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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • I am sorry, but what is wrong with your professor? You were doing exactly what you are supposed to do in a peer review. You should go look for things that are wrong or should be improved and only if the paper can withstand that process, it should be published. Only providing positive comments is really harmful to the scientific process and, in the end, to society.

    To be honest, I think I reject more than half of the papers that I review. The rest require major or minor revision. It is not that I have a target or anything for how many I need to reject, it is just that most papers are of such low quality that I cannot do anything else. I think the number of papers I reject is quite normal in my field.

    So, not all your comments need to be positive. If there is reason to be positive, you should mention it. And your comments should be constructive and respectful, but definitely not always positive.

    In the case you are describing where the authors seem to only have read the titles of the papers, I would definitely reject. This is fraud. You are saying you did a literature study and you did not. So, I would be quite clear about that. I would also be a bit angry that they wasted my time. So, in my opinion, that is how a reviewer should respond in this situation, not with only positive comments.



  • I did not find out that I was gifted until I was 36. I had a terrible childhood where I was emotionally neglected and psychologically abused, so it is difficult to say what issues that I had were strictly from the giftedness and what of them were due to being abused.

    One thing I do know that is likely due to giftedness is that in middle school I spend all my time in class reading comics or other books instead of doing assignments and paying attention to what the teacher was teaching the class. As I got grades that were okayish (not that good, but good enough to pass), this was ignored. In high school I also did the bare minimum that was necessary to pass. I never did any assignments that were not graded if I could get away with it and I often slept during class. They always thought I just was very lazy and they told me this often.

    Then I started studying psychology at university. For the first exam, I was very afraid that I would not pass. This was university, so I thought it would be difficult. However I got a 9.8 out of 10. From that point on, I was not able to concentrate and only got grades that helped me to just pass the courses, but not much better. I wanted to do better than that, but I just could not get myself motivated.

    All this time I felt very bad about myself. I thought that I was just lazy too. I tried to get myself motivated and do the work, but I just couldn’t. I also felt that the time I was in class was completely useless and that the same was the case for making assignments. It just felt like I was jumping through hoops because, well, those were the rules. I still get angry about that. I wanted them to just tell me what I should be able to do and know in the end and just let me figure out myself how to get there, instead of just doing useless stuff. It was very frustrating.

    I had a bit of a breakdown after studying psychology for two years due to my traumatic childhood. When I got better and wanted to start studying again, I went to the study advisor and simply told her I wanted to do something difficult. She told me to try Artificial Intelligence (which back then was something I never heard about). I went to the first lecture and I did not immediately understand what they were explaining. That created a bit of panic at first, as that was a bit of an unfamiliar feeling. All of a sudden, I really had to work for it.

    And that is what I did and it was not difficult to get motivated at all anymore. I worked really hard and really did my best. I had an average mark of 8.6 out of 10 in the end for my master’s, which is considered very high. However, most importantly, I was having a lot of fun! I had a lot of energy all of a sudden, I had all these new ideas. It just was a really good time. Learning did not feel like a chore at all anymore. After that I got my PhD and now I am an assistant professor and I hope to become a full professor one day. Once I can do that, I am thinking about starting a whole new career path to keep myself challenged.

    I am telling you all this to illustrate what it feels like to be gifted, but having to fully adapt to your environment instead of your environment adapting to you. The psychiatrist that told me I was gifted once said to me “if you have an IQ of 70, people will help you and adapt to you, if you have an IQ of 130, people expect you to figure it out by yourself and adapt to everyone else, even though it is the same deviation from the average.” That stayed with me a lot. Gifted people need help and they get exhausted by continuously being expected to adapt to their environment and having to jump through hoops that were not made for them.

    With my experience in mind, I would think it would be best to get you daughter the help she needs, whether that is in a regular school or in a program. Also, it is very important to keep her challenged. If she is not doing well at school, she might not be lazy or not wanting to do better, she just might be very bored and unable to concentrate. If a program is needed to keep her challenged, that might be the best option. However, I think that lots of interaction with people outside of such programs remains important as it teaches you a lot about a variety of other people and how to work with them. I hated my childhood, but that’s something valuable that I did learn.




  • I actually agree with this. This technology should be open. I know that there are arguments to keep it closed, like it could be misused, etc. However, I think that all the scary stories about AI are also a way to keep attention away from the fact that if you have a monopoly on it, you have enormous power. This power will grow when the tech is used more and more. If all this power is in the hands of a commercial business (even though they say they aren’t), then you know AI is going to be misused to gain money. We do not have clear insight in what they are doing and we have no reason to trust them.

