Pros and cons of research science as a career I suppose

Why science is cool

The thing I love most about research science is how varied the gig actually is. You get to be analytical: Experimental strategizing, analysis of data/experiments, problem solving, writing, coding, constructive criticism of your own and others work. You also get to be creative: experimental design, data visualisation, graphic design, oral presentations + public speaking. You get to work with legitimate experts who casually and nonchalantly cover your biggest weaknesses, while teaching and passing knowledge and skills onto the next cohort – just as you were taught. Probably the best part is the potential to be humbled on a good day. Sometimes you get to plant the ‘First!’ flag on something new. Your work can have an impact on other science and sometimes other humans if you’re really onto something, long after your life is over. You work for the public (if funded by government grants) which feels like an important responsibility to me. Industry science is important too!

Why science isn’t cool and the structure of modern science

For such a banger gig, the structural design of the research science industry is saddening to me as it drives incredible people away. The vast majority of the highly educated, intelligent and motivated people I have worked with and known are now out of the game and I don’t blame them. This is in no small part due to any combination of: poor job security, abusive workplaces + lab heads, sexism, low grant success (sexism at play here too) + shrinking pools of money and the ridiculous micro-metrics used to evaluate careers.

This isn’t about academic purity - the fact that most careers can’t even absorb one terrible early supervisor or unyielding PhD/postdoc project without tanking their future career and funding opportunities outlines how truly fragile and inefficient modern science is. In my opinion, the projects and lab you sign up to is mostly a dice roll and on average the game of modern science rewards the lucky few. I say this as someone who has had nothing but overwhelming support, encouragement and guidance throughout my career and been given opportunity after opportunity to succeed from both colleagues and supervisors and well thought out projects.

I’ve known colleagues (PhD students and postdocs) across a considerable number of institutions who have:

• been sexually harassed + assaulted by their supervisors
• been physically and verbally assaulted when experiments don’t go as predicted
• their contributions and authorships on manuscripts diluted, downgraded and in several cases, first authorships taken away (the most important metric if you want longevity in research)
  
• had mental health problems be handwaved and their character questioned
• whom their supervisors were being negative referees for job applications, decimating their ability to even work in science
• been treated like assembly line workers instead of their skills being cultivated

Even when these things were reported to the university/faculty at the time, there was often almost no blowback on the supervisors/aggressor.

Why science investment is a good economic strategy

Funding science is simply good long-term economics [1-4] and only short-sighted governments cut funding. It has an insane return on investment (ROI) of an estimated 20% [8]. The Australian government for example, does not invest in R&D appropriately - historically around 0.61% of GDP and currently at ~0.56% [4], far below the OECD average of 2.71% [6]. This is in line with Australia’s long-term galaxy-brain strategy of: ‘Me dig rock out of ground. I sell. U buy’, placing us as the 82^nd most complex economy (Economic Complexity Index) [5]. Instead, we spend taxpayer money on training PhD graduates and largely do not provide them with meaningful opportunities to establish their careers within the country, due to poor funding schemes and incredibly low success rates, ultimately resulting in brain drain [7].

Some ideas

I don’t have all the answers and I’m sure there’s lots of good ideas in this space, but the game needs to change if it wants to thrive. We’re in the prime age of technology, instruments and data required to push human knowledge to the next level, but it needs bodies. It also needs to jettison the parasitic for-profit publishing model which is nothing more than taxpayer-funded corporate welfare with extra steps.

Supporting links and references:

[1] https://unitedformedicalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/UMR_NIHs-Role-in-Sustaining-the-U.S.-Economy-2023-Update.pdf

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21752

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6818650/

[4] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview202223/ScienceResearch#:~:text=To%20enable%20comparisons%20across%20time,of%20GDP%20(Figure%201)

[5] https://oec.world/en/profile/country/aus#:~:text=Overview%20In%202021%2C%20Australia%20was,Economic%20Complexity%20Index%20(ECI)%20

[6] OECD (2023), Gross domestic spending on R&D (indicator). doi: 10.1787/d8b068b4-en (Accessed on 21 June 2023), https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm

[7] https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-09/115786_COUNCIL_OF_AUSTRALIAN_POSTGRADUATE_ASSOCIATIONS_-_SUBMISSION_2.pdf

[8] https://sciencebusiness.net/system/files/reports/Why-fund-research_.pdf

Oat milk and tensegrity handjobs

I'm excited for this oat milk phase of my life.

