gwern.net Open in urlscan Pro
2606:4700:20::ac43:4749  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

Skip to main content
Site Me Changes News Links Patreon


ESSAYS

 * Newest
 * Popular
 * Notable
 * Statistics
 * Meta-Science
 * Decision Theory
 * Order Statistics
 * Crypto/Bitcoin
 * Dark Net Markets
 * 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
 * Ethics
 * Philosophy
 * Literary Criticism
 * Anime
 * Fiction: Prose
 * Fiction: Verse
 * Docs
 * Docs: Science
 * Docs: Crypto
 * Docs: NGE
 * Docs: Anime
 * Wikipedia
 * Reviews
 * Personal

[Warning: JavaScript Disabled!]

[For support of key website features (link annotation popups/popins &
transclusions, collapsible sections, backlinks, tablesorting, image zooming,
sidenotes etc), you must enable JavaScript.]

This Is The Web­site of Gwern Bran­wen. I write about AI, psy­chol­ogy, &
sta­tis­tics. I am best known for work on the ⁠dark­net mar­kets & ⁠Bit­coin,
blinded self-⁠ex­per­i­ments, ⁠dual n-back & spaced rep­e­ti­tion, DL scal­ing,
and ⁠anime neural net­works.

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 Links page; for in­for­ma­tion about new pages, see the
Changelog; to re­ceive up­dates, news, & re­views, sub­scribe to the newslet­ter
(archives). For an an­no­tated ver­sion of this site index page, see the ⁠long
index.


NEWEST



 * Drop­cap Gen­er­a­tion With AI

 * Catitec­ture: Bet­ter Cat Win­dow Boxes

 * Utext: Rich Uni­code Doc­u­ments

 * CQK Is The First Un­used TLA

 * “Suzanne De­lage” Solved

 * In­dent/Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion CSS A/B test

 * Ab­solute Unit NNs: MLPs for Every­thing

 * Im­pos­si­bil­ity of Knowl­edge of Retrocog­ni­tive Knowl­edge

 * “You And Your Re­search”, Ham­ming

 * Find­ing Feyn­man’s Maze Story

 * Re­search Ideas

 * Solv­ing Gam­bling Prob­lem #14 Fast


POPULAR



 * The NN Scal­ing Hy­poth­e­sis

 * Death Note Anonymity

 * Silk Road 1 Tu­to­r­ial

 * DNM Archives (2013–2015)

 * Using Modafinil Stim­u­lants

 * 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

 * Spaced Rep­e­ti­tion Learn­ing

 * Tool AIs Want To Be Agent AIs

 * In­ter­net Re­search Tips

 * In De­fense Of In­clu­sion­ism



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


STATISTICS

 * Pre­dict­ing Google Clo­sures

 * Judg­ing 2012 Elec­tion Fore­casts

 * Google Alerts Over Time

 * Mod­el­ing Fic­tion Re­view Rates

 * LW EA Do­na­tions, 2013–2014

 * Mis­cel­la­neous 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

 * Lep­rechaun Hunt­ing/Cito­ge­n­e­sis
   
   * Ori­gin of Lit­tle­wood’s Law

 * Does Mouse Utopia Exist?

 * Hy­dro­cephalus & IQ

 * Open Ques­tions & Top­ics

 * Crit­i­cal Read­ing: Fake Jour­nal Club


DECISION THEORY

 * Ban­ner Ads Con­sid­ered Harm­ful

 * When Should I Check The Mail?

 * My Pre­dic­tion Mar­ket Trades

 * Twin Power: Milk Ex­per­i­ment

 * Candy Japan’s New-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


CRYPTO/BITCOIN

 * Bit­coin Is Worse Is Bet­ter

 * Time-Lock Crypto; Time­stamps

 * CO2 Coin: Car­bon Blockchain

 * Trust­less Trade: 2-Of-2 Nash


DARK NET MARKETS

 * Silk Road 1 Buy­ers’ Guide

 * DNM Archive: 2013–2015

 * DNM Ar­rests: 2011–2015

 * DNM Life­time Cen­sus


AI: SAFETY

 * GPT-3 & The Scal­ing Hy­poth­e­sis

 * Evo­lu­tion As Learn­ing Back­stop

 * Tool AIs Want To Be Agent AIs

 * Com­plex­ity No Bar To AI

 * Looks Like You’re Tak­ing Over The World

 * The NN Tank 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

 * CYOA AI Dun­geons

 * GPT-2 Folk Music

 * Pref­er­ence Learn­ing Music


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

 * Project Ideas

 * Ab­solute Unit NNs: Regression-Based MLPs for Every­thing


COMPUTER SCIENCE



 * Sur­pris­ingly Turing-Complete

 * Archiv­ing URLs

 * The sort --key Trick

 * In­ter­net WiFi Im­prove­ment

 * The 3 Grenades

 * Com­put­ers In Com­put­ers

 * Choos­ing Soft­ware

 * ⁠Com­put­ers Are Fast

 * Gam­bling Prob­lem #14

 * “Utext: Rich Uni­code Doc­u­ments”


HASKELL

 * Haskell Sum­mer Of Code

 * Archiv­ing GitHub

 * Wikipedia Archive Bot

 * WP RSS Archive Bot

 * ⁠Re­silient Haskell Soft­ware

 * Evo­lu­tion­ary Li­censes

 * El­e­gant Run Length Cod­ing

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


COGNITION

 * Spaced Rep­e­ti­tion & Learn­ing

 * Dual n-Back FAQ

 * Dual n-Back Meta-Analysis

 * Io­dine Adult-IQ Meta-Analysis

 * SMPY G&T Bib­li­og­ra­phy

 * Cre­a­tine Cog­ni­tion Meta-Analysis

 * How Com­plex Human Dif­fer­ences?

