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I've just watched a very interesting video by Endeavour. He compares two Canadian PSA films, made twenty years apart. They are effectively the original and the remake, since they utilize the same narrative device and techniques and handle the same issue. Thus, they are a perfect way to compare the Canadas of 1999 and 2019.

(Before I get to the actual meat, a quick tangent. I noticed that the CGI in the 2019 version is barely, if at all, better than that in the 1999 version. If something as prominent in modern culture as CGI has not improved in 20 years, that would seem to confirm the observation that we have been stultified since the year 2000.)

While the 1999 version was aimed at children (being broadcast on childrens TV channels) the 2019 version is aimed at adults (its associated website even has a section explicitly for parents). Ironically, given the 20-year gap, we can assume that the two PSAs are actually targeting the very same generation: people who were children in 1999 and young adults in 2019.

The message of the 1990 PSA is that, if you are not careful, you can get tricked into believing things that are not true, especially if the person telling you those things sounds authoritative. Therefore, it is important to always think critically, even with things you are told by so-called experts. In effect, it is warning against placing too much trust in those who are, formally speaking, above you in societys hierarchy.

The fascinating observation Endeavour made is that the 2019 PSA, while ostensibly doing the exact same thing as its 1999 predecessor, actually does the diametrically opposite thing. It tells people not to think for themselves, but to trust the experts, whether that be Wikipedia, scientists, the government, the mainstream media, or accredited fact-checkers. By contrast, the 1999 version specifically says that people can be duped when they place too much trust in authority. While it effectively said dont believe everything you see on TV, its successor effectively says believe only what you see on TV. The first warns about the danger of corrupt or dishonest experts, the second asserts that experts are your only defense against corruption and dishonesty.

While the 1999 version assumed a level of intelligence and discernment in the general public and sought to encourage those qualities, the 2019 version does the opposite, advising people to switch their mental faculties off. The only thinking you are supposed to do is that the powerful are correct, trustworthy and reliable, and are in fact your only source of safety in a world of foolish people like yourself. In contrast to its predecessor, the 2019 version assumes a public that is stupid, gullible, and constantly at risk of letting itself down and (or rather, by) defying the powerful.

This change, over a period of just 20 years, is simply remarkable. When Zoomers wonder why Millennials have nostalgia for the 1990s, this kind of thing serves to show that life really was different then.

Now, it can be argued that in 1999 the powerful also distrusted the publics ability to think, so took to persuading them via flattery (e.g. We know youre smart, so of course youll think X). This is true, but it only makes the change in dynamic more ominous. Whereas, in 1999, the powerful felt they had to pretend to respect the public, today they dont. Today they brazenly talk down to them, and even openly tell them not to trust their own judgemente.g. We know youre not smart, so you need to be told to think X. But dont worry, were here to do just that.

It gets worse when we click on the website that is linked from the 2019 PSA. While the film delivers the short insult, this website does the heavy lifting and really puts the knife into any idea you had that you were fit for this thinking malarkey. Called Break the Fake in a cutting reference to fake news, the website was funded at least in part by the Canadian government, which then as now operated under the seemingly eternal loving care of Justin Trudeau.

One of the first things on the website is a video which tells you, in not so many words, to entrust your critical thinking to Google and accredited fact-checkers. To be fair, it does also advise to check whether a claim has been made by multiple outlets or just one (potentially rogue) outlet, but that is the only good advice it gives, and even then, in this age of systematic censorship, multiple outlets corroborating a true claim can be hard to find, unless the claim is one that Google (and Trudeau) want you believing. Otherwise, Google will censor it, deboost outlets which promote it, and boost outlets which fact-check it. (And Trudeau will call people racist for complaining about this.)

Next, the website has a dedicated section on COVID-19, which has presumably been added since it went online in 2019. I couldnt bring myself to click on that.

