April-June 2022 Archive
created: 16 Aug 2022; updated: 19 Sep 2022; epistemic status: log
This is an archive of some of the interesting things that I did or stumbled upon during April-June 2022. Well, that’s how it was supposed to be, but there are also lots of leftover items (the majority of the music and anime sections) from late 2019 to 2021 that I want to collect here.
Research
- Our new quantum advantage proposal dubbed Fermion Sampling has been published in PRX Quantum.
Demonstrating quantum computational advantage with strong hardness guarantees is possible using fermionic linear optics with magic input states, and an experimentally feasible setup is proposed. @MichalOszmaniec @ninnatdn @Mauromsoler @ZoltanZimborashttps://t.co/cMxaUa5XVj pic.twitter.com/o81Dye7VJl
— PRX Quantum (@PRX_Quantum) May 9, 2022
Links
- Pataphysics, a parody of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry
- Words known better by males than by females, and vice versa
- People thought garlic and magnets are natural enemies
- Why Rome rose to power and not other cities? Citizenship
- Who wrote up Banach’s thesis?
- Against survival of the prettiest (buildings)
- The dangers of high status, low wage jobs. Why do so many writers live in Brooklyn? High status, low wage jobs select for high-status seekers. Status rewards incentivize geographic concentration, which will in turn create homogeneity. But in the end, you can’t live off something other people will do for free,
Everyone who’s gotten their foot in the door and ridden the elevator up to their new 6th floor cubicle has been greeted with the same horrifying sight. Teeming masses, as far as the eye can see, all desperate for their job, for their identity, as a writer. So desperate they’ll do it for free. […] by night they write fiery, in-depth, shockingly well-informed features about their favorite North London soccer team, Icelandic DJ subculture, or how to get the most bang for your buck shopping at Costco. The research, the writing, the promotion, they do all of this for free.
- How to use a personal website to enhance your ability to think and create?, Michael Nielsen
One trouble with blogging is that people subscribe to the blog, rather than each post finding its own audience. This encourages lowest common denominator writing. In particular it creates a context in which depth is penalized […] A media form which does this better than blogs is academic journals. Although it is possible to subscribe to a journal, it’s very uncommon to expect to read a journal entire. And the reason is that the form is designed so that each article finds its own audience. For instance: the title and abstract are designed to make it super-easy to not read a paper. They say “Oh, unless you have these interests and this background, you should ignore this”. They’re sometimes described as “marketing” for papers, but really they’re better thought of as anti-marketing [emphasis mine]. In particular: they set the right expectations, and help drive away the wrong kind of reader. That’s invaluable not just for the reader, but perhaps even more for the author.
- We haven’t seen a pattern of “antigenic turnover” of SARS-CoV-2 variants.
I think seasonal coronaviruses and influenza are a sensible ‘prior’ to bear in mind for what long-term dynamics of antigenic turnover of SARS-CoV-2 could look like. But we also need to remember this process of sequential turnover isn’t what’s happened so far.
Rationality/statistics/human genetic variation
- Muflax’s epistemic states (believed, semi-believed, not believed, speculation, fiction, emotional, log)
- Steven Pinker live streamed his Harvard course on Rationality for free
-
Grading reproducibility of researches in Thinking Fast and Slow. Chapters whose researches have less than 50% chance to replicate (<50 R-index) are given a failing grade. Below I include only chapters with the number of experiments in the double digits
Chapter Results R-index Pass/Fail 3 29 39 F 4 34 19 F 5 55 55 P 8 18 68 P 11 37 44 F 12 43 62 P Chapter 3 cites researches on ego depletion, while chapter 4 cites researches on priming, for example; both are known to face severe replication crisis.
- Dunning-Kruger might be explained away by random data
- Neuroimaging with small sample size is just noise. Now neuroimaging research can follow the route of genetic research (GWAS; see also my mini-review of Robert Plomin’s book). However, there is little evidence that neural correlates of the traits studied should exist (unlike in genetics where most traits studied are already known to be heritable).
- Epstein-Barr virus associated with multiple sclerosis as predicted by Gregory Cochran twenty years ago.
