Tune in tomorrow for years of research jammed into one talk. If you're at Day 1 of @philsci.bsky.social Around The World, then you'll get about 15% of it. :)

How many generations into the future should we consider when making collective policy decisions? Seven? More? Less? Averaging across thousands of people in the U.S., moral *concern* extended 10 generations, but *obligation* extended about twice as much! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Prayer's effects on health have been studied many times. Small studies initially reported some benefit, but more rigorous studies found null or even harmful effects. In sum, prayer seemed ineffective, recommending focus on more promising interventions: doi.org/10.1002/1465...

What did I learn from this year's annual blood test results? I shouldn’t run 40 miles the day before I get the blood drawn… …unless I tell my doctor about the run *before* they see the results. 😆 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.... #exercise #running #medicine #health #hematology #edu

Baby boxes have become overrated. Confidential birth is still underrated. Why? Confidential birth allows more than mere anonymity: it allows pregnant women and babies to receive accountable healthcare and other resources. Not just celebrities need it.

Does faulty thinking tend to be faster? People often fell for lures more quickly (than they realized the correct answer) on cognitive reflection and conjunction #fallacy tests, but this reversed in gambler's fallacy tasks: lured responses took longer. 🔓 doi.org/10.1002/bdm....

Can genetic testing backfire? In those with high cholesterol in the family, those who learned they had a genetic mutation linked to hypercholesterolemia were less likely to think lifestyle changes help and more likely to think genes control their lipids. doi.org/10.1002/ajmg...

Does additional reflective thinking improve #AI reasoning models' math decisions? Actually, additional reflection improved initial (more than final) answers: doi.org/10.48550/arX... More reason for #StrategicReflectivism: doi.org/10.48550/arX...#AI#StrategicReflectivism:#epistemology #cogSci #philMind

A correlation between reflective thinking and belief in #conspiracyTheories can reverse based on one item? "...coded messages from Q ...reveal the truth about what is happening behind the scenes." Representative sample of U.S. Prolific workers (N = 690) doi.org/10.1080/2044...

As in humans, the plausibility of a conclusion can #bias #AI assessment of arguments (#beliefBias). Chain of Thought prompting reduced (but didn't eliminate) the bias. Plausibility influenced validity judgments ...and vice versa?! doi.org/10.48550/arX...#bias#AI#beliefBias).#logic #cogSci #tech

The #AI companies are onto me! #OpenAI recently automated the identification of tasks worthy of "slow" #reasoning. In "Strategic Reflectivism...", I showed why that's a key to #intelligence (in humans as well). The #preprint (accepted in #LNCS) is now available as an audiopaper (a.k.a. #podcast)👇

Is solipsism measurable? Seven studies developed a self-report scale of how much one doubts that others exist (beyond one's own mind). It correlated with loneliness, social disconnection, aggression, and problematic gaming. doi.org/10.1016/j.pa... #xPhi #psychometrics.#psych

🤬 “Among articles stating that data was available upon request, only 17% shared data upon request. … Results replicate those found elsewhere: data is generally not available upon request, and promissory Data Availability Statements are typically not adhered to.” #openScience #philSci #ethics #psych

Proud of Vahid's use of #computational #CogSci to identify and compare #reasoning errors in #Reddit users and communities. He's presenting it at an #AI + #decisionSci workshop at #CMU : www.cmu.edu/ai-sdm/r... Follow him for alerts about this and more: www.researchgate.net...

How can #AI and #cognitiveScience improve #healthcare? We got some answers from the #NudgesInHealthcare Symposium at #UPenn. Check out this summary of some themes in the write-up below: ldi.upenn.edu/our-wo...#AI#cognitiveScience#healthcare?#NudgesInHealthcare#UPenn.#medicine #psych #econ #compSci #tech #LLM #edu #bioethics #xPhi

Thousands of people in a dozen countries thought reflective reasoning was usually the best way to make a decision in ordinary dilemmas. Runners up were intuition, friends' advice, and the wisdom of a crowd (in that order). doi.org/10.1098/rspb... #cogSci #epistemology #xPhi

Do reflection test solutions actually involve reflection? Our think-aloud studies found they usually do (doi.org/10.14264/0f1...), but Ryan Jesson found that solution-prompting insight is often unconscious or spontaneous. doi.org/10.14264/0f1... #ProcessTracing #psychometrics