    You also know that bad actors, like dictatorial governments will eventually get or develop the technology themselves. So, keeping it closed is not a good way to protect it from that happening. At the same time, you are also keeping it from researchers who could investigate how to use and develop it further to be used responsibly and to the benefit of humanity.

    Also, they relied on data generated by people in society who never got any payment or anything for that. So, it is immoral to not share the results with that same people in society openly and instead keeping it closed. I know they used some of my papers. However, I am not allowed to study their model. Seems unfair.

    The dangers of AI should be kept at bay using regulation and enforcement by democratically chosen governments, not by commercial businesses or other non-democratic organisations.


  • I think they have instructions on the website on how to unlock the bootloader etc. There is also a lot on how they support open source with their own OS. I think that your warranty also remains valid after you unlock the bootloader and install another OS, as long as you revert to theirs when asking for support. I can sortof understand that, as it would not be feasible to support all sorts of custom ROMs.


  • I can definitely recommend getting a Fairphone. I quite happy with my Fairphone 4. Bloatware is limited to Google stuff and they even give instructions how to easily install a custom ROM (have not tried that yet though).

    The specs are not great, but good enough for me. But the main advantage for me is that it does not break that easily. I drop my phone all the time. My Samsung phones and Pixel phone I have broken within the first few weeks. Usually I dropped it and the screen cracked, even with a protected case.

    I have had this phone for a lot longer now (maybe years by now) and I dropped it like a 1000 times and it is still fine. The screen has not cracked, it still works. Only the side is a little chipped. I don’t even use a protective case. And even if it breaks, I can just buy the broken component from their website and easily replace myself using normal tools. So that is really nice.




  • It is quite shocking that it costs so much. Is it plastic surgery because it is in the middle of your face, or something?

    I had a mole removed recently on my arm. It took a general practitioner about 15 minutes and all he used were some alcohol swabs, a scalpel, a syringe with something to numb my skin and some thread for closing the wound. How can that be 800 dollars plus insurance?

    I checked my insurance and they paid €127,02 to remove it in total and then it was sent to the hospital to check whether it was cancer and that cost €120,16. (Fortunately, it was not cancer.) It was completely covered by my insurance, I never got that bill. That is a really big difference in price.

    I am not posting this to be mean or something. I just wanted to know whether the difference is as big as I thought (and maybe also how angry I should be on your behalf). It is really unfair that you have to pay so much and that it is not covered by your insurance. I really hope that this stuff will change.








  • I have a mother who used to act like she hated me a significant amount of time until a few years ago. I have a father who does not think I am that important. I used to think both of my parents hate me, or did not love me at least. I now have a more nuanced view of that. They are just people who are very damaged and almost handicapped in certain aspects. In any case, I think I might be able to understand your situation at least a little bit.

    For me the most difficult part was not deciding whether to keep in touch with them or not. I mean, that is a very difficult decision and if your father is still hurting you, you should protect yourself. However, for me the most difficult thing is dealing with the damage.

    I am not sure if this damaged you in the same way it damaged me. But if it did, I want to tell you that it is not your fault. Your father acting like he hates you is not because of anything you did and certainly not because of who you are. It is because of who he is.

    A lot of children who are not loved or who are even hated by their parents think it is their fault. They think something is wrong with them and they deserve it. I mean, that makes sense, right? If it is your fault, then at least the world still is a fair place. And if something happens to a bad person you do not need to be compassionate, so you do not have to deal with any pain you are too little to be able to deal with. Also, you depend on your parents, so you cannot get too mad at them or leave. From the logic of a child, this makes sense.

    And it works, it helps you survive. But once you get older, you keep thinking in the same way. You have a very low opinion of yourself and feel like there is something wrong with you or as if you are worthless. And to keep living in this way is familiar, you know you can survive that. You do not know whether you can survive the pain you suppressed all those years. Or it might still be so suppressed that you cannot even feel it. Until one day, it becomes too much and you start thinking that you might want a different life. You might not just want to survive, but actually live.

    You do not discuss your mother. If you have a mother that was able to show you love, that might have had a protective effect. I hope so. But if you recognise this story in any way at all. I think it is import for you to know that it is not about accepting that your father hates you. It is about accepting that you are someone that did not deserve this. And that is very painful, but going through the pain of it, is the only way not to feel that anymore. It will free you from it and enable you to live more than survive.

    It is a very difficult thing to do. I myself have not yet been able to go through the pain fully. It often feels too overwhelming, too much. However, after each small step I make, I already feel a little bit more free. I really think this is the way to cope with it. At least for me. It might help you as well maybe if you have similar feelings.

    Edit to say that therapy can help a lot with this process. Others have said this as well, but I agree with them.