- Not only was the 20th century eugenic movement a moral nightmare, it also got implementation details horribly wrong by assuming the simplistic Mendelian model where undesirable traits are caused by single recessive genes
- MIT reinstates SAT requirement. Related: many black-white disparities in important life outcomes are mostly or entirely eliminated after controlling for youth standardized test scores [longer version]
- Stimulants work to improve students’ attention, but attention doesn’t improve learning in school. Scott speculates that there is an intrinsic difficulty level, say, of remembering each word in a vocabulary test, and test scores plateau once ones hit the ceiling of their intelligences.
- How effective are homework? Most existing literature are bad. For starters, they use “time spent on homework” as a proxy for the amount of homework.
- Exercise not a plausible treatment for depression
- Less or more sleep? Alexey Guzey: “Comfortable modern sleep is an unnatural superstimulus. I claim that if you sleep as much as you want, you’ll probably sleep too much and become more susceptible to depression.” Natália Mendonça’s rebuttal
Learning algorithms and the brain
- What scientists must know about hardware to write fast code
- Inequalities cheat sheet, László Kozma
- Distinguishing two coins, SE
- How Far Can We Go Beyond Linear Cryptanalysis? [pdf warning], Baignère, Junod and Vaudenay
- Clément Canonne
- Probability toolbox (“A set of notes and expositions about so-called “folklore” or “basic” facts in testing or learning.”)
- Topics and Techniques in Distribution Testing: A Biased but Representative Sample
- A Survey on Distribution Testing: Your Data is Big. But is it Blue?, TOC 2020
- The Complexity of Gradient Descent: CLS = PPAD ∩ PLS, Fearnley, Goldberg, Hollender and Savani [Quanta]
- Willpower. Human and Machine, ACT
- Deceptively Aligned Mesa-Optimizers
- Prosaic alignment (“It’s conceivable that we will build “prosaic” AGI, which doesn’t reveal any fundamentally new ideas about the nature of intelligence or turn up any “unknown unknowns.” “) OOD = Out of Distribution
- Book Review: Consciousness and the Brain (If you’re conscious of something, you can report on it. This is the only definition of consciousness this book deals with. The unconscious can do a lot of things: priming for various representations of the same numbers, induce negative emotions, control your attention, detect error, learn new information. But consciousness is required to do many things: tasks that require memory or “global” task. Consciousness samples from choices.)
- Off-the-shelf deep learning is not enough, and requires parsimony, Bayesianity, and causality, Vasudevan, Ziatdinov, Vlcek and Kalinin, npj perspective 2021
- Physics-informed machine learning
- Principle of Deep Learning, Yaida, Roberts and Hanin 2022 [Facebook AI blog] [Yaida’s talk]
- Why deep-learning AIs are so easy to fool
- Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples, Goodfellow, Shlens and Szegedy 2015 (The panda + noise = gibbon example)
- How to avoid machine learning pitfalls: a guide for academic researchers, Michael A. Lones
- Pen and paper exercises in ML, Michael Gutmann
- Comparing the efficiency of the brain to that of conventional (classical) learning machines, LW
- The Brain as a Universal Learning Machine, LW (2015) (Quick impression: it refutes some weak version of a modularity hypothesis. Replied from the author seems informative though.)
Quantum science
- Stephen Wiesner (1942-2021), an unsung hero of quantum information science and an independent spirit with a very interesting life outside of academia. Many came to share their stories about Wiesner that we may otherwise never hear about on Scott’s Blog.
- There is no quantum measurement problem, David Mermin
- Introduction to Quantum Error Correction and Fault Tolerance, Steve Girvin, 2019 Les Houches Summer School
- lecture notes for Quantum Error Correction, Michael J. Kastoryano
- Scott Aaronson’s talk: Recent Progress on Quantum Advantage at the Simons Institute
- Verifiable Quantum Advantage without Structure, Yamakawa and Zhandry [talk] [Quanta article]
- Quantum computing at the quantum advantage threshold: a down-to-business review, Fedorov, Gisin, Beloussov and Lvovsky (“A simple language review about current status of quantum computing”)
- Modern applications of machine learning in quantum sciences, Dawid et al.