The website lists three tests to check whether you are really thinking critically. You might expect such tests to be things like: how well does the theory fit the known facts? or does the theory have the ring of truth or does it even seem absurd? or does the theory make internal sense? or "how much does the theory explain? Not at all. Here are the tests:

What do I already think or believe about this? [testing for confirmation bias]

Why do I want to believe or disprove this? [testing for wishful thinking]

What would make me change my mind? [testing for willingness to believe otherwise]

Note that these tests relate, not to the theory itself, but to the mind that evaluates the theory.

Even the third test, which could be worded as a test of the theoryhow could this theory be proven false?is instead worded as a test of youare you willing to change your mind, or are you committed to believing this theory come what may?

The other two tests are even worse, being entirely about your motivations for believing something. While motivation is certainly relevant (nobody is as logical as they think they are) it strikes me as sinister to make this the only concern. In isolation like this, it seems more like gaslighting, browbeating the person into doubting their own ability to think and even trying to persuade them that the very motives which drive their thinking are dubiousuntil tested otherwise.

If you wanted a picture of an authority with contemptuous paranoia about the general public, there it is. It is one thing for them to believe the public are stupid, but for them to openly tell the public (in effect) that they are stupid... is just staggering. A teacher of five year-olds probably accords them more respect than the governments of the modern West accord their citizens. The teacher would encourage her pupils to work it out for yourself; the modern governments explicitly tell people dont try to work it out for yourself.

But of course there is another dimension to the message. The full version is: Dont try to work it out for yourself, and dont listen to anyone's explanation of it except ours. This relates to the democratizing effect that the Internet exerted upon society between 1999 and 2019. Enabling a multiplicity of outlets to offer explanations for things, the Internet enabled a multiplicity of rivals to the central power, potential threats to its stranglehold. Well, it turns out that democratization is not what it was cracked up to be. In fact, democratization is a threat to our democracy.

At the same time, it has to be noted that there is an assumption implicit in making PSA films like this, even the 1999 version. To see a need for such films is to believe that the public have a tendency not to think for themselves, not to be skeptical, not to question what they are told. You could almost conclude that what we really need is a new public a new genetic group that has been shorn of these tendencies towards compliance and stupidity. Such a public would be harder to control, but easier to admire.

But then, there I go, assuming that the job of ordinary people is to do their own thinking for themselves. It isnt, really, is it? They are made to follow, made to trust. So, in a grim sense, the 2019 PSA is actually more realistic than the 1999 version. The 1999 version is the kind of thing I grew up watching, and the messagethat most people are capable of independent thoughtis one I thoroughly absorbed during my formative years, and perhaps that is why I find myself constantly perplexed at how people actually are.

You couldnt say the technocrats are honest about people, but they are realistic about them.

But that takes us to the nature of the technocrats. Sociopathy bestows clarifying realism in place of empathy, both obscuring truth and obscuring the value of truth. This is the approach that an efficient predator takes towards its preybut that is a story for another time.

Millennial Woes writes at millennialwoes.substack.com.

Continued here:

Break it 'til you fake it - The Herald Journal

The call for applications to Ph.D. positions at the University of Padova opened yesterday, and it will remain active for less than one month (deadline is June 7th at 1PM CEST).

University of Padovais an important centre for academic studies in Italy. It is the third oldest university in the world, and just turned 800 years old! The department of Physicsand Astronomy itself has been selected for 2023-27 as a centre of excellence. And Padova is a very pleasant small town in north-eastern Italy, where over 70,000 students receive education in all fields of sciences and humanities.

The University has a unified call for all subjects, and within the call there are 44 positions for a PhD in physics. This is a rather large number, which should guarantee a significant rate of success for applicants passing the minimum admission criteria.You can find all the information at these two links:- this one(which points to the three documents to be downloaded, direct link here)- and this one, which is from the Physics department and includes a video, and more information.

The positions are of two kinds: there are 13 "open" ones, which allow winners to freely decide what research topic to embark on and what supervisor to choose among the full body of staff members at the Department of Physics and the personnel of research institutes (e.g. INFN) in Padova. And then there is a large number of positions that target specific research topics. If you apply for a Phd in Physics, you need to be careful to "opt in" to the positions you may be happy to get, and not opt in to ones you would not want. In fact, the selection procedure is a bit baroque, and depending on what you do and do not tick, you may gain or lose the chance to be offered some of the 44 positions.

