The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.

via Open Culture by Dan Colman,

Matthew Might, a computer science professor at the University of Utah, writes: “Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures.” It’s September 26. That means fall is here again, and it’s time to bring you an encore presentation of Matt’s Illustrated Guide to the PhD. Have a look, and you’ll see the whole undertaking in a less hubristic way:

Imagine a circle that contains all of human knowledge:

By the time you finish elementary school, you know a little:

By the time you finish high school, you know a bit more:

With a bachelor’s degree, you gain a specialty:

A master’s degree deepens that specialty:

Reading research papers takes you to the edge of human knowledge:

Once you’re at the boundary, you focus:

You push at the boundary for a few years:

Until one day, the boundary gives way:

And, that dent you’ve made is called a Ph.D.:

Of course, the world looks different to you now:

So, don’t forget the bigger picture:

You can find Matt’s Illustrated Guide hosted on his web site. This guide/reality check is published under a Creative Commons License. You can also buy a print version for $6.50. (The money goes to charity.) Matt offers more insights for Ph.D. students here.

The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. is a post from: Open Culture.

The Evidence of the Senses now available for FREE ONLINE

I have GREAT NEWS for all Philosophy fans!!!

“David Kelley‘s classic, The Evidence of the Senses, is now available on Scribd.com FOR FREE! The Scribd platform allows you to search the book, share it with friends, print it, download it, read it online, copy and paste text from it, and comment or communicate with others reading the book.

About The Evidence of the Senses:
In this highly original defense of realism, David Kelley argues that perception is the discrimination of objects as entities, that the awareness of these objects is direct, and that perception is a reliable foundation forempirical knowledge. His argument relies on the basic principle of the “primacy of existence,” in opposition to Cartesian representationalism and Kantian idealism.

In the first part of the book, Kelley discusses the nature and validity of perception. He argues against classical sensationalist and modern computational theories, according to which perception involves inferences from sensory input. Unlike most realists, he also offers an in-depth consideration of the problems of perceptual relativity. His theory incorporates a key distinction between the object and the form in which it is perceived. This distinction provides insights into the status of phenomenal qualities, the nature of perceptual constancy, and the difference between primary and secondary qualities.

In the second part of the book, Kelley is concerned with the way we distinguish conceptual knowledge from perception. His theory of non-propositional justification shows how perceptual judgments are supported by the direct awareness of objects, and it allows a novel defense of empiricism.

An original and substantial contribution to the philosophical literature, this book will be invaluable to philosophers, psychologists, and anyone interested in the complex subject of perceptual theory.”

Read The Evidence of the Senses now >

Find more about Atlas Society and David Kelley’s work now >

Executive master’s in European Journalism, IHECS Brussels

Recent economic and political turmoil has shaken the European Union to its foundations and at the same time has demonstrated how the EU has grown in importance, and how its politics affect so many aspects of the daily lives of its citizens. But for many of those citizens, the EU remains remote. The way it works is often difficult to grasp, and the interactions between its institutions, with their different roles and powers, are not immediately apparent. The complexities are increased by the fact that the EU is evolving all the time.
Journalists have a major role in boosting EU’s citizens understanding of what is at stake – despite all the intricacies. They can:

– help citizens understand the EU’s integration and decision making processes;
– empower them to exert influence on European affairs
– provide information on what the EU does, and how it affects citizens’ lives
– explain complex debates and conflicting opinions

To equip journalists with the tools for these tasks, IHECS, an official Brussels-based high school, runs a pioneering executive Master in European Journalism. This is a one-year full-time daytime course, beginning in September. The course is structured around project learning and multiple partnerships with European bodies. The teaching component runs from September through to April. In April, May and June students complete their end-of-course assignments.

The highlights of the Master are:

– Workshops led by recognised professional journalists from across Europe who combine first-class teaching with practical experience in the field.
– Small class size (maximum 20 students)
– In the heart of Europe, close to the EU institutions
– Contacts with stakeholders
– Numerous media projects
– In- the-field investigations
– Constant contact with professionals

http://www.ihecs.be/masters-europeens/european-journalism/

CONTACT Person:
Laure Englebert
laure.englebert@ galilee.be
+32 2 549 55 37

via: Executive master’s in European Journalism, IHECS Brussels

Hayek’s Spontaneous Order Goes Global with Instagram

Instagram-user-diegotrial — Instagram user diegotrial

Several months ago when I heard the news about Facebook paying $1 Billion for Instagram I thought ‘the world was going crazy’. My first impression was to think that the ruling scale of values was mistaken. That people was giving value to unimportant things while the rest of the world was still trying to manage to survive the day. I couldn’t understand Why would a company pay such a huge amount of money for a software application for smartphones and iPhone that is only used for procrastination and doesn’t create any value for the world? Last week’s volcanic eruption of Fuego Volcano in Guatemala made me change my mind.

The entrepreneurs behind Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Michel “Mike” Krieger, created an application that was not only user-friendly but that enabled users to share images from anywhere in the world immediately. Such an application was created (maybe unintentionally) to become one of the fastest image reservoirs of instant news and global interconnection. When Facebook bought this photo-sharing app and paid $1 Billion they had not only bought the access to an essential function in millions of smartphones around the world but also connected visually the planet as we had never seen before. Last week’s event in Guatemala was the first time in my life when I could see through my phone in Denmark high quality images of events that were taking place in real-time more than 5,843 miles. Indeed, Hayek’s ideas of how an spontaneous order works was going global!

“Spontaneous order is what happens when you leave people alone—when entrepreneurs… see the desires of people… and then provide for them. They respond to market signals, to prices. Prices tell them what’s needed and how urgently and where. And it’s infinitely better and more productive than relying on a handful of elites in some distant bureaucracy.” Leonard Reed

To say that the world is interconnected and interdependent means to say that we are able now able of bypassing normal newsbroadcasters around the world. No longer will be that easy for anyone to control what the world would see and what the world wouldn’t see (as critized when News corporations around the world have been used to show a biased reservoir of images and videos during the Gulf War, or in the war in Iraq to mention some examples). Now, with access to photo-sharing applications such as Instagram the world not only has access to interconnection of real-time events but also has what Hayek explained as “a more efficient allocation of societal resources than any design could achieve.” Instagram is one more societal tool that enables us to achieve the best of humanity if used for the right purposes. Because of this reasons the founders of Instagram earned that billion dollars and the world is wealthier today.

We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say

Remember 1989? Well, as argued by many scholars, that years was the culmination of global interactions that “dynamized in many places of the world crisis phenomena and synchronized, the resulting transformation processes Had they been previously locates primarily in a national framework, now its global dimension is obvious. Thus began both reflect on the established order of the world is understood relationship with their respective areas of sovereignty in the resolution, as well, should be designed as the new world order.” (Read more on 1989 in a Global Perspective).

“The MIT Technology Review explains how CSI’s model works: “The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause.” Plot the data, and it looks like this:……”