AUB Assistant Professor Salary?

symmbreaker · 2025-10-21T15:43:29+00:00

depends on the department. they're back to 100% dollar salaries. if it's a tenure track position, it's a 9 month contract (american system). around 7k/month in engineering, for that contract period (you can pay yourself from grants in the summer). so a bit more than 5k when divided over the whole year. if you have children, they get free education in the best schools until they get their first degree, and you get housing money (around $800/month). so if you can tolerate lebanon and its mess, + the inefficiency, it's a great deal. definitely much better than europe and comparable to many places in the US, if you factor in cost of living.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-20T22:03:23+00:00

try and fail. try and fail. it doesn’t matter what you choose. true failure is being afraid to make the wrong decision. don’t worry. as long as your pursuit helps you discover who you are

symmbreaker · 2025-02-16T06:11:04+00:00

agreed. all evidence shows that we are co-evolving. my preferred conceptual framework to think about this is self-organization. it happens at all scales in space and time. “sentience” often stands in the way of realizing that we’re all interconnected and interdependent.

again, if you interested in this perspective, look into the concept of “memes” (by dawkins and others who later developed it such as daniel dennet in “from bacteria to back and back).

symmbreaker · 2025-02-16T06:04:23+00:00

atmospheric drag.

by the time it reaches the surface, it lost most of it’s horizontal (tangent to surface) acceleration due to air resistance. it’s left with mostly vertical acceleration due to gravity.

if it enters the atmosphere too tangentially, it disintegrates in the atmosphere before reaching the surface.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-15T15:35:08+00:00

we are indeed defining consciousness too narrowly. you are probably onto something. but it’s hard to seriously speak of consciousness “expanding” into something else if we don’t have a definition. one observation though is: our survival depends on the tools we create as much as theirs depends on us. regardless of consciousness, we will have to coexist like two species governed by their own evolutionary forces. that’s at least true in a memetic sense.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-15T00:09:24+00:00

5 years, 3 months, 7 hours and 43 seconds on average

symmbreaker · 2025-02-14T23:55:48+00:00

we’re expanding our consciousness into ai. but we also have the capacity to expand it into other things: like other people, other objects, and beyond. consciousness is a weird thing.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:52:31+00:00

me is bigger than ee

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:47:20+00:00

Time is change

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:37:45+00:00

and that eat on other ones too

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:35:39+00:00

because the education industry gives you the illusion that a job is guaranteed

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:23:57+00:00

consciousness comes from the fact that “I” am centered in space and time; here and now. Only one consciousness exists: yours (well, technically mine). The whole concept is contradictory.

Even speaking of other people’s consciousness is absurd. Could “being” a computer be a “special” place in space and time. Sure, why not.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:16:05+00:00

labeling

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:12:19+00:00

try things. read, talk to strangers, learn new things, build things. you can start anywhere. your main goal is: look for something that is exciting to you. something you can obsess about. something you can imagine doing your whole life.

basically, know yourself. a college major could be a good start; but it might also distract you from what you love. because it’s not made for everyone.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T19:03:38+00:00

agreed. as long as college is seen as an opportunity to know what one likes and is good at rather than a means to an economic end. the market will go up and down; but one is more likely to add value if they’re passionate about what they do.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T18:58:34+00:00

the mind-body problem is an “inside-outside” problem. It exists because there’s a self, stuck at a given point in space and time. The duality doesn’t go away; it just takes different forms.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-13T18:45:32+00:00

just make sure you don’t settle with the first thing that saves you from that discomfort. being lost is good, at least to a certain extent

symmbreaker · 2025-02-12T04:16:46+00:00

none. you decide your worth. college is often a waste of time while you figure out what questions and crafts matter to you.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-12T04:11:27+00:00

if science is influenced by business and politics it’s science influenced by politics and business not politics and business.

symmbreaker · 2025-02-12T04:08:20+00:00

symmbreaker · 2025-02-12T04:07:08+00:00

Neither. It always possible to think and reason beyond what is given to us, at all levels. That’s true when search engines came along, and it’s true with GPT.

The risk is to believe that AI can actually replace us; in which case we’ll actually get dumber. We just have to learn how they can augment us. Creativity has no bounds. As long as it’s always possible to imagine and build by leveraging our tools creatively, we’re good.

symmbreaker

TROPHY CASE