This year I invested some funds to offer a couple of joint PhD positions which are in the list. These two positions are "special" in the sense that they imply:

- a co-tutorship by me and a computer scientist from a different University- the spending of 18 months in Padova and 18 months at the foreign University with the computer scientist tutor's research team- the increase of the salary by 50% for the 18 months spent outside Italy- the embedding of the winning candidates in the MODE collaboration (boosting their visibility and networking chances).

As for MODE, here is a defining slide for the collaboration (link: https://mode-collaboration.github.io).

Of additional interest is the fact that besides the allocated funds for travel to external schools that the student will be endowed with as part of the PhD program in Padova, I will make additional funding available to the students, and specifically encourage them to participate in a rich training program, with attendance to international events (Ph.D. schools in physics, computing, machine learning) and conferences, and stays at foreign institutes.

The snapshot below shows where the two positions are listed in the document available at the link provided above.

The two positions, while being in a sense related to work at the crossroads of physics and computer science, are still going to produce a title of Ph.D. in Physics. And they both involve the participation of candidates to the MODE collaboration, which is a group of physicists and computer scientists from 24 institutes around the world, who work together to solve difficult problems of end-to-end optimization for fundamental science applications (see https://mode-collaboration.github.io . I founded the MODE collaboration in 2020 and have been directing it since).

Lulea, Sweden

The first position is meant for applicants who will be jointly supervised by myself and by Prof. Fredrik Sandin. Fredrik is a full professor at the Computer Science department of Lulea Technical University. A physicist by background, he is an expert in neuromorphic computing, a topic about which I will discuss in a post in this blog very soon (I will put here a link when I write that piece).

In a nutshell, neuromorphic computing exploits the time-encoding of information in streams of "spikes", signals that travel to the synapse of neurons and produce changes in the membrane potential, activating an output signal. The time encoding allows for extreme reduction in power consumption with respect to normal digital computing, and the strength of the connection between synapses and neurons acts as a in-place memory storage, so that neuromorphic computing allows for co-location of memory and computing, avoiding the problem of data communication between storage and CPU normally seen in digital processors. NC is particularly exciting since it is a much more accurate model of the working of our brain, and offers applications in edge computing applications (such as the internet of things). Of high relevance is the energy efficiency of these devices, looking at the green transition.

The position we offer is for a graduate student who will work at applications of neuromorphic computing for fundamental science. This is a broad definition, and indeed although we have a couple of specific applications in mind, we will be able to adapt the work plan to the student's wishes. One possibility involves developing a triggering and processing strategy for radio antennas detecting the signal of neutrino interactions in the ice of the Arctic, in collaboration with another group of physicists from the University of Uppsala. In any case, the student will be embedded in the MODE collaboration and she or he will benefit from the rich program of activities we are carrying out within that group.Kaiserslautern, Germany

The second position offers research work in collaboration with the RPTU University in Kaiserslautern, with as co-supervisor Prof. Nicolas R. Gauger. Nicolas is the chairholder for Scientific computing and director of the computing center RHRZ in Kaiserslautern-Landau. He has enormous competence in scientific computing and outstanding track record of teaching and advisorship.

In this case the research work is centered on optimization of particle physics detectors, and again the exact definition of the work is voluntarily left open to finalization according to the preferences of the winning candidate. One possibility is to study the development of highly granular hadron calorimeters for future particle colliders, when the integration with a tracker may provide a paradigm change with respect to current available technologies, looking forward to providing particle-ID capability in these instruments.

More information

If you need more information on these positions, and/or want to chat with me on the topic, I will make available a couple of slots for zoom meetings where I can answer all your questions. Just fill a when2meet poll here(use your email as your name, so I can identify you!, and possibly send me an email (at tommaso.dorigo(at)gmail(dot)com) about it too) to indicate the dates/times you prefer, and I will try to meet all demands! But be careful to indicate _all_ the time slots you can possibly make, as I need to then pick a couple of dates/times that maximize demand. Good luck!