It feels good to live by at least something ethically. I know that I'm not perfectly ethical in my lifestyle, but I try fairly often to think about a more ethical or compassionate way to live in society. There are small things like using my money to donate to things like Wikipedia and journalism, stuff I find personally to be of incredibly high value to society.

I don't usually like donating to viral charities I guess, because I am skeptical and to me they don't really ever address the larger problem, which is massive inequality, and this is more complex than giving a few poor souls a million dollars for their lifesaving $400,000 surgery, for which they need to win the hearts and minds of people on Facebook. I think it's a good thing for that person, but I don't think that it's an ideal reflection of a society. To me it's insane that someone can look at these stories and think it's heartwarming when in reality is a fucking dystopian nightmare we were warned about so many times prior. We've had every opportunity as a global community yet we have allowed societies to be structured in a way where the richest, deepest pockets control the vast majority of decisions that happened in within and between countries. If you're super rich, you can dictate to countries - how insane is that? A single person/coalition of rich decision-makers can dictate to entire nations of people. 

We outnumber those that won capitalism - they should not be taking advantage of us for their own benefit. Is that an example of psychopathic behaviour, or is it just detachment from their actions and the ripples caused by? What's worse is that billionaire envy is real and is seen as something to strive for at any cost - if one could only work hard enough to achieve it.

In my opinion, it really comes down to class warfare - punching down from the ultra rich and the political class which enable and empower them in constant stasis like a tensegrity handjob. If you have a lot of wealth, you're like an obese kid squeezing through a crowded pool. No matter which way you turn your going to make a lot of waves and displace a lot of people. They are like Godzilla trying to walk peacefully through Tokyo - it just can't be done. They've got their own social gravity. Social gravity is already a term but it's meaning isn't as cool as my meaning, as it refers to brands having gravity and marketing people ask 'How do you achieve social gravity?' as it's sort of like a target rather than a defined jargonistic academic phrase.

I want to know why there are so many people spending all their time on social media and why are we not doing more about this? This is messing up peoples lives in terms of mental health. How has the government not stepped in and properly regulated these for-profit businesses which are leeching eyeball time and mental health from their populaces?

I like to think of morality as a scale between 0 and 1. Almost everyone sits in between, but how in-between depends on how likely they are to stray from moral 1 that society has set and agreed upon. It's really hard to not be any kind of in-between. To be closer to moral 1, means taking the high road more often than not. I don't know anyone in my life that I would consider strictly morally adherent in the positive direction and do the 1 thing every time. That's okay though - it's basically impossible task especially considering our underlying biological wiring and lizard brains which take over.

With of course the exception that privilege brings. But hey, I drink oat milk now, so I'm a good person /S

Entry for ATA Scientific's Encouragement award

 My entry for ATA Scientific's Encouragement award:

Question: 500 words or less: A previous entry into the Eurovision song contest was composed by a computer using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since most songs are related to human personal interactions such as love songs do you think an entry should be accepted from an emotionless machine? How would you feel about an affectionate song dedicated to you and composed by a robot?

 

Answer: The proposed question is basically asking ‘Are AI songs equal to human songs?’, but what this question is really asking is ‘Do humans have permission to emotionally connect with art that has been generated by an indifferent, synthetic creator?’. Being emotionally moved by something created within the intangible nodes of an unfeeling artificial neural network says more about the human condition than it does about AI’s ability to convincingly reproduce decades of ‘music-by-spreadsheet’. Music made in this way is specifically designed to financially mobilise as many of the four consumer quadrants as possible. Record labels have streamlined song-writing down to a soulless condensable formula, which means that songs are compiled by a committee based on market treads, loaded onto a standardised conveyor belt, and packaged all with the specific purpose of making people feel something. If they feel something, they buy, stream and consume music. It is already robotic. AI has just automated this process.

