whyteout

I would also explain the temporal unfolding of a recurrent neural network.

You can do that?

Any conjectures about the purpose of consciousness from an evolutionary perspective?

My own suspicion is that it's a means of extracting additional meaning from sensory data (in combination with pre-existing knowledge) and also serves as some form of memory compression (storing the "gist" of something).

How best to get into the field (i.e., data-driven policy analysis?)?

I have decent knowledge of stats & scientific methods... what to I need to do to make myself a competitive candidate and what types of jobs should I be looking for?