription cancellations & optimal experiment design.

The Erl King · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Fairy tale tragedy, or, a lesson in courtesy and logic

Bitter Melon for blood glucose · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis of whether bitter melon reduces blood glucose in one self-experiment and utility of further self-experimentation

Wikipedia Résumé · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A precis of my old work on the English Wikipedia, 2004–2017 (edit counts, articles by subject, and particularly notable articles)

Diet Variance: Soylent study · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Proposal to use meal-replacements to partition daily variance in mood/productivity between diet and other factors

Who Wrote The Death Note Script? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Internal, external, stylometric evidence point to live-action leak of Death Note Hollywood script being real.

Nicotine · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 09 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On the benefits and lack of demerits of nicotine (research up to 2015)

LessWrong and cryonics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

How does LessWrong usage correlate with cryonics attitudes and signup rates?

Conscientiousness & Online Education · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Technology-driven shift in demand for Conscientiousness, not intelligence

Weather and My Productivity · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Rain or shine affect my mood? Not much.

Hacker News submission analysis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Describing HN submissions; estimating manipulability

Charity is not about Helping · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Simple cost-benefit: distributed computing considered harmful as scientific lemon projects run at high resource cost.

Buckminster Fuller’s fog gun · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Remaining materials towards one day building and trying out a real fog gun

2013 LLLT self-experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

An LLLT user’s blinded randomized self-experiment in 2013 on the effects of near-infrared light on a simple cognitive test battery: positive results

Culture Is Not About Esthetics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Aesthetically & economically, maybe there is too much new art. Don’t take this too seriously.

2012 election predictions · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Compiling academic and media forecaster’s 2012 American Presidential election predictions and statistically judging correctness; Nate Silver was not the best.

Education is not about Learning · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Examples of low-hanging fruit suggesting the education system does not solely optimize for learning

Touhou music by the numbers · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Collect music metadata and look for patterns

Girl Scouts & Good Corporate Governance · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Cookie prices & tax filings as evidence of corporate inefficiency

Melatonin · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Melatonin improves sleep, & sleep is valuable

Isomorphisms & Meaning · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Haskell juvenilia, reinventing entry-level math wheels, of no interest to anyone; investigating when two theories or representations mean the same things.

Bitcoin donations on The Pirate Bay · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Downloading and parsing TPB metadata to estimate Bitcoin usage and revenue for uploaders

2014 Spirulina randomized self-experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Spirulina users’ randomized trial on self-rated allergy symptoms: null result.

Plastination versus Cryonics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Break down survival as Drake equation, see how plastination differs from cryonics, try to calculate advantage

Why Anime? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Objectively, anime/manga better than American alternatives. So why the need to justify?

Ethics of Lithotomy · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Using modern statistical analysis, how quickly should improved bladder stone surgical methods have been adopted?

Ontological Pantheism · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Descartes’s God is pantheism; a reductio ad absurdum of his ontology

On Stress · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Stoic meditation with reference to being homeless. Written to myself at a particularly low point; like many, I take comfort in considering how things could be worse.

Two Simple Happenings · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Short story; psychological horror

Against Copyright · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Copyright considered paradoxical, incoherent, and harmful from an information theory and compression perspective as there is no natural kind corresponding to ‘works’, merely longer or shorter strings for stupider or smarter algorithms.

Methods of Rationality predictions · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Recording fan speculation for retrospectives

Poems on the theme of Genshiken · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Waka/haiku on Genshiken, clubs, and Comiket; allusions to Fujiwara no Teika and Shōtetsu.

Gilles Goullet, Author of the Blindsight · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A parody of SF, the Internet, and Borges.

LW anchoring experiment · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Do mindless positive/negative comments skew article quality ratings up and down?

Scientific stagnation · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Shrinking marginal returns to science and technology

Alerts Over Time · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Does Google Alerts return fewer results each year? A statistical investigation

Wikipedia & YouTube · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Why Wikipedia and YouTube will never be integrated.

Evolutionary Software Licenses · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Game theory on BSD versus GPL: partnership? Is GPL an evolutionary stable strategy against invasion by proprietary copyright strategies?

Archiving GitHub · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Scraping and downloading Haskell-related repositories from GitHub

SICP Chapter 1.1 notes · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Syntax, function definitions

Lifelogging · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Thoughts on uses and a categorization of said uses for lifelogging

Aria’s Past, Present, and Future · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

On divining the esoteric truth of Neo-Venezia through holes in world-building.