Giving oneself permission to emotionally connect to music constructed by an artificial neural network requires us to admit to ourselves that we are also machines (albeit meaty waterbag ones). We the meat-bags, have standard involuntary emotive responses to key inputs, with emotionally-charged music being one. Be it machine or record label, the standard emotional output would be the same if listeners were blinded to the composer. If we can let ourselves be emotionally touched by music spun out from the constantly churning studio conveyor belts, it is no small leap that people will feel the same regarding AI-generated music. 

So how would I feel about an affectionate song dedicated to me, composed by a neural network? Honestly, I don’t get a choice in the matter.

Thoughts on Planescape: Torment

Just finished Planescape: Torment. What an experience. The combat wasn't anything special, but dialogue, writing, mystery and subsequent investigation, overarching lore and ideas were deep, thought-provoking, complex, funny, tragic and satisfying. A great story told in the perfect medium for it.

SPOILERS:

• I am hoping there will be a quest where you have to kill as many shades as you have died in this current life. That would be awesome. AHH YOU DO. COOL AS.
• It sucks a little bit that there was no evil/neutral equvilant of the tears of Salieru-Dei
• Yves is one of the best sections of the game. Just swapping cool stories. I love it
• I love the lore of Ravel Puzzlewell
• The Modron Cube - I could play an entire game like this lol. The Clue! and Magical Item! Not the actual maze...
• "Nordom" is like yes man from NV
• Lol, getting mazed.
• This really updated my journal
• Karach blades, what a great idea.
• One thing I really loved was that past reincarnations ended up being so much of the world's lore. A story about a man making a wish, being told he had already made the first two. and that first wish was the exact same wish he did for wish number 1. All these mysteries tied back to The Nameless Ones past. So cool.
• I love how 'find the journal' was basically was basically a red herring. Need red herrings!

Notes on naruto and shippuden

Just watched all non-filler episodes of Naruto and Naruto: Shippuden. I took some notes:

