Alex K. Chen's Shortform

What are some strategies you use to "reduce the hit" when you're about to take in potentially bad news? This is important b/c it's sometimes important to face up "bad news" earlier rather than later, and there is social loss in some people not being able to face it until it's too late, esp b/c some kinds of "bad news" aren't as incorrigible as they may initially appear (just that you need out-of-distribution strategies to make the proper amends)

[some examples of bad news: irreversible data loss, cancer diagnosis, elevated epigenetic age, loss of important friend, someone overpromised and underdelivered on you and that affects many of the promises you made]

[as AGI timelines come "nearer", "bad news" may come at faster frequencies, but OOD ways to solve them may also come faster]

[sometimes you can ask yourself "how much wealth would you need to take in any bad news"]. Wealth is not fully-completely interchangeable with youth/intelligence/universal social acceptance, but it DEFINITELY has potential for tipping the needle..

Generally interesting people I wish more people would appreciate

Arthur Jiuliani (see his medium)/Adam Safron/Yohan John

Michael Woodley (kind of)

Jeremy Hadfield (https://imaginaries.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile)

Benjamin Anderson

http://augmentationlab.org (and their discord)

some neurofeedback peole (still TRYING THIS OUT, the S/N ratio might not be high, but finding the right person alone can make it super-worth it). Need to try LENS neurofeedback (money for this would be helpful btw)

Stephen Frey (undersells himself)

SOME quantified-self'ers

https://twitter.com/i/lists/1546283699829936129

MAYBES: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/faculty/2308/thomas-hartung (on brain organoids and autism), Bobby Azarian, https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/layzer/
 https://www.readcodon.com/p/machine

Interesting LessWrong people

dkirmani

matolcsid (infra-bayesianism I could never understand)

http://niplav.site/index.html (another gwern! calls himself midwit) Ad more interested in neurotech

Ege Erdil

https://gormful.net/ (gaspode, he has SO MUCH taste)

p.b.

https://www.lesswrong.com/users/bhauth

https://www.lesswrong.com/users/beren-1 (blog @ https://www.beren.io/ ). Janus likes him a lot

Matthew Barnett

Jacob Cannell

Interesting links:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KQSpRoQBz7f6FcXt3

Are exotic computing paradigms (ECPs) pro-alignment?

cf https://twitter.com/niplav_site/status/1760277413907382685

They are orthogonal to the "scale is all you need" people, and the "scale is all you need" thesis is the hardest for alignment/interpretability

some examples of alternatives: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PyChB935jjtmL5fbo/time-and-energy-costs-to-erase-a-bit, Normal Computing, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ngqFnDjCtWqQcSHXZ/safety-of-self-assembled-neuromorphic-hardware, computing-related thiel fellows (eg Thomas Sohmers, Tapa Ghosh)

[this is also how to get into neglectedness again, which EA adopted as a principle but recently forgot]

from Charles Rosenbauer:

This is neat, but this does little to nothing to optimize non-AI compute. Modern CPUs are insanely wasteful with transistors, plenty of room for multiple orders of magnitude of optimization there. This is only a fraction of the future of physics-optimized compute.

Using size-1 piksters makes you really aware of all the subtle noise that your hidden plaque is gives your mind (I noticed they cleared up plaque un-reachable by floss+waterpiks+electric toothbrushes.. the first step to alignment/a faithful computation is reducing unnecessary noise (you notice this easily on microdoses of weed/psychedelics)

It's a pareto-efficient improvement to give all alignment researchers piksters to eliminate this source of noise (align the aligners first - reducing unnecessary noise is always the first step to alignment [and near-term tFUS is also a means to reduce noise]). I know that one of the alignment offices had a lot of "freebies" that anyone could use - so piksters should be one of the useable freebies.

Random content I'm reading (could be important)

https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/natalia-goriounova/publications/
Natalia Goriounova – Research output — Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(22)00208-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS136466132200208X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Evolution of cortical neurons supporting human cognition: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/32/11/2343/6373557
Verbal and General IQ Associate with Supragranular Layer Thickness and Cell Properties of the Left Temporal Cortex | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00044/full
Frontiers | Genes, Cells and Brain Areas of Intelligence
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/25/12/4839/311644?login=false
Dendritic and Axonal Architecture of Individual Pyramidal Neurons across Layers of Adult Human Neocortex | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/33/6/2857/6633911?login=false
Strong and reliable synaptic communication between pyramidal neurons in adult human cerebral cortex | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39946-9
Genes associated with cognitive ability and HAR show overlapping expression patterns in human cortical neuron types | Nature Communications
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03813-8
Human neocortical expansion involves glutamatergic neuron diversification | Nature
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10345092/
Genes associated with cognitive ability and HAR show overlapping expression patterns in human cortical neuron types - PMC
 

https://www.esi-frankfurt.de/people/hermanncuntz/
Dr. Hermann Cuntz | Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience
https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(21)00625-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0896627321006255%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
A general principle of dendritic constancy: A neuron’s size- and shape-invariant excitability: Neuron
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1200430109
A scaling law derived from optimal dendritic wiring | PNAS
 

