The Templeton Research Lectures Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology hosted by The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University have produced a podcast of the audio of the lectures and there’s links to other material on their web site.

The podcast feed is here.

Topics include:

• John Tooby: Can Beauty Build Adapted Minds
• Ashok Gangadean: A Missing Global Blueprint for Integral Life and Culture
• James Hughes: Happiness, Virtue, and Transcendance in a Neurotechological Future
• John Tooby: Reconciling Universal Human Nature and Genetic Uniqueness
• Pascal Boyer: The Blind Spot of Humanism and Transhumanism
• Sander van der Leeuw: Could Transhumans be Humans After All?
• William Grassie: Transhumanism at the Crossroads of Science and Religion
• Leda Cosmides: Are We Already Transhuman?: Evolutionary Psychology and Human Nature

Related link:

• Greenflame · Arizona State University gets grant to study transhumanism

(Part 8 of 10)

In television or film production people, such as a script supervisor, are responsible for making sure that there is a consistency seen about the persons, plot, objects, places and events as seen by the viewer, even though the episode or film is made up of small pieces and later edited together. When things aren’t consistent you get ‘continuity errors’ of one sort or another that annoy or jar the reader or viewer.

It’s the same in putting the thesis together. You need to check that you’re being consistent in how you’re bringing the final product together. So it’s important to check things like:

• Are all the questions I raised in the early chapters, and said I was going to address, actually addressed? It pays to go through looking for those questions, noting them down, and then looking to see if you did actually answer them in some way.
• If I pointed forward to a later section of the thesis or back to an earlier section, does that section actually exist as I refer to it? Sometimes you’ll edit out a section that you referred to elsewhere and you’re left with some loose ends for the examiner to pick up on.
• Are all references to chapters and sub-sections in the thesis correct? I had a couple of chapters that got merged and split several times and I had to keep updating chapter references in other chapters around those changes. (Missed one in the submitted copy and had to fix it in the final, bound copy).
• Is all the formatting – headings, quotes, citations, actually consistent? Sneaky things might be when you’ve referenced a magazine article in a journal format in one part of the thesis and as a magazine article in another part.
• Is the thesis an integrated whole or just a series of smaller snapshots or vignettes? Do the beginnings and ends of each chapter work to generate a smooth, continuous flow through the thesis for the reader?

It’s time-consuming to do this sort of checking, but it’s worth it to present a thesis that takes the reader/examiner through a carefully plotted journey to the end that leaves them satisfied that you’re competent, have arranged your material well, and haven’t left any questions unanswered (unless you meant to).

Don’t give the examiner reason to be annoyed or disappointed with your thesis because of continuity errors.

(Part 7 of 10)

One of the temptations when trying to finish off the PhD thesis is to continue to try and stay up with the latest reading material, and to incorporate that into the thesis. However, there comes a time when you simply have to stop doing that. To draw a line in the sand and say that the body of work you’re referencing is as closed as it can be.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t pay attention to new material in your area that’s being published. In a worst-case scenario someone else will publish very similar work to yours and you should definitely know about it (and maybe even have to rework you own work in response). But while you’re paying attention to new material, spending a lot of time on it will get in the way of the final writing and editing.

Keep track of the new material, and some of it may make it into the bibliography (depending on what’s required there), but don’t be overwhelmed by it. After submission, you should probably revisit the new material so you can talk about it in the oral defense and demonstrate that, while it isn’t in the thesis, you do know about it and can respond to it there.

Your thesis is a snapshot of the state of the field at a particular time, and by its very nature cannot include references and responses to every piece of related material up until the day of submission.

I’m the only one in my household without a dedicated lunchbox. These look so cool that my situation could soon be a thing of the past.

Dark Horse Comics : Serenity Lunch Box
Dark Horse Comics : Serenity Lunch Box: Fruity Oaty Bar

Now, if only I could get one of these to go with it.

In his post Exploring Our Matrix: Robots in the News, James McGrath points to not only the new Star Wars developments but also a couple of articles/books about robots and how we perceive them in terms of possible consciousness and relationality.