• How the writers of Naruto treats Sakura is fucking embarrassing. What a joke. Her entire character is how much she loves Sasuke. She just gasps on the sidelines the entire time. Her role is pure wankery, exposition. They should be ashamed of how she is written in the first season.
• In general, the show fails at lack of telegraphing. A ninja will pull out a quadruple switcheroo on something and the viewer will be constantly going "WTF!", there is no way to guess what is happening beforehand
• The first season is also very short on animation. A lot of static images. It still works, but it's not too complex or technically sound. The animation is clearly done on the cheap for the first season at least.
• The battles are great. They are like chess matches
• Naruto is stupidly annoying. Why does he tell everyone about his Hokage dream. I wonder if he has undiagnosed ADHD? He seems to talk about irrelevant things to people who don't know anything about him or his problems.
• "Sorry I'm late, I'm afraid I got lost on the path of life." - Hatake Kakashi
• From S1 E21, the show is instantly better. The Chunin exams are already super interesting. Lots of new characters, interesting dilemma, high stakes. The animation quality is considerably better and more complex from this point on. I wonder what happened during this time.
• Hinata is also such a fucking bad character. Why do they write such poor female characters? Her whole thing is loving Naruto. Fuck. In fact, every female ninja's whole character is just competing for Sasuke's attention. It's fucked up.
• "The condition is"
• "The condition is, to protect the life of someone precious"
• Blowing out the cast to have way more leaf ninja was such a good idea.
• Dattebayo! Believe it! Lol, Naruto's verbal tick.
• Ino being excluded from Chunin third exam training and working in a fucking flower shop. Lol this show is cooked.
• I am loving the politics of Naruto in S3. Interesting. The show just keeps getting better.
• Konohamaru is a great name! I love saying it. 
• One Thousand Years of Death
• Naruto no-sells moves. He makes moves look weak and tanks everything.
• During the Gaara fight, Sakura literally taken out of the fight and does nothing. Bullshit. They can't even let her contribute.
• There are a lot of animation tricks used in Naruto, from Kakashi's mouth, meaning no animation required when he talks, Naruto running, reusing older animations.
• Man, Kakashi, what a badass. Such a cool character. He's so chill
• The price of entry
• When Sasuke is leaving the village then knocks out Sakura, that is incredibly fucked up. She is now unconscious in the middle of the only road into town, and it's the middle of the night. Both Naruto and Sasuke express concern for her being out that late, yet Sasuke knocks her out? Shit is cooked bro. She could totally have been assaulted etc.
• Rock Lee could have been the main character
• Wow, Sasuke is the kind of guy to party at a strangers house then take random pills given to him. What a loose unit (when he chooses to go with the Sound Village Ninja).
• Rasengan is badass. Chidori is cool
• Episode 133, the animation quality is just out of this world, amazing. So reactive, so smooth
• There was a lot of love poured into Naruto. From the animation, to the heart of a lot of the stories, even the music is just really great - the start and ending songs. 
• One of the reasons I like Naruto, was that it isn't like Dragon Ball Z, where characters had to power up to beat opponents. Strategy almost never played a part, instead it was relegated to power level - surprise attacks or suicide explosions don't matter if your opponent can just tank it. To win in DBZ, you just drink a potion, get touched by a god and just gain a higher power level than them. Goku is just a filthy power-level grinder.
• Sometimes life hits you with a rasengan
• Was Jiriyah the toad sage inspired by Master Roshi, the turtle sage? Both taught their student a nuke attack, kamehameha and rasengan. Both are pervy sages. 
• I love Guy Sensei and Rock Lee's relationship. It's not often genuine male affection and wholesome role models are shown in anime. The POWER OF YOUTH - the handsome devil of the leaf village.
• Sakura's first real badass moment was when she fucking slayed the third Kazeikage puppet. Holy shit. Finally, she gets props she deserves. Finally. The entire battle was amazing. Finally - they treated Sakura right. What a badass.
• Why didn't Team Guy just swap opponents when they were battling the clones from the 5 point jutsu? If Rock Lee cant beat clone Rock Lee, why not get Neji to beat clone Rock Lee?
• There were many times characters should have died using suicidal but heroic tactics, but then they live. Choji should have died taking pills, Gaara should have stayed dead, Rock Lee should have stayed paralysed/injuired. It would have done way more for his character.
• Kakashi: "There you are, hugging the earth like a worm"
• The arc that focuses on Shikamaru and his teacher is so fucking good. It's just the best arc I've seen. Shikamaru is the best fucking character in the show. Rock lee is great too though, need moar.
• This show cannot deal with female characters. Even this boss lady who is a warden of a fucking prison just fawns over Sasuke, and that is her character. What a shit.
• I love how they try to make fights all different and unique. They aren't all on repeat. Except for Naruto, who does the same thing every time.
