Reading papers

I've notices recently that the focus I have when reading articles has changed quite dramatically. In undergraduate, I really didn't care how a researcher did anything or how they validated their claims, I just wanted to see the interpretation of their results so I could paraphrase them and be done with it. Now I'll spend days pouring over their method and results section to see if there is absolutely anything I dislike. I'll spend time trying to simulate some small part of it to get some understanding, make notes on anything that seemed absurdly difficult or just redundant.

 I do tend to notice now though that the moments of genius people get are always in these sections, although the language has to be so plain that you really can't express the joy you get from making some realisation that made your method work. It seems a shame to paraphrase this now.

Computational Neuroscience

My interest in Computational Neuroscience and AI started in some of the dissatisfaction I had with Psychology while studying for my BSc. I felt that a lot of the time there wasn't any coherent theory to actually understand the results of the experiments being done and it often seemed like an exercise in collecting more data. Sometimes there would be a 'theory' proposed, but this was just a qualitative expression that could often be twisted to fit the data. The formalism introduced in Computational Neuroscience and AI gave some concrete predictions that could actually be evaluated.

However there have been times while doing my MSc that I feel I'm just playing with properties of matrices, and that there are people out there better suited for doing it, i.e., physicists, mathematicians, etc. Perhaps I'm just making excuses.

Musings on Alien Races

I've noticed in Sci-fi that Alien races are often depicted as being completely homogeneous. Same religion, same language, same dress sense, same ideals. This is true unless it is a specific plot point, and even then they are only limited to two warring factions at best.

One notable distinction to this is the Covenant in the 'Halo' series. Admittedly this is an amalgamation of different species held together by a unifying religion, but off the top of my head this is one example where an Alien 'race' isn't treated as homogeneous. There are several belief systems, several cultures, etc. In fact, another game seems to make fun of this sci-fi trope, i.e., in 'Mass Effect 2' where Mordin notes that the human race are good test subjects due to their relative genetic diversity, hence explaining why all other races are so homogeneous.

So, assuming that alien races are not so homogeneous, I wonder whether the reason we have yet to be invaded by aliens is that they have yet to hold a referendum on invasion yet.