- Maria Schuld’s look for cases that break QML benchmarking and beware of your own cultural bias (QI vs ML cultures)
- Suvrat Raju on the recent “solution” to the black hole information paradox by Calmet, Casadio and Steve Hsu
- Lessons from the Information Paradox
it has been my position for a few years (which not everyone agrees with) that the information paradox can be resolved by replacing the no-hair theorem by a principle of holography of information. This is the result, which we have developed with several collaborators that, in an appropriate UV-completion of gravity, all the information inside the black hole is available outside, which is very different from the no-hair theorem. But the results of Calmet et al. do not establish such a principle and should not be conflated with our results. They only establish a more-limited result: that some information is available outside.
- Lessons from the Information Paradox
- Notes on Some Entanglement Properties of Quantum Field Theory, Edward Witten (Reeh-Schlieder Theorem)
- Yet More Ado About Nothing: The Remarkable Relativistic Vacuum State, Stephen J. Summers (in the language of C*-algebra and GNS states)
- Why Does Quantum Field Theory In Curved Spacetime Make Sense? And What Happens To The Algebra of Observables In The Thermodynamic Limit?, Edward Witten
Music
- what we did in the desert, eightiesheadachetape
- Lenny Lederman
- Toxic Seahorse, MMX3
- Straight Ahead, MMZ4
- Ice Brain, MMZ2
- In the Wind, MMZX Advent
- Polyphia
- Playing God [unplugged]
- G.O.A.T, New Levels New Devils 2018
- Upside Down ft. Tim Henson, Jason Richardson and Luke Holland
Vtubers/Utaite
- Playlist of all Hololive covers and originals so far, made by BoR
- All Suisei’s utawaku songs are listed on Hoshiyomi Studio, maintained by Kamaboko
- Hoshimachi Suisei “Still Still Stellar” Reaction + Analysis, ravenclaw (Yes, a one-hour review of just Stellar Stellar and two more hours for the rest of the album)
Suisei’s 4th 3D live is in my opinion a huge step up from her previous three free lives.
2:59 - in this unstable world - Yoshiko Tsushima
7:53 - U - millennium parade x Belle
11:04 - Kyoumen no Nami - YURiKA
15:37 - Kakusei - Superfly
20:18 - Ready Steady - q*Left & Giga
26:53 - Wicked - Sui-chan and Calli (New Song)
30:15 - Kisetsu wa Tsugitsugi Shindeiku - amazarashi
36:03 - Beaucoup De Bruit Pour Rien - Tokyo Jihen
39:48 - Ego Rock - 3 (Surii)
46:37 - Kakero - Hoshimachi Suisei
50:30 - Tenkyuu, Suisei wa Yoru wo Mataide - Hoshimachi Suisei
54:49 - TEMPLATE - Hoshimachi Suisei (New Song)
Songs prior to Suisei’s Phony (an arbitrary cutoff point) that I just discovered/to which I had still been listening, chronologically ordered
| Singer | Title | Date | Original | Composer | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inui Toko | RE: I AM | 04.29.19 | Aimer | ||
| Shishigami Leona | Neko | 09.15.20 | Dish | ||
| Kaida Haru | Yuurei Tokyo (Ghost City Tokyo) | 10.25.20 | Ayase | ||
| Inui Toko | Jigokuya Hakkyou-Arashi | 11.27.20 | majiko | Toko’s 1st original | |
| Kurone Yomi | Last Resort | 12.08.20 | Ayase | ||
| Ado | Gira Gira | 02.14.21 | Teniwoha | ||
| Asahina Akane | Nh-Uh-Uh | 05.21.21 | SLAVE.V-V-R | ||
| Deathstar* | Getcha! | 06.15.21 | Giga, KIRA | *Mori Calliope x Hoshimachi Suisei |
|
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Shoujo Rei | 07.27.21 | MikitoP | ||
| Mori Calliope | End of a Life | 10.01.21 | Pretty Patterns | ||
| Inui Toko | Hatsukoi | 10.19.21 | Arte Refact | Toko’s 3rd original |
New songs/covers since Suisei’s Phony
| Singer | Title | Date | Original | Composer | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Phony | 11.26.21 | Tsumiki | ||