• Jiriyas backstory is amazing. What a great development to an already cool character. His story is like a tale, or a legend. I love the idea that a guy is told his destiny, then follows the foretelling to try and make it a reality. It was fortold he would take an apprentice which would shape the world, so then he goes out of his way to teach and train people in the hopes that he fulfills his destiny. Had he not been told, would he have done this?
• I love the inter-generational storytelling in Naruto. It really puts everything in context. The two Jiraiya ninja scrolls episodes are fucking awesome. I have liked the historical episodes.
• I just noticed something, which is that when Naruto confronts Itachi and Itachi asks him why he is obsessed with his brother Sasuke. Naruto responds saying "He's more of a brother to me than he ever was to you". Itachi then smiles, which I realise now was a smile of happiness. I think he was glad and relieved that Naruto feels that way, because Itachi hasn't been able to be the brother he wanted to be.
• All of Team Kakashi were trained by the sanine
• 153 is a cool show format changeup.
• Holy SHIT Shikamaru's speech to Naruto was fucking good. it was so on point.
• Quotes from message boards: "kishi probably secretly imagines he is itachi or sasuke or something and hence he gives uchiha more screentime cause hes living out his gay fantasies" - babaGAReeb
• Dude Naruto is so gay and he loves Sasuke. I think Sasuke loves Naruto too, he is just in denial.
• Sasuke is an Uchiha-supremecist
• Man, if they wanted to fix Sasuke, they should have kidnapped him and brought him to the magical waterfall where he could have fought himself etc. Would have been much simpler than war.
• Wow, Naruto is really about nuke attacks and stuff now isn't it? Just who has the biggest nuke.
• Changing his most said word to avoid the gourd, wow Darui is so fucking smart. What a cool twist
• Wow, Naruto is really all about powerups and nukes now. Fucking hell. Where is all the tactics of lower level shinobi?
• The sexism of Naruto is so pervasive. Even when they refer to all the Kages as 'The First Kazekagi' or whatever, yet Tsunade is always referred to as 'Lady Tsunade'.
• Why are there so many Hashirama cells floating around? They are the HeLa cells of Naruto.
• Is Madara also gay and loves Hashirama? 
• Quotes from message boards: "All Uchiha are gay. They only had sex with women so they can have more gay Uchiha to be gay with."
• Quotes from message boards: "You should have made this thread when Kishi had a chapter about Madara pumping white gunk infused with Hashirama's DNA from a naked statue of him into his backside and making plant-babies combining himself with Hashirama."
• Quotes from message boards: "Hinata is the icon of traditional Japanese feminity: silent, obsessively loyal and obsequious to her man, oh-so delicate... an inanimate sex doll. Naruto is the icon of traditional Japanese masculinity: unrealistically ambitious, earnest, passionate, domineering and athletic. Their relationship is propaganda about classical sexuality."
• Kakashi vs Obito. What a fucking amazing fight. No talking, no bombs, no fucking megazords, just amazingly animated hand to hand taijutsu.
• Sakura massaging Naruto's heart is fucking metal.
• I get original Team 7 being the last left standing during the Infinite Syukiyomi, but I wish Sai and Yamato were also present. That would have been metal. Sai could have stopped people falling in the lava with his ninjutsu, while Yamato could have saved everyone from falling. I miss Yamato, and his presence has been noticeable in the last few arcs of Naruto. His dream state shows how much this is what he wants; approval of Kakashi and to lead the amazing Team 7. I wish he'd been included for this segment of the show.
• Also, the Ten-Ten episodes were fucking amazing. I wish we'd had 100x more of her and that type of episode. 
• Having the resurrection jutsu was such a fucking creative but also shitty way of having the writer of Naruto have their cake and eat it too. Like, they get to resolve a whole bunch of things post-death. Classic fanservice. It should have only been up to people living...
• The visit from the Sage of Six Paths was such a deus ex machina. So lame.
• Interesting that Naruto stopped making 100000 shadow clones and now just makes 2 - 4. 
• This Obito > Madara > Kaguya bullshit is bullshit. Pick one big bad. Just one.
• Oh my god. I can't beleive I am writing this. Now the final bad guy is Sasuke? What the fuck? This makes no sense. How were they not drained after the last 3 bad guys? I love also how the Sage of Six Paths can't do anything about it now. lol. what a shit writing.
• What the fuck is wrong with the writing, making Sakura still love and have kids with Sasuke after he turns into a homicidal maniac.
• To be fair, Naruto made me realise what good quality animation is. The love and attention that can go into it. They really have a love for animation...when they want to.
• There are a lot of fairly well written characters in Naruto. Primarily, Oorochimaru, Shikamaru, Pain to some degree, Itachi...sorta.
• Oh my god the writers FUCKED Yamato so much. His dream was to lead team 7, so what do they do? Make him guard Oorochimaru as he freely walks about the village...after everything he's done. What the fuck
• I think Ten-Ten has the best character design post-war time-skip. But they are all really good. Even her outfit is fiiire. Even Shino and Kiba look great. The outfits are also great.
• Reincarnation in Naruto is FUUUCKING lame.
• Honestly, Naruto is at its strongest when it's Naruto vs Sasuke. God damn, that animation of the final battle. When they are exhausted and barely able to hit each other. 10/10 animation. I love it. It felt so real.
• Omg, Hinata and Naruto relationship comes out of literally nowhere. Wtf
• I do not buy Oorochimaru's face turn. So cringe

