Page Inspect

Essays · Gwern.net

Skip to main content

Site Me New Blog Links Patreon

# Essays

- Newest
- Popular
- Notable
- Newest: Blog
- Statistics
- Meta-Science
- Decision Theory
- Order Statistics
- Crypto/Bitcoin
- AI: Safety
- Generative AI: Image
- Generative AI: Fiction
- Deep Learning
- Computer Science
- Haskell
- Cognition
- Psychology
- Behavior Genetics
- Economics
- Economics: Tech
- Domestic Cats
- Practical
- Design
- QS: Sleep
- QS
- Politics
- Epistemology
- Philosophy
- Literary Criticism
- Anime
- Fiction: Prose
- Fiction: Verse
- Docs
- Docs: Science
- Docs: Crypto
- Docs: Anime
- Wikipedia
- Reviews
- Personal

This is the website of **Gwern Branwen**. I write about AI, psychology, & statistics. I am best known for my writings about AI scaling, poetry & anime neural networks; darknet markets and Bitcoin; blinded self-experiments; and dual *n*\-back & spaced repetition.

Navigation: For information about my site’s philosophy & method, see the *About page*; for the website features & implementation, see the *Design page*; for information about myself, my use of other websites, and contact information, see the *about-me page*; for new pages, see the *Changelog* ( = new), short *blog posts*, or *new links*.

Features: To use *dark-mode* () or *reader-mode* (), or *disable popups* (), or *search* the site (), use the floating toggle bar in the lower-rightupper-right corner (); for more, see the *help* () page.

# Newest

- Idea: LLM Daydreaming
- Speedrunning Is Not Such A Waste
- Cats As Horror Movie Villains
- “October The First Is Too Late”
- Review: *I Remember Lemuria!*
- Writing Non-Biblical Sentences
- Running Lights as Complex Disasters
- On the oldest possible food
- Rock-Paper-Scissors as game mechanic
- “A Christmas Protestation”

# Popular

- The NN Scaling Hypothesis
- *Death Note* Anonymity
- Silk Road 1 Tutorial
- DNM Archives (2013–2015)
- Spaced Repetition Learning
- Commoditize Your Complement
- Banner Ads Considered Harmful
- Generating Anime Faces
- Melancholy of Subculture Society
- Ordinary Life Improvements

# Notable

- Existential Risks & Math Errors
- Danbooru2021: Anime Dataset
- DNM Archives (2013–2015)
- Correlation ≠ Causality
- Embryo Selection For Traits
- Longevity Meta-Analyses
- Tool AIs Want To Be Agent AIs
- Internet Research Tips
- In Defense Of Inclusionism
- Why So Few Matt Levines?

* * *

# Newest: Blog

\[Most recent 29 blog posts.\]

* * *

# Statistics

- Predicting Google Closures
- Judging 201213ya Election Forecasts
- Google Alerts Over Time
- Modeling Fiction Review Rates
- LW EA Donations, 2013–201411ya
- Miscellaneous Stats Notes
- Regression-To-Mean Fallacy
- Fermi Problem Examples
- The Math Of Hunting Lions
- ‘CQK’ Is The First Unused TLA

# Meta-Science

- Why Correlation ≠ Causation (eg)
- Everything Is Correlated
- How To Critique Research?
- The Replication Crisis
- Citation Leprechaun Hunting

- Origin of Littlewood’s Law
- Does Mouse Utopia Exist?
- Hydrocephalus & IQ
- Open Questions & Topics
- Fake Journal Club

# Decision Theory

- Banner Ads Considered Harmful
- When Should I Check The Mail?
- My Prediction Market Trades
- Twin Power: Milk Experiment
- Running Lights as Complex Disaster
- Candy Japan’s Box A/B Test
- A/B Testing CSS & HTML
- Frank P. Ramsey Papers

# Order Statistics

- Gaussian Expected Maximums
- Interactive List Sorting
- Multi-Stage Selection Demo
- GoodReads Abandoned Books
- *Genius Revisited* School Flaws
- Leaky Pipeline/Log-normals
- Selection Scenarios
- Best Student Ever!
- Speedrunning Is Not Such A Waste

# Crypto/Bitcoin

- Bitcoin Is “Worse Is Better”
- Time-Lock Crypto; Timestamp
- CO2 Coin: Carbon Blockchain
- Trustless Trade: 2-Of-2 NashX
- **Dark Net Markets**:

- Silk Road 1 Buyers’ Guide
- DNM Archive: 2013–2015
- DNM Arrests: 2011–42015
- DNM Lifetime Census

# AI: Safety

- GPT-3 & The Scaling Hypothesis
- Evolution As Learning Backstop
- Tool AIs Want To Be Agent AIs
- Complexity Is No Bar To AGI
- Looks Like You’re Taking Over The World
- The NN Tank/Photo Urban Legend
- Hyperbolic Time Chambers & AI