Follow this link:

Joint PhD Positions In Physics And Computer Science Available In ... - Science 2.0

A new technology developed by University of Texas at Austin scientists can turn a persons thoughts into readable text.

Its called a semantic decoder, and it uses artificial intelligence to interpret brain activity. The decoder can allow communication with someone who is mentally conscious but may be unable to speak like someone whos had a stroke.

Alex Huth is an assistant professor of neuroscience in computer science at UT-Austin. He worked with doctoral student Jerry Tang to develop this decoder. Huth joined Texas Standard to talk about their research, the technology and the legal and ethical concerns surrounding it. Listen to the story above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard:Give us an overview of this brain activity decoder youve created. What is it and how does it work exactly? This sounds like one of these almost science fiction devices.

Alex Huth:Yeah, every day were moving a little bit of science fiction into science fact. So the way it works is we put a person in an MRI scanner, kind of like the one where you would get a medical MRI. But were doing functional MRI so we can record whats happening in the brain. We build up a mapping of where different ideas, different thoughts are represented in the brain over many hours of training. And then we can use our algorithms to read those ideas out into words. So we can decode words that somebody is hearing if theyre listening to a podcast, for example, or even just thinking if theyre telling a story inside their head.

So does the person, the subject, do they have to think particularly hard about it for it to register? How does it work?

So it seems like they have to be very intentionally thinking something. So we were concerned about kind of the mental privacy implications

I was going to say, youve seen the movie Minority Report, right? I would think that there might be something like that.

So were worried about this. So we did some tests to see if the person, if they werent thinking thoughts very deliberately or if they were trying to think something else, could that upset the decoder? Could that make it not work? And it turns out it can. So the person has to be very deliberately, actively sort of thinking a sentence in their head, and then we can read that out. And of course, this only works on a person where weve trained this model with many hours of data.

You mentioned listening to podcasts, for example. This was part of your experimentation?

Oh, yes.

So is this technology, which uses the kind of artificial intelligence language model that people may know from ChatGPT, how different is it from what has been achieved in the past?

So theres a couple strands of work in this direction in the past. One, the most successful so far, has been using electrodes that are actually implanted in the brain. So this is after neurosurgery to implant electrodes, which is only done for people who are undergoing epilepsy surgery or have another medical issue. Thats been very successful, but that gets at a kind of different level of language. So that looks at how a person is trying to move their mouth to speak, for example. Whereas our technology works at this much higher level. Its about like, what are the ideas the person is thinking about or hearing about? And we can actually read that out, which means that we can do it non-invasively. So we dont need a person to have brain surgery. They can do it with an MRI, which anybody can do.

How nuanced is it?

Its okay. So its not perfect by any stretch. It doesnt get the exact words that a person is, you know, hearing or trying to say. It gets the gist. So it gets kind of what are the main ideas. Sometimes it gets phrases correct you know, specific sequences of words but its still kind of at the level of gist. This is something that were working on improving.

So you talked about how this could help people whose brains are active but cant speak. Do you see any other applications for it?

Yeah. So potentially this could become something that consumers could use at home, certainly not with an MRI scanner, but with other neuro imaging technologies.

I imagine its only a matter of time.

Hopefully. Its kind of hard to say, you know, what kinds of technologies will be available for looking at brain signals in the future, but were kind of hopeful that thats going to work. And if thats something that people could use at home, then they could potentially use it to interface with their computer. They could use it to search for things to control their computer without actively, you know, typing things in. We dont really know what the killer app for that would be yet, but I think theres a lot of possibilities.

Nolan Zunk

/

University of Texas at Austin

You know, its hard not to think about this and think about those who might use it for more nefarious purposes. Weve heard the expression thought police.

Absolutely.

What sort of ethical or legal safeguards are going to have to be built in now that we are, from the sound of it, at that threshold?