Glad I watched Naruto, if only for the sakuga animation. The fight scenes, when animated well, are some of the best I've ever seen.

LNP and good economic management: The party, the myth, the legend

Why is Australia's growth rate equivalent to that of a developing nation? 

Why are we second highest, globally in the household debt to GDP ratio? 

Why have we had significant wage stagnation since 2013?

Why do we have a complex-poor economy (ranked 59th worldwide), propped up on thermal carbon exports (an uncompetitive, dangerous and dying market) and overvalued higher education student fees?

Nothing screams 'gOoD eCoNoMic MaNaGeMeNt' like poor portfolio diversification.

Anyone who believes the never-proven myth of the LNP being 'better economic managers' should consider doing their own research instead of believing the political spin.

This LNP has a documented history of hucksterism. They take your money and pretend it is theirs. They use it to hand out money to corporations, influence votes and circumvent the democratic process. Tendered processes are often ignored or overruled. 

Does anyone remember the time the NSW LNP sold a power station for $1 million which was evaluated as a $730 million asset? I wish I could pull off sweet deals like that.

What sort of political party believes in corporate welfare handouts, but can't look after its most vulnerable members of society?

The Coalition have been unable to manage the Murray Darling Basin, the 2019 bushfires, or most importantly, climate change.

Despite all this, I am confident the LNP/Coalition will be voted in again, come next federal election. 

If I'm wrong about anything here, please correct me and send links! Cheers in advance.

All pictures are sourced from hyperlinks within this post. Please go to these sources and read them for yourself.

Some meanderings on Noam Chomsky; the human I most admire on the face of the planet.

If I could ever have the ears of the world, for even 2 seconds, I would tell them to 'Youtube Noam Chomsky'. Just listening to the man is listening to a powerful sage intellect break down and accurately describe, scary and true events and ideas with a polymathic knowledge bank, ranging from philosophy, history, political, social and biological sciences. I might be a bit of a fanboy, but I can't help but be intellectually inspired by Noam Chomsky. I just wish more people were aware of him and his work.

Noam Chomsky is a towerlingly thoughtful man and activist for humanity. He has realised that he has a limited amount of time with people's attention. He has distilled the most important message he possibly can; that is, talking about the largest existential (not philosophical existential but literal existential) threats to life as we know it, climate change and the stockpiling of nuclear arms. He is outward with his pragmatic priorities and I can't help but praise the work he's done and is doing and send anyone I can to watch and read his stuff. He has rolled with the times too. He used to write lots of books, as a way to get the message out. Now he also does a lot of recorded interviews. He is a legitimate powerhouse in terms of communication. His texts span complex topics and he manages to clearly explain while not oversimplifying, which is an incredible skill

What drives Noam Chomsky? What are his goals? A lot of people feel this way, but he's such an advocate and activist. He's taken political activism to an almost scary degree. He travels around the world giving sell-out talks and discussions and panels, now mainly via webcam. He is so fucking good as what he does, the ruling class are scared to even address his critisisms, because that will immediately draw attention to them and their heinous actions.

Does Chomsky listen to music? Would he even have the time, or the inclination? Why hasn't he retired? God, working till his 90's. I think he knows people will remember him and his message for a long time. He knows he is on the right side of history and doesn't need to be smug about it. It is required for him to perform his activism.

What is also inspiring about him is that he owns things when he doesn't know them and will admit to not being an expert or knowing about something despite demonstrating a semi-expert amount of knowledge across a diverse array of topics. Sometimes, but not often he will be blind-sighted by a question or topic, and bumble a bit, but it's not often he doesn't have a pretty good idea what the question was and how to astutely answer it. I aspire to be like this. He also often quotes the enemy. This is another admirable trait; knowing what drives them and being aware of their tactics and philosophy, while also in stark disagreement about their goals. Chomsky has this in spades. He's informed on a level that most people care to know even exists; he lives this thing. You can see it when he talks and it explains why he continues to work at an age where most are either dead or dying.

I wonder, does Noam Chomsky ever get scared about speaking out on particular things? Like, legitimately scared, offending extremely powerful organisations, governments, cartels etc?

Though, Noam Chomsky once said the space race was an "infantile competition to land a man on the moon" and "Taxpayers can be deluded into supporting the Roman Circus of the space race...", this is one of the things I disagree with him on, but that is all that springs to mind. I think he misses the larger, unintentional effect which was the spiritual win for humanity. A beacon of hope for the future. Looking up at the sky, seeing an extra-planetary body, knowing we can go there. Where else can we go?

Keep it up Noam. Though we've never met, I am flattered and humbled to have overlapped existences with you on earth. You've taught me so much and opened my eyes to so many things. You're the reason I have become invested in the intellectual pursuit of history and the politics which influence and shape our world. You helped make me a more informed member of society and for that I will forever be grateful. In turn, I don't always succeed, but I always try to do the same.