Brains working towards machine consciousness

I decided it was about time I looked at some of the online learning materials for our Graduate Development Skills Programme.  In a way, I knew it would be a bit of a mistake – but also that it would be informative.

Apparently, according to the one on IP, it is wrong to answer a question along the lines of “True/False: it always costs money to use a patented technology” with False, although the explanatory text says “It usually costs…” thus proving the ‘correct’ answer of True to be False (as ‘always’ would be required for the answer to be ‘True’). 

Anyway, the one which really made me decide to write a blog post was on the Managing your supervisor module.  I am including this snippet here, as part of a critique, which I believe comes under ‘fair use’:

Now, first things first – that is a horrible format, and it took a while to figure out how I was supposed to be even filling it in.  Secondly, I have no clear idea what they really mean by ‘administrative’ and ‘interpersonal’ in the context.  But neither of these are the point I wanted to highlight.

It appears that one should not expect a supervisor to conduct any work ethically.  Shame that.  They are also not expected to show initiative and be enthusiastic.  Personally, if my supervisor was not doing at least all three of these, I would be wondering why they were employed, and certainly would not continue to allow them to be in charge of my research efforts.

I would also, definitely, expect a supervisor to meet administrative deadlines; rather more importantly than interpersonal ones.  And I would expect my supervisor to expect me to provide feedback …

Basically, I think this is a mess, and lost patience with the module at that point.