| Laplus Darknesss | Kamippoi na (God-ish) | 12.01.21 | PinocchioP | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei x Moona Hoshinova | Saikai | 12.03.21 | Ayase, Uru x LiSA | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei x Kanade Izuru x Astel Leda | Cinema | 12.13.21 | Ayase | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Palette | 12.21.21 | niki,Tokoyami Towa | Part of Christmas 3D live | |
| Tokoyami Towa x Hoshimachi Suisei | Hai-iro to Ao (Grey and Blue) | 12.23.21 | Kenshi Yonezu | Part of Christmas 3D live | |
| Takanashi Kiara x Ninomae Ina’nis | Iiya Iiya Iiya (Whatever whatever whatever) | 12.23.21 | Neru | ||
| Millie Parfait | Marshall Maximizer | 12.23.21 | Hiiragi Magnetite | ||
| Tokoyami Towa | Fact | 01.03.22 | niki | Premiered in Towa’s 2nd anniversary live | |
| My Roar | 01.11.22 | UtsuP | Premiered in Towa’s 2nd anniversary live | ||
| Akuma | 01.18.22 | 3 (Surii) | Premiered in Towa’s 2nd anniversary live | ||
| Born to be Real | 03.12.22 | ANCHOR | Performed in Hololive 3rd Fes | ||
| Micomet* | Animal | 01.27.22 | DECO*27 | *Sakura Miko x Hoshimachi Suisei | |
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Lower (Lower One’s Eyes) | 02.01.22 | Nuyuri | ||
| Pavolia Reine | Cinderella | 02.03.22 | DECO*27 | ||
| Inui Toko | Henshoku | 02.23.22 | Kashii Moimi | ||
| Tsukuyomi | Mayday | 02.24.22 | |||
| Shiranui Flare | Sangenshoku (RGB) | 02.20.22 | Yoasobi | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Boku wa Hatsune Miku to Kisu wo shita | 03.10.22 | MikitoP | ||
| Nekomata Okayu | Yona Yona Dance | 03.15.22 | Akiko Wada | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Template | 03.31.22 | Kitani Tatsuya | Premiere in Suisei’s 4th live | |
| Deathstar* | Wicked | 03.31.22 | Giga | *Mori Calliope x Hoshimachi Suisei, Part of single Template |
|
| C-Man | My Reality | 04.01.22 | |||
| Minase Rio | Kimi no Myaku de Odoritakatta | 04.02.22 | Pikon | ||
| StartEnd* | Asu no Yozora Shoukaihan | 04.16.22 | Orangestar | *Minato Aqua x Tokoyami Towa x Hoshimachi Suisei | |
| Mori Calliope x Povalia Reine x Hoshimachi Suisei | Beat Eater | 04.22.22 | Police Piccadilly | ||
| Astel x Rika | Gunjou Sanka | 04.29.22 | Eve | ||
| Lazulight* ft. Nijisanji EN |
Virtual to Live | 05.16.22 | Nijisanji, kz | *Pomu Rainpuff x Elira Pendora x Finana Ryugu, Lazulight’s 1st anniversary |
|
| Isekaijoucho | Shinkai Shoujo | 05.12.22 | Yuuyu | ||
| Elira Pandora | Shoujo Rei | 05.16.22 | MikitoP | ||
| Ninomae Ina’nis | Nai Nai | 05.20.22 | ReoNa | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Yuurei Tokyo (Ghost City Tokyo) | 05.22.22 | Ayase | ||
| Levi Elipha x Machita Chima x Inui Toko | Magia | 05.22.22 | Kalafina | Part of Levi Elipha’s 3D live | |
| IRyS | Till the End of Me | 05.22.22 | HANO(Aratame Shun) | ||
| Hoshimachi Suisei | Tricologe | 06.08.22 | Niru Kajitsu | ||
| Omaru Polka | Empress | 06.16.22 | Tenoniha | ||
| Nekomata Okayu | Rinkai Diver | 06.19.22 | Kojiro | ||
| Nornis* | Abyssal Zone | 06.23.22 | Yumemi Kujira | *Machita Chima x Inui Toko x Asahina Akane |
Manga
- Vinland Saga, Ch 101-161 (Vol. 15-22), Yukimura Makoto
- Kingdom, Yasuhisa Hara
- Blue Lock, Ch 1-95, 108-154, Kaneshiro Muneyuki
- Chi no wadachi (A Trail of Blood), Ch 1-28, 74-122, Oshimi Shuuzou [reddit comment]
Oshimi Shuzo seems to have had a very complicated childhood due to his mother (which is why he always write women as antagonists in his works, although nuanced and mysterious ones). He seems to have found his path, so maybe Sei’s life will reflect this.