https://www.uni-giessen.de/de/fbz/zentren/icar3r/3r-symposium/speaker/name-2
Dr. Hermann Cuntz — 3R Symposium
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9g7Uj-MAAAAJ&hl=en
‪Hermann Cuntz‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.27.530331v1
Topology recapitulates ontogeny of dendritic arbors | bioRxiv
https://www.treestoolbox.org/hermann/hermann_publications.html
Hermann Cuntz - homepage
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.532740v1.full
Skewed distribution of spines is independent of presynaptic transmitter release and synaptic plasticity and emerges early during adult neurogenesis | bioRxiv
https://www.treestoolbox.org/CNS2023_pareto_workshop/speakers.html
Optimality, evolutionary trade-offs, Pareto theory and degeneracy in neuronal modeling
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/787911v1.full
A general principle of dendritic constancy – a neuron’s size and shape invariant excitability | bioRxiv
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/31/2/1008/5930850
Excess Neuronal Branching Allows for Local Innervation of Specific Dendritic Compartments in Mature Cortex | Cerebral Cortex | Oxford Academic
 

maybes

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856390/
Optimal Current Transfer in Dendrites - PMC
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5474458/
Pyramidal Neurons in Different Cortical Layers Exhibit Distinct Dynamics and Plasticity of Apical Dendritic Spines - PMC
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6672209/
Dendritic Spikes in Apical Dendrites of Neocortical Layer 2/3 Pyramidal Neurons - PMC
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09184-3
Branching morphology determines signal propagation dynamics in neurons | Scientific Reports

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22741-9
Diversity amongst human cortical pyramidal neurons revealed via their sag currents and frequency preferences | Nature Communications
https://elifesciences.org/articles/46876
Cell-type specific innervation of cortical pyramidal cells at their apical dendrites | eLife
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aax6239
Dendritic action potentials and computation in human layer 2/3 cortical neurons | Science
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011212
Biological complexity facilitates tuning of the neuronal parameter space | PLOS Computational Biology
https://alleninstitute.org/events/neuropixels-and-openscope-workshop/
2023 Neuropixels and OpenScope Workshop - Allen Institute
https://www.lifespan.io/news/extracellular-vesicles-from-stem-cells-reverse-senescence/
Extracellular Vesicles from Stem Cells Reverse Senescence
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8078853/
Classification of electrophysiological and morphological types in mouse visual cortex - PMC
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.31.018820v1.full
Human cortical expansion involves diversification and specialization of supragranular intratelencephalic-projecting neurons | bioRxiv
 

https://github.com/mousepixels/sanbomics_scripts/tree/main/RNAseq_method_comparison
sanbomics_scripts/RNAseq_method_comparison at main · mousepixels/sanbomics_scripts · GitHub
https://community.brain-map.org/t/introducing-the-allen-brain-cell-atlas/2444
Introducing the Allen Brain Cell Atlas! - How To / Allen Brain Cell (ABC) Atlas - Allen Brain Map Community Forum
https://knowledge.brain-map.org/data/LVDBJAW8BI5YSS1QUBG/summary
ABC Atlas - Mouse Whole Brain
https://community.brain-map.org/t/abc-atlas-user-guide-tools/2446
ABC Atlas User Guide: Tools - How To / Allen Brain Cell (ABC) Atlas - Allen Brain Map Community Forum
https://celltypes.brain-map.org/
Overview :: Allen Brain Atlas: Cell Types
https://portal.brain-map.org/explore/connectivity/synaptic-physiology/synaptic-physiology-experiment-methods/experimental-stimuli#intrinsic_stim
Synaptic Physiology Methods: Experimental Stimuli - brain-map.org
https://portal.brain-map.org/explore/connectivity/synaptic-physiology/synaptic-physiology-experiment-methods/cell-classification
Synaptic Physiology Methods: Cell Classification - brain-map.org
https://portal.brain-map.org/explore/connectivity/synaptic-physiology/synaptic-physiology-analysis-methods/synapse-characterization
Synaptic Physiology Methods: Synapse Characterization - brain-map.org
https://aisynphys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/matrix_analyzer.html#matrix-analyzer
Matrix Analyzer — aisynphys documentation
https://aisynphys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/matrix_analyzer.html#appendix
Matrix Analyzer — aisynphys documentation
https://portal.brain-map.org/explore/connectivity/synaptic-physiology/synaptic-physiology-analysis-methods/synapse-characterization#stp
Synaptic Physiology Methods: Synapse Characterization - brain-map.org
http://casestudies.brain-map.org/ggb#section_explorea
The Genetic Geography of the Brain :: Allen Institute for Brain Science
https://knowledge.brain-map.org/data?filter.program.title=CONTAINS~Allen%20Brain%20Map&limit=25&offset=0&sort=species.name~ASC
Data Catalog for Allen Institute's Brain Knowledge Platform
https://celltypes.brain-map.org/
Overview :: Allen Brain Atlas: Cell Types
 

https://community.brain-map.org/t/how-to-download-raw-data-from-neuropixels-public-datasets/1923
How to download raw data from Neuropixels public datasets - How To / Brain Knowledge Platform - Allen Brain Map Community Forum
https://community.brain-map.org/t/new-signaling-mechanism-in-catecholaminergic-neurons/2507
New signaling mechanism in catecholaminergic neurons - OpenScope - Allen Brain Map Community Forum
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aax6239
Dendritic action potentials and computation in human layer 2/3 cortical neurons | Science
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124719305777#bib48
Dissecting Sholl Analysis into Its Functional Components - ScienceDirect
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=bcV-p4MAAAAJ&citation_for_view=bcV-p4MAAAAJ:YsMSGLbcyi4C
View article
 

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