# Generative AI: Image

- **Danbooru2021** Anime Dataset

- PALM: Hand Detection+Crops
- Danbooru2019 Figures
- Danbooru2019 Portraits
- Anime Faces: BigGAN, Failures
- Dropcap Generation With AI
- This Waifu Does Not Exist (details)

# Generative AI: Fiction

- **GPT-3** Poems & Fiction

- old: RNN, GPT-2
- GPT-3 Creative Nonfiction
- Benchmarking LLM Creativity?
- CYOA AI Dungeons
- GPT-2 Folk Music
- Preference Learning Music
- “Superhuman Rubik’s Cube Solving”
- “A Christmas Protestation”
- Writing Non-Biblical Sentences

# Deep Learning

- Kelly Coin-Flip Game
- Machine Learning Scaling
- Efficient Transformer Attention
- The MLP/FC NN Rebirth
- Neural Nets Are Oversized
- The End-To-End Principle
- Absolute Unit NNs: MLP Everything
- Project Ideas

- number search engine
- novelty-net sampling • free-play period • daydreaming

# Computer Science

- Surprisingly Turing-Complete
- Archiving URLs
- The `sort --key` Trick
- Internet WiFi Improvement
- The 3 Grenades
- Computers In Computers
- Computers Are Fast
- Utext: Rich Unicode Documents
- Unsorting Lists for Diversity
- Rock-Paper-Scissors as game mechanic

# Haskell

- Haskell Summer Of Code
- Gambling Problem #14
- Archiving GitHub
- Wikipedia Archive Bot
- WP RSS Archive Bot
- Resilient Haskell Software
- Evolutionary Licenses
- Elegant Run Length Coding
- Choosing Software

* * *

# Cognition

- Spaced Repetition & Learning
- Dual *n*\-Back FAQ
- Dual *n*\-Back Meta-Analysis
- Iodine Adult-IQ Meta-Analysis
- Conscientiousness & Online Ed
- SMPY G&T Bibliography
- Creatine Cognition Meta-Analysis
- How Complex Human Differences?
- Anne Roe’s Elite Scientists
- Intelligence Of *Portia* Spiders
- LW Anchoring Experiment

# Psychology

- Are Sunk Costs Fallacies?
- Lithium In Drinking Water
- Morning-Writing Effect
- The Collecting Mindset
- Why Do Hipsters Steal Stuff?
- Progress In Beauty
- Ordinary Incompetence
- Finding Feynman’s Maze Story
- Elon Musk
- Potent Drugs As Psychological Warfare
- Why To Not Write A Book
- Why So Few Matt Levines?

# Behavior Genetics

- Embryo Selection For Traits
- Bakewell’s Invention: Breeding
- Dog Cloning For Special Forces
- History of IES
- Drug Evolutionary Heuristics
- Genetics In Herbert’s *Dune*
- Genetics In *My Little Pony*
- Amusing Ourselves To Death?
- Emergenesis: Genius’ Genetics?
- Non-Gene Variance Components

# Economics

- Ordinary Life Improvements
- Girl Scouts & Good Governance
- Console Insurance
- Buying Greenland
- Long Bets’s Design Problems
- Copyright Deadweight Loss
- Local Optima & Greedy Choice
- IQ/Income
- Self-funding Harberger copyright tax
- Copyright

# Economics: Tech

- Commoditize Your Complement
- Timing Tech: Media Lab Lessons

- DARPA & The SCI VC Program
- The Garden Of Forking Paths
- Moore’s Law & Chip Fabs
- ‘Holy Wars’ Coordination Problem
- Startup Ideas
- Automation/Colonization Wave

# Domestic Cats

- Cat Psychology/Domestication
- Catnip Rate Meta-Analysis

- Solving Catnip POMDPs
- Catnip Breeding
- Catnip Surveys
- Cat-Caused Accidents
- Why Cats Like Earwax
- Cats As Horror Movie Villains
- *Cat*itecture: Better Cat Window Boxes
- What is it Like to be a Cat Tail?

# Practical

- Internet Search Tips
- On Having Enough Socks
- Plastination Vs Cryonics
- Vitamin D Longevity
- Falling & Head Injuries
- Bjorksten Aging Papers
- Oldest possible food

# Design

- Gwern.net Design, Lessons, Traffic

- Feature test page
- Manual of Style
- InvertOrNot.com
- Sidenotes In Web Design
- Rubrication Design Examples
- Who Buys Fonts?
- On Subscripting Citations
- Use Rarer Greek Variables
- Twitter Follow-UX Problems
- Website Colors: Red vs Blue

# QS: Sleep

- Melatonin For Sleep
- Modafinil As Stimulant
- Modafinil Use Survey
- Self-Experiments:

- Caffeine
- Potassium
- Redshift
- Vitamin D
- ZMA Mix
- Wooden Pillows
- Lunar Sleep Rhythms

# QS

- Nootropics Experiments
- LSD Microdosing
- Blind Mineral Water Taste Test
- Spirulina Allergy Experiment
- Bitter Melon Blood-Glucose
- Meditation & Math Errors
- Weather & My Mood
- Treadmill Memory & Typing
- Bacopa Quasi-Experiment
- 2013 LLLT Self-Experiment
- Acne: a good QS topic