This is something weve thought about a lot in this work. So we certainly think were at the point where considering codified legal safeguards is important is something that we should be actively worrying about that people should not have this done without their consent. We think this should not be used for law enforcement purposes because its certainly not accurate enough for that. That hasnt stopped law enforcement in the past, for example, with the polygraph. We dont want to have that kind of situation repeated. We did some testing on kind of these privacy concerns to see how much control does the person have and thats where we found, again, that if the person is trying to resist it trying to make it not work then they can do that. They can shut it off. And also, we had this lengthy training procedure where the person has to lay in the scanner for many, many hours and listen to podcasts. We tried to see, can we avoid that? Can we take the model that we trained on one persons brain and apply it to a new person so we wouldnt need to do this training on them? And that doesnt work at all, currently. So right now I think the concerns are not very acute, but its on the horizon, which is why I think we should think about it.

Whats the next frontier as you see it?

The biggest kind of avenue forward that we see with this is kind of bigger and better models like bigger and better A.I. models. As these models get more effective, as we move from the kinds of things that we used in this work which was GPT-1 from 2019 now theres much more effective models out there, and we think that those things will very much improve the system make it more accurate, which which were excited about. But a lot of what were doing is really, you know, what we try to study in my lab is how our brains process language, how we understand language. Thats our scientific goal. So a lot of what were doing is taking these same kinds of models and using them to try to figure out what the brain is doing, to try to say what are the different parts of the brain responding to, how is language and meaning

More broadly beyond the technology, in other words.

Right. So what are the scientific implications? So really most of our work is in that direction.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support ithere. Your gift helps pay for everything you find ontexasstandard.organdKUT.org. Thanks for donating today.

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'Science fiction into science fact': Decoder can turn your thoughts ... - KUT

Jacob Wright was still in middle school when he decided that he was destined to attend CSUN all thanks to Matador Motorsports.

As a middle school student, at the 2013 Los Angeles Auto Show, Wright first laid eyes on a CSUN student-designed race car, an annual senior design project that gives CSUN engineering students the opportunity to design, build, test and race a Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) racing vehicle. A decade later, Wright is the proud senior project manager of the Matador Motorsports team.

Ive lived like down the street from [campus] for my whole life, said Wright, a member of the Class of 2023. Once I learned about Formula SAE being here, I was like, Oh dude, I have to go to a school with FSAE, and CSUNs right there. Lets do it.'

This week, all of the teams hard work comes to fruition at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich. In Formula SAEs vaunted North American competition, CSUN will compete against nearly 120 other universities, May 17-20. Twelve students traveled to the competition, hauling their race car across the country in a trailer. Eight of them, including Wright, will miss their College of Engineering and Computer Science commencement ceremony to take part in the competition a decision each made on their own.

Theres some people that are kind of bummed about missing graduation, but I know for me at least, I came to college just to do Formula SAE, Wright said. So, its kind of a tough thing to realize. But once you get over that [missing graduation], youre like, Okay, lets go to competition. Lets do it. Every single alumni that we tell that were missing graduation, theyre like, Dont worry about it. Competition is way better.

The team has been working on their car, Shaqira, since summer 2022. In a matter of months, they planned, designed, manufactured and tested their car. The students also must stick to a budget of about $50,000. According to Wright, in recent weeks, team members worked on the car 24/7 to complete the project before departure for Michigan.

Matador Motorsports was established at CSUN in 1988. Students work in teams during the academic year to design, then build the race car. In his role as the senior project manager, Wright spends a lot of his time in the Haas Laboratory at Jacaranda Hall, overseeing all the teams who work on the car. That includes seven sub-teams of about four students each including graduate and undergraduate students dedicated to working on a particular part of the car: controls, engine, drivetrain, chassis, engine, suspension and management. The management team is in charge of creating the general idea of what the car should look like, and the teams goals for the semester.

Wright ensures that the teams overall workflow is efficient and that all work is completed correctly. He collaborates closely with the projects faculty advisor, Stewart Prince, and shares information he receives from Prince with team leaders.

