121
Schizophrenia: No Smoking Gun
[Note: despite how some people are spinning this, tobacco is still really really bad and you should not smoke it] I. Schizophrenics smoke. A lot. Depending on the study, about 60-80% of schizophren…
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 431 posts.
122
Pump Up the Storage
If we adopt solar and wind as major components of our energy infrastructure as we are weaned from fossil fuels, we have to solve the energy storage problem in a big way. An earlier post demonstrated that we do not likely possess enough materials in the world to simply build giant lead-acid (or nickel-based or…
123
China is building more coal plants but might burn less coal
China is adding more coal capacity, but its plants are running less often.
124
Gerard ’t Hooft, Theoretical Physics as a Challenge
How to become a good theoretical physicist
125
In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis
A guest post by David Schneider-Joseph
126
Seriously bright light vs. winter blahs
Most SAD light therapy lamps are not bright enough. How to get brighter light than any you can buy!
127
Gears
Interactive article explaining how mechanical gears work.
128
Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier
The Wirecutter’s review of the IKEA air purifier is a mishmash of scientific errors, shoddy testing, and self-contradictory logic.
129
I should have loved biology
In biology class, biology wasn't presented as a quest for the secrets of life. The textbooks wrung out the questing.
130
So You Want to Learn Physics
Over the past few years, ever since writing “If Susan Can Learn Physics So Can You,” I've been contacted by people from all backgrounds who are inspired and want to learn physics, but don't know where to start, what to learn, what to read, and how to structure their studies...this post is a condense
131
Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
Craig Gidney's computer science blog
132
How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?
Any time you have a benchmark that gets taken seriously, some people will start gaming the benchmark. Some famous examples in computing are the CPU benchmark specfp and video game benchmarks. With specfp, Sun managed to increase its score on 179.art (a sub-benchmark of specfp) by 12x with a compiler tweak that…
133
The crash of Air France flight 447 (2021)
The story of the infamous disappearance of an Airbus A330 over the Atlantic, and the fundamentally human mistakes which led to the tragedy.
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135
The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend
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.
136
The Scaling Hypothesis (2021)
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.
137
Lead Poisoning and Rome
"The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them."
138
GPT-2 as step toward general intelligence (2019)
A machine learning researcher writes me in response to yesterday’s post, saying:I still think GPT-2 is a brute-force statistical pattern matcher which blends up the internet and gives you bac…
139
The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)
An allegory against complacency about aging and death.
140
When (if ever) did the Sun set on the British Empire?
It hasn't. Yet. But only because of a few dozen people living in an area smaller than Disney World.
141
Nicholas Wade: Origin of Covid – Following the Clues
“” is published by Nicholas Wade.
142
Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails
This blog post focusses on Chapter 4 about Implicit Priming in Kahneman's book "Thinking" Fast and Slow." A review of the book and other chapters can be found here: https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-perspective-on-thinking-fast-and-slow/ Daniel Kahneman's response to this blog…
143
An Intuitive (and Short) Explanation of Bayes’ Theorem
Bayes’ theorem was the subject of a detailed article. The essay is good, but over 15,000 words long — here’s the condensed version for Bayesian newcomers like…
144
Flood Death Valley
Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water?
145
Society Is Fixed, Biology Is Mutable
Today during an otherwise terrible lecture on ADHD I realized something important we get sort of backwards. There’s this stereotype that the Left believes that human characteristics are socia…
146
The China Study: Fact or Fallacy?
Disclaimer: This blog post covers only a fraction of what’s sketchy with “The China Study.” In the years since I wrote it, I’ve added a number of additional articles expandi…
147
My visit to D-Wave: Beyond the roast-beef sandwich
Last week I was in Vancouver, to give talks at the University of British Columbia and at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. As part of that visit, on Friday af…
148
Why We Sleep: Responses to questions from readers
Introduction The aim of the book, Why We Sleep, is to provide the general public access to a broad collection of sleep research. Below, I address thoughtful questions that have been raised regardin…
149
Cameras and Lenses
Interactive article explaining how cameras and lenses work.
150
Artemis II is not safe to fly
On Wednesday, NASA will attempt to send four astronauts around the moon on a mission called Artemis II. This will be second flight of NASA’s SLS rocket, and the first time the 20-year-old Orion capsule flies with people on board.