Reminds me of this quote from Ray Kurzweil’s article “The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine” (from Scientific American) where he says,

Sometime early in the next century, the intelligence of machines will exceed that of humans. Within several decades, machines will exhibit the full range of human intellect, emotions and skills, ranging from musical and other creative aptitudes to physical movement. They will claim to have feelings and, unlike today’s virtual personalities, will be very convincing when they tell us so.

As McGrath says, the issue will not be whether or not we can definitively assign agreed concepts of consciousness or personhood to synthetic systems, but whether our conscious and unconscious interactions with such systems will have already forced us to decide how we will treat them.

(Part 6 of 10)

One of the things that needs to be taken into account as you struggle to finish the thesis are your supervisors. For you, finishing the thesis has probably become you entire life and it’s easy to assume the same of your supervisors. However, they have their own lives to live – and your project is just a small part of that, along with their own teaching, research, other grad students, marking, and their life outside of university.

Simple courtesies really.

• Don’t dump 50,000-100,000 words on them and expect it back tomorrow or the next day with comments.
• Check that they’re not disappearing off to conferences etc. when you need them to sign essential forms for submission or to cast an eye over a final draft. Also, check what they have to do for you to submit.
• By the end of the process you should be defending your research and writing decisions to them as peers and colleagues. If you differ in opinion (and you will in places), then you must be prepared to defend that to the examiners (and in the oral exam, if you have one).
• Don’t forget to thank them for their input and work in the process – in person and in the thesis acknowledgments.

Following on from the animated Clone Wars short format television shows Lucas announces the continuation of animated/CGI developments and a live actor Star Wars spin-off for TV.

I liked the animated Clone Wars series – though it worked better as a series of short episodes rather than all the episodes viewed in one hit as a ‘movie’. However, the only live actor Star Wars TV I ever saw was the horrific Star Wars Holiday Special. Even as a child who was a huge fan of Star Wars I could see how bad it was. (See YouTube for excerpts of it). So who knows how this new series will turn out. Hope it works out.

See E! News – Star Wars TV Series Coming Soon – George Lucas

Ugh! Just remembered the extremely bad Galactica 1980 series too.

This is neat. The combination of the PS3′s parallel-processing capabilities with its ability to run Linux allows supercomputing tasks to be offloaded to clusters of games consoles. Doesn’t it just warm your geeky heart?

Astrophysicist Replaces Supercomputer with a Cluster of Eight PlayStation 3s

(Part 5 of 10)

Everyone has a horror story about losing part of their thesis. In my case it wasn’t so bad, just a day or two’s notes I’d typed out a year or two back which weren’t there when I came to check something. I was lucky because I had a day or two spare to write them out again.

Mostly though, I don’t have a horror story because I’m fairly obsessive about backups. Here a measure of paranoia is useful, because basically, the thesis is your life and your life’s work. Computers fail and die. Computers have accidents (a friend’s 2 year old poured a glass of cola into his laptop keyboard!). Computers get stolen.

If you do not know how to back up your thesis then learn. Now!

Here’s how I did it. Pick what works for you.

