@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

NicoleCRust

@[email protected]

Professor (UPenn). Brain researcher. Author (nonfiction). Advocate for community based progress & collective intelligence.

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renordquist, to academicchatter
@renordquist@akademienl.social avatar

Now in the midst of the fun part of grant writing: blue sky discussions with a small core team and a deadline far, far away still.

We could do anything! Not yet locked into ideas and budgets, just dreaming away...

#academia #AcademicLife #science #writing @academicchatter #AcademicChatter #grants #GrantWriting

NicoleCRust,
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

@renordquist @academicchatter
I love that phase. I first read your post as writing a grant on BlueSky (the social media platform), and I was pondering how that might work ... 300 character chime in nuggets and diverging (and converging) threads ... fun to imagine.

Good luck with the grant!

NicoleCRust,
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

@renordquist @academicchatter
If I were the reviewer of that grant, cha-ching!

elduvelle, to academicchatter
@elduvelle@neuromatch.social avatar

What’s the most difficult question you ever had in a job interview? @academicchatter

NicoleCRust,
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

@elduvelle @academicchatter
Not sure about the most difficult. But the most pervasive: Do you have any questions for me? I remember thinking: I have to say something! Will they know if I ask each (of 8 or so) all the same question?

WorldImagining, to cognition French
@WorldImagining@mastodon.social avatar

Though dogged in his desire to confirm this "pseudoscientific" (plain false tbh) model of the solar system, also stuck to the data and thus ended up elaborating three robust laws of planetary motion which paved a significant part of the way towards Newton's later laws.

If I've understood the now (imo) become distasteful dispute between advocates and critics, then I believe this historical example contains important lessons for both.

@cognition @cogsci @neuroscience

NicoleCRust,
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

@WorldImagining @cognition @cogsci @neuroscience

I love these historical examples! And sorry if I'm being dense here, but in what way was Kepler pseudoscientific? He took Copernicus's idea and Brahe's data and formulated his 3 laws; those equations made predictions about where the planets would be in the future that could be tested (And as you said, those laws triggered some of Newton's ideas about why the planets move as they do).

Is the pseudoscience here the absence of an account of "why the planets do it that way?"

In contrast, IIT appears to be prescientific insofar as most of its predictions cannot be empirically tested at all (as I understand it).

renordquist, to academicchatter
@renordquist@akademienl.social avatar

Love it when problems solve themselves.

I was trying to figure out how to teleport in order to fit in a meeting with many busy people, that could only be at that one specific time which is inconvenient but not impossible for me so I said "yes".... and now the meeting has been moved to a time much easier for me.

@academicchatter

NicoleCRust,
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

@renordquist @academicchatter
For sure. And so I'm starting to admire and emulate those professors who call into question: do we really need this meeting?

A type of magic can happen in person that does not happen in an inbox. Does this topic really need magic?

NicoleCRust, to random
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

On jargon - is it useful?

Is it necessary and useful for scientists to say "mnemonic" to refer to "memory" and "affect" to talk about "emotion"?

In other words, given that everyone understand emotion and mood and no one really understands what "affect" is until you are really deep into things, why is the term affect useful and important at all? And should we reserve it for deep dives (as opposed to public facing websites and such)? And does anyone call themselves an "emotion researcher?" or a "mood researcher?"

@PessoaBrain @knutson_brain

NicoleCRust,
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

@brembs @PessoaBrain @knutson_brain
Absolutely on that - if we don't have words, we need to create them; your examples are great illustrations. The heart of my question is really: if we already have colloquial words for things, is there value in giving them scientific terms that mean the same thing?

If we are concerned that a word might be used in a confusing way that has multiple definitions, is it better to give it a new word? Or just more clearly define what we mean? (Or give it a modifier like for causality, causal production?).

I worry when scientists use mysterious terms to refer to things everyone is familiar with (like affect for emotion/mood). It's alienating. And I wonder: what's the value there.

Private
NicoleCRust,
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@WorldImagining @philosophy

@ehud, @dbarack

NicoleCRust,
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@WorldImagining @prachisrivas @devezer @philosophy
Me too.

NicoleCRust, to random
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

Book superposition?

I just finished an interleaved reading of two books, and wow! did they enhance one another.

The first was an approachable philosophical treatise about how science works given that scientists are human with all their faults. The answer: “evidence”. (Thanks to Jim DiCarlo for this rec + confirmation by @markdhumphries).

https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631491375

The second was a book describing the unfolding of ideas about evolution from Darwin’s tree (mutations + survival of the fittest) through more modern ideas about horizontal gene transfer between species - a perfect illustration of the ideas in the philosophical book but not included in it. (Thanks to @cyrilpedia for this rec).

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Tangled-Tree/David-Quammen/9781476776637

Books can be complementary in all sorts of ways. Do you know of pairings that are enhanced when thought about together?

I’m just starting a book about the nature of time and ideas about time travel by @JamesGleick. Any thoughts on a good complement for it? (Maybe @JamesGleick) even has suggestions?

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/233793/time-travel-by-james-gleick/

NicoleCRust,
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@Lennvor
I haven’t - thanks for the rec!

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