Might the concept of "good judgment" vary by framing or social roles? Five studies of four nations (🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇨🇳) found some words and roles were more associated with "rational" than "reasonable" (and vice versa). doi.org/10.1162/opmi... #CogSci #xPhi #linguistics #dataViz

Can #AI chatbots handle student discussion better than teachers? In a controlled study of 83 Chinese adolescents, dialogue with a #generativeAI resulted in more learning than dialogue with a human teacher. doi.org/10.1080/1049...#AI#generativeAI#edu #LLM #tech #teaching #policy #CogSci #xPhi

This week I'm Zooming into the Human & Artificial #Rationality conference: https://har-conf.eu My paper argues that a key to #intelligence is pragmatic switching between intuitive and reflective inference — the paper forthcoming in #LNCS is on #ArXiv: doi.org/10.48550/arX...

"We do not assume [system 2 is] always better ...than [system 1], or vice versa, .... Some tasks might be better handled by S1..., especially once the system has acquired enough experience": doi.org/10.1145/3715... Amen! Long live pragmatism: doi.org/10.48550/arX... #cogSci #AI #xPhi #epistemology

Some #medical #nudges that didn't work: Most (of a dozen) clinician-facing #ElectronicHealthRecord deprescribing tools didn't work? doi.org/10.1111/jgs.... Showing clinicians cheaper versions of a drug didn't reduce prescription costs? doi.org/10.1001/jama...#medical#nudges#ElectronicHealthRecord#reproducibility

Is it more problematic for organ donations to be allocated based on receivers' behaviors (such as alcohol use) than on medical predictions such as probability of survival? Not according to these UK adults (N= 172): doi.org/10.1111%2Fbi... #bioethics #medicine #BioXPhi #cogSci

Apple's next #healthcare #nudge targets #highBloodPressure. They expect to notify over 1,000,000 people with undiagnosed #hypertension within a year of this month's release to 150 nations. www.youtube.com/live...#healthcare#nudge#highBloodPressure.#hypertension#wearables #health #silentKiller #cogSci #behSci #Apple #bigData

If we nudge a random subset of clinicians to improve prescriptions to SOME patients (e.g., 65-or-older), will the effect spillover to (or contaminate) other patient populations? It did in this clinical trial in #Canada; doi.org/10.1001/jama...#Canada; #philSci #medicine #stats #methods

A conceptual replication of a result from our U.S. participants in U.K. participants: A reminder that #antibiotics are probably ineffective for respiratory infections reduced expectations of needless #antibiotics. doi.org/10.1111/bjhp...#antibiotics#antibiotics.#antibioticResistance #AMR #xRisk #edu

This week I share a text message and infographic that improved decisions about #existentialRisk: osf.io/preprints/psy... #AntibioticResistance kills many. Misusing #antibiotics makes matters worse. IAPHS: iaphs.org/conference... #Nudges in #Healthcare: nudgeunit.my.canva.s...

How can #hospitals easily reduce #medication orders that can increase #antibioticResistance? After months of baseline #prescription tracking, a computer #nudge helped docs order 17-35% fewer extended-spectrum #antibiotics. doi.org/10.1001/jama...#hospitals#medication#antibioticResistance?#prescription#nudge#antibiotics.#AMR#xRisk #bioethics #CogSci

Neuroscience reveals listening to audiobooks activates the same brain regions as reading print. The key difference? Reading demands more attention and can improve comprehension for complex topics.

Can thinking aloud accurately capture how we decide? Nisbet & Wilson's 1977 paper famously suggested it can't. But #NLP and #AI methods may indicate that it can: - escholarship.org/uc/... - openreview.net/forum...#NLP#AI#cogSci #psychology #philosophy #surveyMethods #thinkAloud #LLM

Does having atheist friends predict apostasy? Yes, but maintaining one's religion is still more common regardless of how many atheist friends one has. So "worldviews may not be as fragile as" some think. doi.org/10.5334/snr.200 #religion #atheism #secularism #socialNetworks #

More toxic #Twitter posts from US Members of #Congress (MCs) were more likely to be reposted by liberal users — especially toxic posts about #Republicans. This and more among 13,000,000 users and 1,300,000 posts from 2009 to 2019. doi.org/10.1093/pnas...#Twitter#Congress#Republicans.#socialmedia #politics

Prompting an #AI model to take on a persona can impact the quality of its reasoning. Example: political personas reasoned better when evidence aligned with their politics — a la #motivatedReasoning. Neither chain-of-thought nor accuracy prompts helped. doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Are moms more likely than dads to get #antibiotics for their kid? In Japan "Women were more likely to accompany a child to a healthcare visit for a respiratory tract infection [but] were no more likely to... receive antibiotics at those... visits." doi.org/10.1007/s401...#antibiotics #AMR