 * Anne Roe’s Elite Sci­en­tists

 * In­tel­li­gence Of Por­tia Spi­ders


PSYCHOLOGY

 * Are Sunk Costs Fal­lac­ies?

 * Lithium In Drink­ing Water

 * Con­sci­en­tious­ness & On­line Ed

 * Morning-Writing Ef­fect

 * The Col­lect­ing Mind­set

 * Why Do Hip­sters Steal Stuff?

 * Progress In Beauty

 * LW An­chor­ing Ex­per­i­ment

 * Or­di­nary In­com­pe­tence

 * Find­ing Feyn­man’s Maze Story


BEHAVIOR GENETICS

 * Em­bryo Se­lec­tion For Traits

 * Bakewell’s In­ven­tion: Breed­ing

 * Dog Cloning For Spe­cial Forces

 * 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


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
   
   * Cat-Caused Ac­ci­dents

 * Cat­nip Rate Meta-Analysis
   
   * Solv­ing Cat­nip POMDPs
   
   * Cat­nip Breed­ing

 * Cat­nip Sur­veys

 * Why Cats Like Ear­wax

 * “Catitec­ture: Bet­ter Cat Win­dow Boxes”


PRACTICAL

 * In­ter­net Search Tips

 * On Hav­ing Enough Socks

 * Plas­ti­na­tion Vs Cry­on­ics

 * Vi­t­a­min D Longevity

 * ⁠Falling & Head In­juries

 * Bjork­sten Aging Pa­pers


DESIGN

 * Gwern.net De­sign, Lessons Learned, Traf­fic

 * Side­notes In Web De­sign

 * Rubri­ca­tion De­sign Ex­am­ples

 * Who Buys Fonts?

 * On Sub­script­ing Ci­ta­tions

 * Use Rarer Greek Vari­ables


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

 * Nico­tine as Stim­u­lant

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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


ETHICS

 * The Nar­row­ing Cir­cle

 * An Abor­tion Di­a­logue

 * ⁠Im­moral Books

 * ⁠Jus­ti­fi­ca­tions

 * Ethi­cists’ Ethics


PHILOSOPHY

 * Cul­ture Is Not About Es­thet­ics

 * On­to­log­i­cal Pan­the­ism

 * On Dis­re­spect

 * Im­pos­si­bil­ity of Knowl­edge of Retrocog­ni­tive Knowl­edge

 * Against The Mile­tians

 * Copy­right

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


LITERARY CRITICISM

 * “Story Of Your Life” ≠ Time Travel

 * MLP: Im­mane­tiz­ing the Eques­trian

 * R. Scott Bakker’s Sec­ond Apoc­a­lypse

 * On Gene Wolfe’s “Suzanne De­lage”

 * “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


FICTION: PROSE

 * The Gift Of The Amyg­dali

 * 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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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”

 * “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: NGE

 * Evan­ge­lion Source An­thol­ogy

 * The Notenki Mem­oirs (Takeda)

 * Re­build 2.0 CRC

 * “Con­science Of The Otak­ing”

 * Michael House On Gainax

 * 1996, 1997 Anno In­ter­view


DOCS: ANIME



 * “Talk About RahX­ephon”

 * “Yu­taka Izubuchi × Anno”

 * “Otaku Talk” (Okada etc)

 * “Earth In My Win­dow”, “Lit­tle Boy”

 * Utena 2011 Boxset Com­men­tary

 * “On The Bat­tle­field Of ‘Su­per­flat’”

 * “Ero-Anime: Manga Comes Alive”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


WIKIPEDIA

 * In De­fense Of In­clu­sion­ism

 * WP & Google Knol

 * WP & Google YouTube

 * WP & Dark­side Edit­ing

 * WP & Other Wikis

 * My Wikipedia Edits


REVIEWS

 * Anime

 * Books:
   
   * Mc­Na­mara’s Folly
   
   * The Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion
   
   * Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

 * Movies

 * Op­eras

 * Teas


PERSONAL

 * About Web­site

 * Links/About Me

 * Old Newslet­ters

 * Misc Notes

 * Epi­grams & Humor





[Send Anony­mous Feed­back]

[Quote Of The Day] [Site Of The Day] [Annotation Of The Day]

Popins EnabledDisable Popins
Auto Reader ModeEnable Reader ModeDisable Reader Mode
Auto Light/DarkLight ModeDark Mode


Arrow keys: Next/previous image

Escape or click: Hide zoomed image

Space bar: Reset image size & position

Scroll to zoom in/out

(When zoomed in, drag to pan;
double-click to reset size & position)





Essays