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THERMALTOY

(it's an anagram of my name: Tom Hartley)

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INTERESTING TIMES

I first set up this site in 2012. In retrospect that was a watershed year for me
and for the UK, an optimistic time where we could look forward to the
possibilities of a better life in the new century.

To put in mildly the intervening 12 years have not delivered on that optimism.

We had a prolonged period of economic austerity (it’s still going on), Brexit
and then the pandemic. We had years of shambolic government.

Tom Hartley, April 2024 – I didn’t cut it during the pandemic/lockdown period
Tom Hartley, September 2024 – my last day at the University of York before
retiring at the end of the month.

Beyond the UK the world is looking less friendly. We have the continuing
existential threats from nuclear conflict and the effects of climate change,
nearer now rather than further away as we might have hoped. Russia has reverted
to its old isolation and expansionism while the older democracies and alliances
are polarized and crumbling.

AI has arrived and although the potential positive applications are exciting,
they are being outpaced by darker developments both deliberate and accidental.

In the wrong hands, AI can be a potent tool in undermining human wellbeing and
in creating or exacerbating division. It undermines human wellbeing when it
helps corporations optimize our economy for (concentrated) profit at the expense
of (distributed) happiness. And it can be used to create or exacerbate division
by creating, highlighting and distributing misinformation and disinformation,
manipulating our emotions and undermining trust. Used carelessly, it typically
amplifies human or corporate biases. And generative AI can appropriate human
creative work without attribution or compensation, meaning that human creativity
is devalued.

I think that over the next few years we will increasingly need the reassurance
that the people we deal with are living breathing human beings acting on their
own free will. The best evidence will be meeting people face-to-face and (for
cultural activities – art, music, comedy, sport) seeing them live, in the flesh.



When I first started this blog, I wrote posts about my life and work in science
and academia. I’ve hidden most of these although some of them were quite
interesting, so I may bring them back. Some seemed a bit earnest, too optimistic
or prescriptive for the more cynical and less friendly world we now find
ourselves in. At the moment the main purpose of this site is to verify my online
identity as an actual human being with a backstory (see the About page for more
details).

I may decide to start blogging again, but at the moment I will be posting to
Bluesky which, for me, has taken the place of Twitter/X. I was an earlyish
adopter of Twitter and my 10,000th Tweet was in March 2013. The experience
gradually degenerated over the last 3 or 4 years (partly due to the
misinformation and increasingly divisive algorithms it employed), but I am
currently finding Bluesky as positive and useful as early Twitter. I made lots
of new friends and built trusted connections with many people there. Together we
learned a lot about how trust can be developed through honest and thoughtful
online interactions, and how it can be undermined by less thoughtful reactions,
by carelessly sharing misinformation and by succumbing to easily to destructive
and polarizing influences. So I will be taking that experience onto the new
platform and trying to link up with other people with a similar outlook. I think
we’ll need trusted online networks more than ever.

A big change in own my life is that I’ve retired, meaning I’ll be posting less
about science and academia in the future. I don’t rule out a return to some kind
of work in the future – there are quite a few interesting options for someone
with my background. In the mean time I’ll be posting more about my hobbies which
include coding (including AI, because it’s not entirely evil) and recording
music. At the moment I am trying to learn to play the drums. I am trying to
write a song-a-day thread about the Beatles on Bluesky.








Author tomhartleyPosted on November 19, 2024Categories Uncategorized


MEN: WHEN TO STAND UP, WHEN TO PIPE DOWN

Based on what I have learned so far by listening to women.

If you work in science or technology and spend any time listening to the honest
views of women around you, you will find that many report experiences of sexism
and an environment that is hostile to them. Listen to them.

Men sometimes undervalue women’s views, ideas and experiences, talk over them
and shut them out of discussion, even in discussions about sex, gender and
discrimination where they clearly have vital, distinct experiences and
knowledge. Don’t drown out their voices. 