My source is this review of the manga by a French newspaper. I translated the relevant comments shared by the author to the reviewer.
"For me teenage years are not a sweet memory of a bygone era. They're a knot of issues still tightly bound deep in my heart. [...] I feel afraid every time I try to confront it. Yet, hidden beyond the pain is a a sort of sexual tension. I hope that through my stories my readers can rediscover this hidden part of their selves."
"I think that the women I met so far are the ones who shaped my taste for a certain type of female character. I've always been afraid of women [...] Not of real women, but of how I picture them. The shadow of my mother looms over them. All the while, I hate my own masculinity, it feels dirty to me. Deep inside I hope that I'll be able to overcome these ideas, win over my fears, free myself from my mother and form a relationship with a woman."
Shuzo Oshimi finds inspiration in the feelings and experiences that he went through as a bored teenager in a small locality of the Gunma prefecture, right in the center of Japan. He even gave Seiichi his own birthdate. In middle school during the 90s, the author discovers and falls in love with the salacious writings of Baudelaire as well as the Marquis de Sade. "What attracts me is the possibility of externalizing emotions whose existence could only be revealed through a relationship of submission."
Shuzo Oshimi had yet to attack the mother figure in his work, at least as forcefully. "I realized that the dilemmas I feel in the relationship with my mother are behind one of the fundamental themes that I've been haunted with. This is why I decided to put it at the core of the manga."
Anime
- Zoku Owarimonogatari, Shaft {Nisio Isin} [Light novels] 2018
- Yuru Camp△ (12), C-Station {Afro} [Manga] 2018 (Notable episodes: 9,12; Notable moment: くぁwせdrftgyふじこlp)
- Serial Experiments Lain, Triangle Staff 1998 (Notable episodes: 5, 9-10) [TV Trope shoutout] [reddit]
- Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, Studio DEEN {Haruko Kumota} [Manga] 2016
- Vinland Saga, Wit Studio {Makoto Yukimura} [Manga] 2019 (Notable episodes: 1-4 and 24 are movie quality. Unique directing for episode 14.)
- Yojouhan shinwa taikei (The Tatami Galaxy) , Madhouse (Masaaki Yuasa) {Tomihiko Morimi} [novel] 2010 (Notable episode: 11)
- Eizouken ni wa te wo dasu na!, Science SARU (Masaaki Yuasa) {Sumito Ouwara} [Manga] 2020 (Notable episode: 7)
- Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Madhouse {Hideyuki Kikuchi} [Novel] 2000 (A visual and atmospheric treat. Relatively simple vampire story plot but imo enough nuances to be interesting)
- Psycho-Pass. Production I.G. (Urobuchi Gen) 2012-2013 (Notable episodes: 11,17)
- Kobayashi-san chi no Maid Dragon, Kyoto Animation {Coolkyousinnjya} [Manga] 2017 (Notable episode 12)
- Violet Evergarden, Kyoto Animation {Kana Akatsuki} [Light novel] 2018 (Notable episode: 10)
- Seishun buta yarou wa Bunny Girl senpai no yume wo minai, CloverWorks 2018 {Kamoshida Hajime} [Light novel] (Same author as Sakurasou; feels incomplete with Shoko’s storyline left for the movie.)
- Jujutsu Kaisen, MAPPA {Akutami Gege} [Manga] 2020-2021
Video Game
- Blasphemous: Wounds of Eventide, The Game Kitchen (The latest and final DLC before the planned Blasphemous 2 in 2023)
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