If theres any glaring red-flag design issue, I have to raise the question: Hey, what are we doing here? Is this really the best way that we can do this? Wright said. I have to make sure that things are gelling correctly [and that] its not going to get in the way of other things.

The process for choosing the senior project manager can vary, from overall team votes to alumni volunteer members making the selection. Based on his years volunteering with the team, Wright stepped up to take this position and Prince accepted this decision.

I think hes done a pretty good job. I still see him as that kid in sixth grade, and he still is to this day. He still has that level of enthusiasm of a young kid, and I certainly appreciate that, said Prince, who has served as Matador Motorsports advisor since 1991.

After the competition, Wright wants to work in the automotive industry. Hed like to follow in the footsteps of former Matador Motorsports project manager, Luiz Oliveira 14 (Mechanical Engineering) a race engineer at Honda Performance Development. Oliveira was there at that fateful 2013 L.A. Auto Show.

[Oliveira] showed me that it [is] possible to go from CSUN to Formula One. I would love to do that, Wright said. Thats the dream to eventually end up in Formula One. But you know, Id love to end up in racing somewhere.

This month, he hopes CSUN will place in the top 15 or 20 at the competition, Wright said, and hed like to expand the roles within Matador Motorsports to include students from other departments and majors. For example, hed like to see graphic design students help out with designing team merchandise, and journalism students assist with the Matador Motorsports newsletter and social media, he added.

This isnt just for engineers. We could have a marketing team, we could have a business team. You could find an avenue from every single major to help with this project, Wright said.

For more information about CSUNs Department of Mechanical Engineering and College of Engineering and Computer Science, check out their websites

College of Engineering and Computer Science, CSUN, Matador Motorsports, Students

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Coming Full Circle on the Track: Graduating Senior Fulfills Lifelong ... - California State University, Northridge

Your college major can have a profound impact on your income.

Within four years of graduation, some majors stand to earn as much as $256,539, while others make less than $10,000 per year, according to a new report from The HEA Group, a research and higher education consulting firm.

The top-earning majors are in so-called STEM fields, or degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Half of the top 10 majors with graduates making the most money are subsets of engineering.

Michael Itzkowitz, the founder and president of The HEA Group, analyzed data collected by the U.S. Department of Education from more than two million students who received federal financial aid and graduated in 2015 or 2016. Their earnings were measured in 2019 and 2020.

Here are the 10 highest-paying college majors, four years after graduation:

The majors with the highest earning potential tend to provide specialized, technical training in an in-demand field, like health care or technology, says Itzkowitz.

Nuclear engineering majors earn the most, with a median annual salary of $131,454. Increasing calls for clean, renewable energy has spurred demand for nuclear engineers amid challenges with wind and solar power.

Engineers, in general, are needed in a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, cybersecurity, construction and agriculture, says Itzkowitz. Chemical engineers and industrial engineers, which have consistently been two of the highest-paying college majors over the past few years, are also two of the occupations projected to grow the most by 2031, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Biology is another major that can open doors to a wide range of high-paying opportunities, and not just in the medical field, Itzkowitz says.

"While many biology majors may have ambitions to go to medical school, some do not, and have no trouble finding jobs with competitive salaries, like a biotechnologist or research scientist, right after college," says Itzkowtiz.

Similarly, veterinary medicine is a field that includes a wide range of majors, from veterinary technicians to "pre-vet" programs for veterinarians, a job that requires a doctor of veterinary medicine degree in addition to a bachelor's degree. The U.S. Department of Education's data does not include the salaries for people who are currently enrolled in advanced degree programs, like medical and business school.

The non-engineering majors in the top 10 are biomathematics, marine transportation, veterinary medicine, computer science and operations research, which typically focuses on the development and application of mathematical or simulation models to solve problems with operational systems.

Jeff Levy, an independent educational consultant in Santa Monica, warns students not to pick a major solely because of its potential salary. As he previously told CNBC Make It, "There's no way of knowing, with 100% certainty, which professions will pay the best in 5, 10 years."

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Link:

These are the highest-paying college majors, 4 years after graduationmany pay over $100,000 - CNBC