When you see that other men are not listening to women’s experiences, are
drowning out their contributions, dismissing their concerns or derailing
discussions they have initiated, what should you do? You will need tact and
judgement to determine whether your support is truly helpful – for example, if
you get drawn into a predominantly male argument it is surprisingly be easy to
become part of the problem, rather than the solution.

Women’s ideas are sometimes dismissed, ignored or doubted until expressed by a
man. If you want to amplify, echo or support a woman’s view, it can be helpful
to make it explicit. “I would like to amplify what Dr X has said”, “I agree with
Dr X”. This avoids any impression that you are taking credit for her idea, and
it helps remind other men to listen to women.*

When you see overt sexism or misogyny, yes, you should speak up. Confront it.

This is going to take some judgement, sometimes we need to stand up, often we
need to pipe down. In both cases it will feel uncomfortable, in my view, that
male discomfort is the feeling you get when a sexist culture is changing for the
better.

Note: I have focused on women and sexism, but if you look around you will find
other groups are under-represented and marginalized in your workplace. Try the
same techniques: listen to the people affected, then try to advocate for change
that will improve matters.

*In this spirit I should acknowledge the people whose ideas I have incorporated
in the above advice who most recently and directly include @zerdeve (especially
this thread), @o_guest (twitter) and @noodlemaz (blog and twitter) although many
others have expressed similar views. Misunderstandings or mistakes are my own.
The tip about explicitly acknowledging women whose views you agree with and want
to amplify was arrived at by trial and (especially) error – one error pointed
out gracefully (but forcefully) by Prof Ursula Martin was helpful. Of course, I
like other-well intentioned men, will make mistakes in the way we respond to
women’s concerns about sexism.


Author tomhartleyPosted on August 11, 2017February 17, 2021Categories
UncategorizedLeave a comment on Men: when to stand up, when to pipe down


RHYTHM AND MEMORY FOR SPEECH

This post was co-written with my fellow authors Mark Hurlstone and Graham Hitch.

Today we published an important paper in Cognitive Psychology. The paper is
significant because it explains a link between rhythm and memory in terms of a
common mechanism that connects speech processing, verbal learning and language
development to rhythmic oscillations in brain activity.

Continue reading “Rhythm and Memory for Speech”

Author tomhartleyPosted on June 2, 2016September 22, 2016Categories Research,
Science2 Comments on Rhythm and Memory for Speech


FIRST IMPRESSIONS COUNT, BUT HOW?

Today we published a paper in PNAS about how people form first impressions based
on everyday images of faces, of the kind you find on the internet.



The four authors (L-R), Richard Vernon, Clare Sutherland, Andy Young and Tom
Hartley – we also co-wrote this blog post. Underneath are reconstructions of
photos of our faces which can be loosely thought of illustrating the way such
images are “seen” by our model. They are actually reconstructions based on the
65 numbers we used to describe each face, using a model trained on a large
number of such images (but not these ones). Note the subtle differences in shape
between the photos and the reconstructed image – the features we use do not
(yet) capture some of the information in the images, but sufficient for the
model to make accurate predictions about social impressions.



By first impressions we mean the way we rapidly form judgements about others’
social characteristics. Although we can make an astonishing range of social
inferences based on appearance (trustworthiness, intelligence, dominance,
extraversion etc.) these different traits tend to go together in predictable
ways, so that they fall along two or three more or less independent underlying
dimensions:

 * approachability (do they want to help me or to harm me?)
 * dominance (are they capable of carrying out these intentions?)
 * youthful-attractiveness (perhaps representing whether they’d be a good
   romantic partner – or a rival!)

These judgements are formed very quickly (in as little as a tenth of a second)
and can influence our subsequent behaviour. The impressions we create through
images of our faces (“avatars”/“selfies”) are increasingly important in a world
where, more and more, we get to know one another online rather than in the
flesh. So how can we go from an image of a face to a judgement about someone’s
character?

Continue reading “First Impressions Count, But How?”

Author tomhartleyPosted on July 28, 2014November 7, 2014Categories ScienceTags
faces, models6 Comments on First Impressions Count, But How?


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