2013 Lewis meditation results · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Multilevel modeling of effect of small group’s meditation on math errors

Parody in Full Metal Panic! · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The unexpected critical depths of a single throw-away scene

Colder Wars · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

MAD will not work in outer space; pre-emptive strikes are nigh-guaranteed.

Wikipedia & Knol: Why Knol Already Failed · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Why Knol is worse than Wikipedia, has failed, and will continue to fail.

Komm Susser Tod · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Perspective and interpretation

Wikipedia and Dark Side Editing · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Cynical tactics encouraged by Wikipedia’s abdication of thought known as ‘No Original Research’ and ‘Reliable Sources’

NGE Rebuild Predictions · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

a comprehensive taxonomy of predictions on future Evangelion media

Final Gifts · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A poem for the end of history

Golfing Run Length Encoding in Haskell · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Haskell: step by step refactoring to concision

Death Note’s Ending · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Ambiguous ending of Death Note means even the victor is unclear; who was right?

Writing a Wikipedia RSS Link Archive Bot · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Archiving using Wikipedia Recent Changes RSS feed (obsolete).

Choosing Software · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Criteria making software useful long-term & worth learning in detail

Distinguishing sources of religion by their experiential differences · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Does the convergence of religious experiences point to a shared truth?

Insert, Abort, Retry? · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Fullmetal Alchemist insert meta-fiction

Life contracts · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

How I reinvented longevity insurance, which provides payouts if one lives to a certain point and thus might run out of savings.

SICP Introduction · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Links to various resources for SICP studying

The Safecracker of Hearts · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The thief of time gives us memories, the safecracker of hearts restores them.

Wikipedia and Other Wikis · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Network effects & benefits of gritting one’s teeth & submitting to a Wikipedia’s rules, rather than using Wikia or one’s own site.

Simulation Inferences · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

How small must be the computer simulating the universe?

The Presocratic’s Logical Path to Atomism · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

How and why did they deduce atomism?

Intermittent Fasting · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Tricking the body into living longer?

Console Insurance Is A Ripoff · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Back of envelope financial calculations: Warranties, fine; insurance, no!

Hypertime in Haskell · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Implementing the Hypertime multiverse model of time travel in Haskell

Against the Miletians and the One True Element · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring consequences of material monism and conflict with observations

The Snowbanks of Time · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Essay on writing waka on truth & lies

SICP Chapter 1.3 · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Generalizing functions with hardwired values

Dinosaur Comics comics · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Comics using the format of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics

Resilient Haskell Software · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Lessons learned about bitrot in Haskell software

Barratry · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Re-inventing anarcho-capitalism in a French context.

The Buddha’s Wheel · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The enlightened is as one with cause and effect.

Gryyfins of the Word · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Incomplete story, notes towards an imitation of Foucault’s Pendulum or From Hell in history-as-horror and re-enchating the world. Probably unwritable, but see ‘October’ for a more viable attempt.

Missing Cities · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

3 short stories in the style of Italo Calvino’s Missing Cities.

Brave Poem · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Poem on memory inspired by the anime Angel Beats!; do you remember love?

Immoral Books · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Argument that texts are neither moral nor immoral as they require active interpretation.

SICP Chapter 1.2 notes · Gwern.net

Gwern — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

recursion into iteration; primality testing

The Case of PenPen · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A parody of Evangelion where PenPen leads Instrumentality.

Dying Outside · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Poem about Hal Finney announcing beginning tracheostomy before dying of ALS.

A Human Story · Gwern.net

Gwern — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The mutability of memory

Cloud Nine · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Unfinished fantasy/SF novel

On Disrespect · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

An attempt to reinvent classic theories of social interaction as expressions of power

How the Panther Got Black · Gwern.net

Gwern — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Mythic short story in the vein of Kipling’s Just-so Stories

Hybrid Rainbow · Gwern.net

Gwern — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Poem about man & his machines.

On Justifications · Gwern.net

Gwern — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Philosophical fiction or a prose poem about suffering innocents and the theodicy

The Jaguars of God · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A dream of a strange judgment day

Dream · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

An old childhood dream about WWI trench warfare.

Before Dawn · Gwern.net

Gwern — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Alliterative verse about staying up all night

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