@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

ByrdNick

@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de

Asst Prof of Philosophy, Affiliate Faculty for Quantitative Social Science & Institute for AI at Stevens Institute of Technology (in the #NYC metro area).

Using science and technology to understand (and improve) decisions and well-being.

I use this site mostly for work (#CogSci, #Philosophy, #Rationality, #Teaching, #SciComm, and #rStats). I may ignore, unfollow, or even block other stuff.

Profile picture: not Neil Patrick Harris, but I'm told almost daily that I look like him.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ByrdNick, to Medicine
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Will physicians better categorize X-ray and ECG images if given more time per image?

Medical residents and staff viewed 50-100 images for 175 milliseconds to 20 seconds.

Neither viewing time nor experience seemed to be strong predictors of true positive and false positive categorizations.

Authors admit, "All viewing times in both studies were likely too brief to represent clinical practice."

https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.15380

ByrdNick,
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Hi, @ttpphd. I’m guessing that admission/realization was the result of peer review (after completing the study).

ByrdNick, to workersrights
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

How soon do you expect replies to ?

When I ask colleagues, answers range from hours to days. This ambiguity may be a source of stress. So I've prepended a disclaimer to my email line: "No pressure to read or reply outside your normal working hours, of course."

Generally, I rarely need a response within a week. In rare cases in which my email is motivated by an immanent , I try to disclose that to my recipient.

What do you do?

ByrdNick, to random
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Around 50% of PhDs got permanent academic jobs in 2012. Guess the percentage for 2021. (Scroll for answer.)
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20%

https://apda.ghost.io/2022-data-collection-results/

ByrdNick, to accessibility
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

friends,

Help me diagnose an issue with APA's PsycNET by voting on one or both of these polls (where the APA can see the results):

https://twitter.com/byrd_nick/status/1742944941163057358

https://www.threads.net/@byrd.nick/post/C1r3t3suRml

Context: APA's PsycNET is chronically inaccessible to me. To diagnose this, I need to figure out the scope of the problem. (Want more context? See my replies to either one of the polls.)

Thanks to anyone who helps me with this!

ByrdNick,
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

friends,

Is 's chronically inaccessible to you?

(It usually blocks me for "trying to access ...using a different IP". No other journal article sites have issues with my IP or block me. Just APA's.)

If you often experience what I do, then PsycNET may be unprepared for shared IPs on campus networks and services (e.g., 's Private Relay).

Hat tip to @elduvelle for asking me to poll this site.

ByrdNick, to random
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

🤔 "causal information at decision time can lead to less accurate choices in domains that relate to existing knowledge".

Possible explanations: (a) fluency effect or (b) expertise reversal effect.

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-0206-z

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ByrdNick, to Logic
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Can the civic and rational benefits of discussion and argument mapping be combined?

Platforms like BCause and Kialo attempt to find out.

Here's a recent conference paper about the former: https://aclanthology.org/2023.sicon-1.5

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ByrdNick,
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

The dissertation associated with this research about online discussion research is now available: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.00017252

You can follow its author Lucas Anastasiou on gScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Cu1r7JYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

ByrdNick, to conservative
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Should appeal to politically people who are paranoid about ?

Does “” thought heroize only White, male ?

This longish piece in the sketches the history of , its proponents (like ), its recent proponents on the right (like ), and more.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/have-the-liberal-arts-gone-conservative

ByrdNick,
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

To me, it seems bizarre that classical education appeals to people who are paranoid about wokeism in schools. The “Western” tradition does not vindicate conservative Judeo-Christian thought or debunk either progressive thought or non-religious traditions.

ByrdNick, to random
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Academic pet peeve number 74: Abstracts which mention what the author(s) discussed rather than the results of what the author(s) discussed.

Example: "Possible mechanisms are discussed" vs. "Possible mechanisms include [X and Y, but not Z]".

We'd never accept such uninformative summaries of the rest of the paper:

  • Introduction: "Prior research happened."
  • Methods: "New data was collected."
  • Findings: "Analysis of the new data is reported."

ByrdNick, to random
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

I can no longer see Lower Manhattan from Hoboken due to .

To learn more: time.com/6285326/wildfire-smoke-air-quality-health-impacts/

ByrdNick, to TodayILearned
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Do students learn better if instructors share slides?

An experiment gave students no access, partial access, or full access to instructor’s slides. Access didn’t significantly help.

When controlling for other factors, “bringing slides to class negatively impacted …exam performance” in two of three units (R < -.2). It never helped.

And “using slides to study” never helped (above and beyond other factors).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.02.002

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DailyNous, to random
@DailyNous@zirk.us avatar

“Argument mapping is about twice as effective at improving student critical thinking as other methods [but] there are obstacles preventing philosophy teachers from adopting it.” A new app helps. https://dailynous.com/2023/07/28/an-accessible-and-user-friendly-argument-mapping-app-guest-post/

ByrdNick,
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Thanks to @DailyNous for posting and especially to Alex for contextualizing the initial claim about argument mapping (from the pull quote):

https://dailynous.com/2023/07/28/an-accessible-and-user-friendly-argument-mapping-app-guest-post/#comment-443487

TLDR; there are least 4 problems with the claim that "Argument mapping is about twice as effective at improving student critical thinking as other methods".