Those experiencing delusions were more likely to jump to conclusions on certain tasks. 🤔 But the *strength* of delusional beliefs did not correlate with propensity to jump to conclusions. Open access link below. #logic #psychiatry #criticalThinking #cogSci #decisionScience

🤦‍♂️ “At least 600 #research projects funded by the #NIH have been modified…. The most frequently deleted term was ‘diverse,’ [even when it wasn't] #DEI-related, [such as] ‘diverse airborne toxicants’.” Not obvious why this matters? Hints in the post below. #science #HigherEd #edu #DOGE #policy #USA

"This study received ethical approval from XXX." doi.org/10.1016/j.te...

Do #AI models really benefit from self-reflection? As we did in humans (http://dx.doi.org/10...), Zhu et al. identified reflective #reasoning, but they also injected it to see its effects! Reflection often improved #performance, but at a #cost. doi.org/10.48550/arX...#AI#reasoning,#performance,#cost.#cogSci

Do #AI reasoning models actually need all the iterative summaries they provide in their chains of thought? Liu et al. filtered out the low-confidence set of these "self-affirmation reflections", reducing token while retaining accuracy. doi.org/10.48550/arX...#AI #cogSci #tech #UI

How can #AI "reasoning" models be more efficient? Liu trained them on only chains-of-thought (CoTs) — no prompts. This seemed to teach models - #CoT reasoning - conditions that trigger longer CoTs - default to shorter CoTs in other conditions 🔓doi.org/10.48550/arX...#AI#CoT#CogSci

How can one stat yield opposing views? Framing - Example: One-sided arguments about crime that compare a city's crime rate with only LOWER rates or only HIGHER rates (in other times or places). - One stat; different comparison; different conclusion. More: www.usatoday.com/sto...

🚨 Free #book alert As #health #tech and #policy assessment graduates from proprietary spreadsheet apps (like #Microsoft #Excel) to open, generalizable, and powerful systems like #Rstats, a generation of researchers need to retool. This book is for them: gianluca.statistica....

How can we scale up the translation of ordinary sentences into formal #logic? Bui et al. “introduce Text-JEPA (Text-based Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture), …for converting natural language into first-order logic (NL2FOL).” doi.org/10.48550/arX...#logic? #AI #cogSci #NLP #edu

How do #AI systems’ decisions about #economics and morality differ from humans’? Some #language models “show excessive cooperation and limited incentive sensitivity, while #reasoning models …align more… with payoff-maximizing strategies.” doi.org/10.48550/arX...#AI#economics#language#reasoning#xPhi #tech

Is a #PhD worth it? In data from #Canada, doctoral grads earned less at first because (A) they entered the job market later, but they surpassed others if they (B) got academic jobs and (B) kept them. So a PhD's value is waning as B and C become harder. econpapers.repec.org...

Are #languageModels vulnerable to #anchoring #bias? Huang et al. generated the #SynAnchors dataset to find out. Anchoring was more common in shallower layers of models. A reflective reasoning strategy was usually most helpful. doi.org/10.48550/arX...#languageModels#anchoring#bias?#SynAnchors#CogSci #AI #tech #edu

Do smaller #languageModels learn to reason better from longer chains of thought? Luo et al. found - Larger CoT data subsets didn't increase reflective reasoning (Figure 3) - Accuracy didn't beat baseline until ≅32k CoT tokens (Figure 2) doi.org/10.48550/arX...#languageModels #CogSci #edu

What's #philosophy got to offer fields like #computerScience? An #AI system was trained via a method championed by a philosopher. The result wasn't perfect, but it was better than "off-the-shelf neural #languageModels" at learning about human #ethics. doi.org/10.1038/s422...

Do #AI models perform better as they do more chain-of-thought (#CoT) reasoning? When is more reasoning no longer worth it? This paper finds near-optimal results when CoT reasoning terminates ... almost immediately? More reason to think CoT's overrated? doi.org/10.48550/arX...

What have papers about #cognitiveBias been focusing on since 2010? Plenty of work on #behaviorChange or #visualization. But human-computer interaction (#HCI) appeared in 2019 ...and became the plurality? doi.org/10.1145/3706...#cognitiveBias#behaviorChange#visualization.#HCI)#CogSci #psychology #CompSci #AI #edu #dataViz