• Work out what you need to back up. Backing up half of your research is better than nothing, but you don’t want to miss anything. I had a single Research folder on the computer, plus my email mailbox. With those backed up, I was pretty good.
• Every day or so I put a copy of my recent files on my flash disk I carried around with me. If it was important I made sure I had a copy at the end of the day (or even at lunchtime). That included the EndNote database if I’d make lots of edits or additions. Flash disks are cheap. Go get one.
• I’d regularly burn a thesis CD or DVD with all my notes, drafts, bibliographic databases, downloaded material, essential fonts and emails!. CDs are really cheap. Don’t lose a whole lot of work because you were too cheap to spend less than 50 cents on a CD. If you don’t know how to burn a CD then get someone to teach you.
• At any significant milestone in the writing I’d print out a draft of that writing and put it in the filing cabinet. Worst case scenario I can type it in again from the paper (and it would be all cited properly – see the footnoting post earlier).
• Sometimes I’d dump the thesis stuff to my iPod’s hard drive. Big disk that allowed me to keep multiple versions of the thesis. Not necessarily easy to bring back on another computer though. A straight USB hard disk would do the trick too.
• Off-site storage is useful too. If your house burns down and takes the computer, your printing and your backups with it, what will you do? In my (obsessive) case, I left a CD backup every now and then with someone I trusted. You might also look at using an online storage facility.
• Always backup your work before you or someone else does something to your computer. New versions of Mac OS X or Windows, upgrades to your primary writing tools (e.g. MS Office and EndNote), and new hardware shouldn’t happen until you have a copy of your most recent work made. If you’re near to the end of the thesis and all your writing tools are working well, then hold off changing anything until you’ve submitted.
• Check your backup worked. Obvious, really, but try to get a file or set of files back from the backup and see if they’re usable.
• Clearly label your backups. A bunch of unlabeled CDs is a nightmare to find a file on.

Mostly, it’s just common sense. If your work is important to you then make sure you won’t lose it.

As a former database administrator for large computer systems I’m pretty paranoid about making sure my work is recoverable, but you have to pick the level of risk you want to take. Just remember how you will justify it to your ‘significant other’ and your supervisor.

(Part 4 of 10)

Just some brief tips here relating to citations, footnotes and the like.

• Cite as fully as you can when write and edit. Put full citation details etc. in your notes even. Makes it much easier to find where a quote or idea came from when you’re looking for it in a hurry.
• Do not attempt to do the footnoting/citations when you’ve written the thesis text. Recipe for disaster.
• I kept a separate EndNote database of everything I had in my filing cabinet. Essential for determining whether I could check a source immediately or whether I had to find it online or at the library.
• If you have any references you meant to follow up later, follow them up now. I had a footnote for some Justin Martyr stuff that said ‘check this reference at some point’. Took ages to find the correct reference because I’d written the wrong one down. You don’t want to be doing this at the last minute because the source might be unavailable (e.g. borrowed from the library).
• Check all the references/citations thoroughly. I had a couple that EndNote bodged because I’d manually edited the citation tags at some point.
• Check you computer can generate the bibliography and format the citations with all the thesis text if you’re using citation software. You don’t need last minute resource issues with the computer.
• Check people’s names. In a couple of places I swapped the first names (Mary for Margaret and vice versa) because I was thinking about the one person while writing another person’s name.
• Be consistent with publishers and place names. If you aren’t sure of US state abbreviations etc. then here’s a useful list.
• Do not muck about changing the citation style at the last minute. You should have been working with one of the department or faculty styles for the past 2-3 years. Even though software like EndNote allows you to switch styles you may fall foul of things like how that new style’s default settings handle repeat citations.
• Clearly identify what is required in your bibliography. Some institutions only want material cited. Others want you to demonstrate you know the field well by listing other material that isn’t directly cited to show you know about it. Others want the bibliography arranged into different sub-sections (e.g. primary sources vs. secondary sources). Make sure you get it right early on.

Get your citation system and formatting sorted early on and you’ll sleep better when you’re trying to bring everything together. Plus, I’ve met several examiners who say they check references rigorously (e.g. taking the thesis to the library and looking up every third reference in a chapter!). Good citation style and use demonstrates you know what you’re doing and is informative and helpful to the examiner.

A footnote on EndNote.

Many institutions have site licences etc. for EndNote and it’s the most widely used bibliographic software (though not the only one). If they do have a site licence then often there will be nice extras that allow you to connect to the campus libraries. Take advantage of this – getting the bibliographic information from your campus library catalogue means it will be for that same book you used (probably). Also, learn to use EndNote or similar early on. Just get the basics right. I didn’t have too many problems with it but I’ve heard some horror stories. If your student learning centre/library run courses on it, then go along. Taking a couple of hours to do that early on can save you major grief later.