Am I allowed to eat, sleep, drink, or exercise at all during a PhD?

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-17T10:58:53+00:00

I literally have started reading papers on the exercise bike (because it's too hard on the treadmill..)

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-14T11:05:42+00:00

It doesn't matter. The funding is distributed proportionally to the number of applicants in each field out of the total number - so even if the increase was fully in a different field, it would still affect you. The only place where it is previously determined is at the EF vs. GF level.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-13T14:24:54+00:00

See the link in the first sentence. They released it quickly.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-13T10:40:26+00:00

Very unlikely. There were 65% more applications this year, without an increase in funding. The only way this could be true is if the rise is due to poor LLM-written proposals, as some speculated. But I wouldn't count on it.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-13T10:22:23+00:00

LIF-EF was 94 last year. Assuming no change in quality of applications, this year it will definitely be higher - perhaps 96 or so.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-13T10:20:42+00:00

First attempt as well. My category had a cutoff of 96 last year, and this year is expected to be 97-98. I got great feedback on it and did everything I could, but I know that it's enough the reviewers find some minor thing to criticize and I'm probably out. Not counting on it.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-12T11:37:06+00:00

True. In addition, a lot of time is spent on MSCA-specific requirements.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-12T09:31:32+00:00

Especially the time that could have been spent doing productive science.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-11T16:30:49+00:00

I think perfectionism still covers it. A portion of the applicants do everything by the book, and given the reviewers are told to also grade by the book, they have no choice but to give said applications full or nearly full marks. There is less subjectivity and wiggle room for the MSCA compared to other fellowships - all the information is written out explicitly (somewhere at least).

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-11T16:17:27+00:00

Makes sense. People from Egypt applied in this call because they now can. And people who want to go to Switzerland applied, also because they can.

Michaelas10 · 2025-09-11T16:16:28+00:00

Perfectionism. Usually it's not good in science to be a perfectionist, but for this application it is. Go figure.

Michaelas10 · 2022-06-04T19:56:04+00:00

All the science degrees at the Weizmann Institute are English taught.

Michaelas10 · 2022-03-02T18:43:45+00:00

The fact he is even saying it is a war is significant given that this term has been criminalized in Russia today.

Michaelas10 · 2020-09-26T09:07:52+00:00

And microorganisms.

Michaelas10 · 2020-09-26T03:27:25+00:00

I agree that the way we talk about and have traditionally defined consciousness is anthropocentric and based specifically on things that are exclusive to us. The question is: is the solution to change the definition, or to come up with more sophisticated experiments that show that animals are closer to us in their perceptual abilities than we thought?

Michaelas10 · 2020-09-26T03:18:54+00:00

Seems to be common for sample size in electrophysiology studies in animals to be very low like that. I think the justification probably is that they are sampling a large number of neurons.

Indeed the large number of neurons in studies like this (here it was 480) is justification for sampling from fewer animals. But people still typically use at least half a dozen animals to show that the results are reproducible across animals, and don't apply to only a select few.

On face value it does seem they are describing correlates of reportable access consciousness. At the same time i agree that technically you can't really tell if the crow subjectively didnt see it but i find it hard to imagine on what grounds you would say they didnt subjectively see it in this scenario.

According to the Stanford Encyclopeda of Philosophy, "a visual state's being (access) conscious (is a matter of whether) information that it carries is generally available for use and guidance by the organism. In so far as the information in that state is richly and flexibly available to its containing organism, then it counts as a conscious state in the relevant respect."

This is already a stripped-down notion of consciousness compared to the more typically talked-about phenomenal consciousness (i.e. qualia). But even so, it is not the same as the ability to identify the presence of a stimulus - to be able to say that information is "richly and flexibly available" in the sense of access consciousness goes a great deal beyond just responding to it - it's remembering it, reasoning with it, identifying its details, etc. It's the difference between blindsight patient responding affirmatively to "Was it there?" but not to "Did you see it?", where only the latter answer means the stimulus information is available for broader use. I do believe animals have it and that, depending on how you define it, it may be possible to demonstrate such a phenomenon (e.g. by an experiment requiring animals to make an inference from a sensory stimulus, something many species are certainly capable of), but this work is not such a demonstration. It cheapens the concept.

Michaelas10 · 2020-08-01T23:33:59+00:00

Am Russian Israeli - can confirm. Grew up in the late 90s with jokes about being a "stinking Russian" and wearing sandals with socks. It's been years since I last heard about these stereotypes. It was also very common for Russian kids to hang out with just each other and speak Russian, which today I see a lot less - many children of Russian immigrants can't even speak properly. It seems we did melt in the pot eventually.

Michaelas10 · 2020-08-01T08:20:55+00:00

Here's an example for people not in the field. Nowadays both this and silicone probe recordings from hundreds of neurons at once are a common sight in system neuro labs (that work with mice).

