September 2016 Media Thread

ArisKatsaris

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Rules:

Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
Please post only under one of the already created subthreads, and never directly under the parent media thread.
Use the "Other Media" thread if you believe the piece of media you want to discuss doesn't fit under any of the established categories.
Use the "Meta" thread if you want to discuss about the monthly media thread itself (e.g. to propose adding/removing/splitting/merging subthreads, or to discuss the type of content properly belonging to each subthread) or for any other question or issue you may have about the thread or the rules.

Short Online Texts Thread

A Quantum of Consciousness

Broadly speaking, suggestions about the mechanisms that might cause consciousness can be grouped into three: (i) the vital spark of life, (ii) an emergent property from basic control functions of the central nervous system and (iii) a special relationship between spooky quantum interactions and life.

But repeated experiments have shown that electron transfer in photosynthesis has an efficiency greater than ninety-nine percent, probably because of superposition and electron tunnelling.

And evidence is gathering that many enzymes may ... (read more)

3Artaxerxes10y

Potential Risks from Advanced Artificial Intelligence: The Philanthropic Opportunity by Holden Karnofsky. Somehow missed this when it was posted in May. Compare, for example, Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) one of the most highly upvoted posts ever on LessWrong. Edit: See also Some Key Ways in Which I've Changed My Mind Over the Last Several Years

3gwern10y

Everything is heritable: * Evolution: * "Divergent Ah receptor ligand selectivity during hominin evolution", Hubbard et al 2016 (Evolution to tolerate smoke poisoning, 350-45kya) * "Genetic Markers of Human Evolution Are Enriched in Schizophrenia", Srinivasan et al 2016 (Our evolution is not yet complete: evolution is still working out the kinks. Fortunately, we don't have to wait for it to finish the job.) * "Genetic Associations Between Personality Traits and Lifetime Reproductive Success in Humans", Berg et al 2016 (contemporary selection for personality traits) * "How cognitive genetic factors influence fertility outcomes: A mediational SEM analysis", Woodley et al 2016 (More on dysgenics in the USA: mostly mediated through education's effects on fertility.) * "Humans Never Stopped Evolving: The emergence of blood abnormalities, an adult ability to digest milk, and changes in our physical appearance point to the continued evolution of the human race" * "Rapid evolutionary response to a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils", Epstein et al 2016 (quick evolution through soft selection sweeps) * "Phenome-wide Heritability Analysis of the UK Biobank", Ge et al 2016 (SNP heritability for 551 complex traits) * "Identification of 15 genetic loci associated with risk of major depression in individuals of European descent", Hyde et al 2016 * "Associations between Polygenic Risk for Psychiatric Disorders and Substance Involvement", Carey et al 2016 * "Genetic Prediction of Male Pattern Baldness", Hagenaars et al 2016 (baldness GCTA of 52%, and GWAS with 250 new hits from the UK Biobank.) * "Sweet Taste Perception is Associated with Body Mass Index at the Phenotypic and Genotypic Level", Hwang et al 2016 * "Analysis of Intellectual Disability Copy Number Variants for Association With Schizophrenia", Rees et al 2016 (more on the pervasive genetic overlap between mental illnesses/intellectual problems) * "Heritability and causal reasoning",