* * *

# Politics

- Melancholy Of Subculture Society
- Terrorism Is Not About Terror
- Terrorism Is Not Effective
- Colder Wars In Space
- Parasocial Relationships Online
- Unreasonable Small Groups’ Efficacy
- Political Fashions
- Best Of *Abandoned Footnotes*

# Epistemology

- Existential Risks & Math Errors
- Hacker Mindset: Seeing Through
- On Powerful Natural Languages
- Littlewood’s Law & The Global Media

- The Lizardman Constant
- One Man’s *Modus Ponens*…
- Newton’s Cosmology & Comets
- Simulation Inferences

# Philosophy

- Culture Is Not About Esthetics
- Ontological Pantheism
- On Disrespect
- Impossibility of Retrocognition
- Against The Miletians
- **Ethics**

- The Narrowing Circle
- An Abortion Dialogue
- Immoral Books
- Justifications
- Ethicists’ Ethics

* * *

# Literary Criticism

- **Time travel**:

- “Story Of Your Life” ≠ Time Travel
- R. Scott Bakker’s *Second Apocalypse*
- *Timecrimes*: Time Travel In Hell
- *MLP*: Immanetizing the Equestrian
- Wolfe’s “Suzanne Delage” is *Dracula*
- “Scanners Live In Vain” Realism
- ‘Screwfly Solution’ Solution

# Anime

- The Melancholy Of Kyon
- ***Death Note*** Anonymity, Ending

- Movie Script Authors
- Hafu Gender Ratios In Anime
- *Aria*’s Past, Present, & Future
- *FMP* Parodies
- On Development Hell
- Why OVAs?
- Why ugly Western animation?
- Why *Space Battleship Yamato*?

# Fiction: Prose

- The Gift Of The Amygdali
- October The First Is Too Late
- The Ones Who Walk Towards Acre
- Three Missing Cities
- The Erl King
- Men Of Iron
- Gilles Goullet, *Blindsight* Author
- How The Panther Got Black
- The Palace Of Wonders
- *Dinosaur Comics* Comics

# Fiction: Verse

- Miscellaneous Poems
- Brave Poem
- Dying Outside
- Poems On *Genshiken* Theme
- Safecracker
- Hybrid Rainbow
- The Mulberry Tree
- The Snowbanks Of Time
- “Bell, Crow, Moon: Poetic Variations”

* * *

# Docs

- Browse By Tag (newest), Bounties
- Rotten.com Library Archives
- OKCupid Statistics Blog Archives
- “Shiny Balls Of Mud” (Gibson)
- “Even More Aphorisms & 10s Essays”
- “Nor The Summers As Golden” (Wolfe)
- “Loyal To The Group Of 17’s Story”

# Docs: Science

- *Radiance* (Carter Scholz)
- “The Iron Law Of Evaluation”
- “You And Your Research” (Hamming)
- “Sanity & Survival” (Hofstadter)
- “Hope Function In Fruitless Search”
- “Climb Mount Improbable” (Dawkins)
- “The Sword Of Achilles” (Asimov)
- Norvir’s Vanishing Polymorphs

# Docs: Crypto

- Cryptography & P=NP, Nash1955
- Wei Dai/Satoshi Nakamoto Emails
- “Bitcoin’s Mysterious Inventor”
- *Drugs 2.0*: “Crack’s In The Post”
- Jed McCaleb/MtGox Interview

# Docs: Anime

- “Talk About *RahXephon*”
- “Yutaka Izubuchi × Anno”
- “Otaku Talk” (Okada et al)
- “Earth In My Window”, “Little Boy”
- *Utena* 201114ya Boxset Commentary
- “On The Battlefield Of ‘Superflat’ ”
- “Ero-Anime: Manga Comes Alive”
- **NGE**:

- *Evangelion* Source Anthology
- *The Notenki Memoirs* (Takeda)
- *Rebuild 2.0 CRC*
- “Conscience Of The Otaking”
- Michael House On Gainax
- 1996, 1997 Anno Interview

* * *

# Wikipedia

- In Defense Of Inclusionism
- WP & Google Knol
- WP & Google YouTube
- WP & Darkside Editing
- WP & Other Wikis
- My Old WP Edits

# Reviews

- Anime:

- *Princess Kaguya*
- *Last Unicorn*
- Books:

- *McNamara’s Folly*
- *The Cultural Revolution*
- *Umineko no Naku Koro Ni*
- *The Quantum Thief*
- *I Remember Lemuria!*
- Movies: *Crumb* • *The Bridge*
- Operas
- Teas

# Personal

- About Website
- Links/About Me
- Interview with Dwarkesh Patel
- Old Newsletters
- Misc Notes
- Epigrams & Humor

- Second life sentences

\[ Send Anonymous Feedback \]

\[Quote Of The Day\]

\[Site Of The Day\]

\[Annotation Of The Day\]

\[adblock public service announcement\]

​