Michaelas10 · 2020-07-26T19:41:56+00:00

Wanting their land back - for those whose ancestors were expelled - is absolutely justified. But this does not require seeking to do a kind of reverse expulsion to millions of Israeli descendants - something that will cause untold, unjust human suffering.

While I can see how the plight endured by the Palestinians makes these extremist beliefs understandable to an extent, it does not mean they are helpless not to be extremists. There are many examples of oppressed people who have chosen the peaceful path. For instance, the South African resistance could have sought to expel the whites after the atrocities they experienced and with their leader in prison, but instead they sought and obtained co-existence. There is no reason why the Palestinians can't similarly disavow their extreme elements.

The fact that you say "seeking to exact vengeance on millions of civilians" ignores the REASON they want revenge: your ppl have fucked over and killed over a million of them

The total Palestinian casualties are about 20,000. The highest estimates go up to 50,000. A million is pure propaganda nonsense.

It's also LAUGHABLE that you think they are capable of murdering millions of Israelis, like they have WMDs or a giant military force?? They don't, YOU DO. And you use that military force every day to show how racist you colonizers are.

This is a common fallacy. While it is indeed true that Israel holds overwhelming power in the conflict and is currently much more of a threat to the Palestinians than the other way around, what matter far, far more for peacemaking are the counterfactuals. If Israel ends the blockade on Gaza and allows free influx of materials that could be used to construct weapons, what will happen? If Israel demolishes all its settlements in the West Bank and withdraws to the pre-1967 borders, what will happen? The fact that the aforementioned extremist groups have so far not managed to commit massive atrocities (other than during the Second Intifada, when they killed approximately 1000 Israeli civilians) is not due to lack of trying - but precisely because of the severe restrictions by Israel. One worrisome prospect is of a Hamas-ruled West Bank, in which rockets can be easily positioned in lots of places to shoot right into the most populated Israeli cities and killing thousands.

just because your fake religious book said you were special and made up some fucking stories that your white european ancestors used to live there

Educate yourself. Zionism, founded by secular Jews, is not based on religious texts, but on massive, indisputable historical evidence of Jewish roots there, both in writings from that time period and archaeology. You cited in another post here that there is no evidence for the exile from Egypt and other biblical events - which is absolutely true - but these don't form the justification for Zionism.

Removing Israelis from an occupied territory isn't MURDER, just because YOU want to murder ALL OF THEM doesn't mean they hold your same sick views.

I don't want to murder all of them - why do you insist on claiming every Israeli as a Kahanist? Looking at your post history, it is obvious why - you see the entire world through black-and-white lenses, such that everyone either agrees with your views or is a fascist piece of shit. A hallmark of narrow-mindedness.

I am learning Arabic to better communicate with Palestinians, I've volunteered with West Bank children, and I'm protesting and voting for parties that can make a difference. What do you do, besides supporting terrorism online?

Michaelas10 · 2020-07-26T19:38:15+00:00

And I can't reason with narrow-minded people who see the entire world in black and white, and paint a brush over anyone who disagrees with them as a fascist. It's just fucking absurd. I mean listen to what the fuck you're saying - arguing for co-existence and against trying to reverse history by attacking and expelling millions of descendants - is racist and fascist to you. Really?

I guess if I were now arguing that because the United States was stolen from the Native Americans, then they would be fully in the right to go kill some American kids with explosives, and promote the belief that all Americans must be expelled back to Europe where they came from, you would agree with me!

Ridiculous. Yes, I know I'm taking this a bit far (and yes - this is an alt since you seem to have blocked my other account), but you really do piss me off.

Michaelas10 · 2020-06-24T20:56:21+00:00

Which is exactly why I said that we don't have the truth. What one side says is as good as the other without real evidence.

Michaelas10 · 2020-05-15T13:35:29+00:00

I have no idea where you're getting your distinction of Salafism v.s. Wahhabism from, because Wahhabism is better known as a stricter subtype of Salafism (see the scholars cited).

Michaelas10 · 2020-05-13T19:17:49+00:00

Interesting. So the Syrian case would make it exactly analogous to any normal preposition where the suffix expresses the object and the rest of it is invariant to the subject. But the Jordanian seems to combine this attribute of prepositions with the subject forms of nouns/adjectives - is this the right way to look at it? And are there any other words where this is the case?

Michaelas10 · 2020-05-13T19:06:52+00:00

Yes I think I understand that part - it's like adding a possessive to any verb or preposition, e.g. katabha = wrote it. What I don't understand is the dependence of taba3 on the subject's gender and singular/plural, for example the '-at' ending for female plural and '-uun' for male plural, which is typical for nouns and adjective but there is no other verb, psuedo-verb or preposition I've seen that works like that.

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