Problems 3 and (the first part of) 4.
The rest of problem 4 and caveats.

ByrdNick, to random
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Giving people more time on base rate problems resulted in more base rate fallacies?

Base rate problems often lure you into stereoptypic rather than probabilistic thinking. Example:

"Of all 1000 participants: 3 had a tattoo and 997 did not."
"Jay is a 29-year-old male. He has served a short time in prison. He has been living on his own for 2 years now. He has an older car and listens to punk music."
"Is it more probably that Jay has a tattoo or that Jay did not?"

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105451

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ByrdNick, to Economics
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Can images make a debunking argument more effective?

A slideshow reduced initial agreement with a misconception (about rent control) compared to text-only stimuli (n > 1000).

Regardless of imagery, however, higher reflection test performance predicted abandoning the misconception among participants who initially held it.

Did images help people think more reflectively or did the images reduce the need to think more reflectively? 🤷‍♂️

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-023-09817-7

Some slides from the "refutation video", which can be found in the paper's Appendix.
Section 4.2 and Table 3 showing the difference in belief change by condition and in correlation with cognitive reflection test performance.
Table 4 and subsequent text explaining how "being more analytical does predict the ability to revise the misconception".

ByrdNick, to Geology
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Question for and nerds,

Is there a way to find out how deep the is on a given day in a given location?

For example, apps/sites usually report the day's accumulation and the next day's precipitation amount for each locale — and in a way that almost anyone can understand.

Is there an app or website for ordinary people to get that much time- and spatial- resolution on levels in their area?

ByrdNick, to fediverse
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

One reason I still get more from than its alternatives:

Its norms incentivize us to be better.

Example: these authors added to all the figures in their book after the exposed them to the rationale.

https://mastodon.social/@deevybee/111550778047029733

Other social networks tend to bring out the worst in me: laziness, negativity, etc.

  1. Is it just me or do you want to move more of your online life to federated networks?

  2. How else do you benefit from federated systems?

ByrdNick, to psychology
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Openness about data exclusions is essential.

I usually recommend rejection when authors of a manuscript decline to
(a) report full and final sample sizes
(b) link to full dataset
(c) list reproducible exclusion criteria
(d) report the results with and without exclusions.

Why? So readers know whether the reported results depend on exclusions and/or massively reverse in excluded data.👇

http://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2023/11/attack-of-50-foot-research-assistants.html

ByrdNick, to religion
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Losing one’s predicted worse relationships with one’s parents over time across three waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion (N = 2,352).

The paper is (free to read): https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12876

ByrdNick, to Logic
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

If mapping arguments improves critical thinking, then argument mapping skills should correlate with critical thinking skills, right?

Alas, they didn't correlate among 115 Advanced Placement students across 4 high schools who mapped arguments for universal basic income (from a Douglas Murray article).

proquest.com/docview/2915819770/abstract/336A7C32595F4464PQ/1

Pages 18 and 19 explaining the critical thinking test and assigned reading by Douglas Murray.
An example of a student's scored argument map (Figure 5a).
Pages 46 and 47 showing correlations between critical thinking test scores and each argument mapping score.

ByrdNick, to philosophy
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

Are students’ intuitions about thought experiments different because of expertise?

Longitudinal studies of philosophy and students (N = 226) didn't seem to reveal as much: there were some group differences in intuitions, but a selection/indoctrination effect seemed more likely than “a general expertise” or “expertise specific to particular subfields”.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04316-x

Pages 11 and 14 showing more sample information and a self-replicated result: philosophy students preferred philosophers' orthodox response to thought experiments about accidentally true belief (a.k.a., Gettier cases).
Pages 17 and 18 showing small or unreliable difference in intuitions about other cases between philosophy and cog. sci. cases.
Pages 38 and 39 showing small differences in confidence between philosophy and cog. sci. students (with lower confidence from the former). Page 39 shows no differences in judgments among students who continued in the study compared to those who dropped out.

ByrdNick, to psychology
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

We know that the task demands of cognitive tests most scores: if one version of a problem requires more work (e.g., gratuitously verbose or unclear wording, open response rather than multiple choice), people will perform worse.

Now we have observed as much in Large Language Models: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.02418

The tests included analogical reasoning, reflective reasoning, word prediction, and grammaticality judgments.

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ByrdNick, to psychology
@ByrdNick@nerdculture.de avatar

How should numeric probabilities be translated into words? Maybe they shouldn't be.

"Words of estimative probability" wreak havoc in high-stakes communication like #intelligenceCommunity assessments and briefings, in part because intelligence and defense institutions map numbers to different words (!) — see Amelia Kahn's forthcoming work at ameliakahn.wordpress.com.

#defense #nationalSecurity #decisionScience #psychology #epistemology #xPhi #cogSci #SciComm #Communication #PhilSci

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