Pals! A new @neverpo.st! I read the news and Producer @audreyevans.bsky.social talks with @oddletters.bsky.social and @kissane.myatproto.social about AI hallucinations sweeping the nation, what this means for the production of knowledge, and what Dark Elves have to do w/ it all (a fair amount tbh!)

this summer i am splitting my time between thinking about LLMs + genre theory and wrapping up my book on venture capital policy in the 1970s and as a result i am _moderately crazed_. please enjoy the evidence here!

Looks like the unhinged AI podcast ep with the always-great @oddletters.bsky.social is up! Ty Audrey and co for the chance to talk about LLMs as, you know, demons.

I’m in the just wept in public to Long As I Can See the Light while transcribing an interview with a Shakespearean actor telling me about his Jean Valjean tattoo over chips and salsa in Texas stage of writing this book. Solid.

Huh, this is now the most downloaded episode since my interview with @rushkoff.com about billionaire preppers (episode 242). youarenotsosmart.com/2026/04/13/y...

I love that the word “refrigerator” stuck, and now we must live with it. Also, FYI, the “re” part doesn’t mean “to return to its previous state,” but “to intensely and purposefully make so.” Latin stuff.

All my spam emails have switched over to rather obvious LLM-generated body copy. I'm fascinated by how writing like this now seems, well, obvious. It took a minute, but our innate pattern recognition (much of what brains do) is catching up, maybe even outpacing the spam/slop.

I'm in the wipe-chalk-marker-streaks-off-desk-with-coffee-retrieved-by-pinky-then-post-about-it stage of the writing process.

I'd like to see an alt Spider-Man comic/movie where this is the species of spider that bites him, and these are the extent of the powers he gains:

This is incredible. I don’t know how else to explain this but it makes the moon look so real. I get that’s a funny thing to say but the clarity and the closeness of the image taken by an actual person changes the perspective I think.

New episode about the latest research into how AI can negatively impact human reasoning and decision making: youarenotsosmart.com/2026/04/13/y...

I strongly suspect AI is not getting better nearly as quickly as it is getting better at convincing users that it is getting better.

Splashdown! Welcome home, Integrity.

Lawd. Happycry over here

🌎 Watch the return of NASA's Artemis II mission live with us--just an hour to go until the astronauts splash down! www.scientificamerican.com/video/watch-...

This is so exceedingly rad. Livestream: www.youtube.com/live/6RwfNBt...

hey kids you may want to tune into the NASA livestream for the Artemis 2 mission it's rapidly approaching home and the earth is getting *big* they're set to splashdown at 8:07 pm tonight www.youtube.com/live/6RwfNBt...

I went back to capture what the astronauts said in full when the clock was stopped at T-10 minutes and they were asked if they were go for launch: This is Victor. We are going for our families. This is Christina. We are going for our teammates. This is Jeremy. We are going for all humanity.

Really timely re-release of @davidmcraney.bsky.social’s brilliant You Are Not So Smart podcast with @chenoweth.bsky.social. #NoKings feels so close to 3.5%. Also makes the key point that the likes of the odious MTG opposing the US government really helps. Stoking division works both ways.

I appreciate how when I fumble a bit entering my food intake into my app for that stuff, it just dutifully records and calculates. You ate 690 little red potatoes? Sure. 11,900 calories for dinner? Ok. No judgment here. Keep at it. What gets measured gets managed

I love how we reacted to Furbies, owl toys that played prerecorded gibberish less and less and prerecorded words more and more. People believed they were learning, they had minds. Give us just the right amount of the right kind of lifeform cues, and we will fill in the rest with agentic pareidolia

The information deficit model is appealing, but the research suggests we resist updating our priors even when exposed to mountains of expertly-vetted information if that updating threatens our social connections or requires us to admit we made poor decisions based on misinformation and propaganda.

DebunkBot is live on BlueSky! Tag @debunkbot.bsky.social in reply to any post to get the facts

People significantly overestimate the social costs of changing their beliefs. Partisans self censor and suppress dissent to avoid appearing disloyal and facing social punishment. Reminding them of prior group loyalty can open them to changing their beliefs pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41627338/

Everyday wisdom in 30” from @jayvanbavel.bsky.social @davidmcraney.bsky.social Your attention is your most valuable resource (“pay”) so don’t let others decide how you use it. Scrolling adds up! No “view from nowhere”, believing is seeing. Most political content on SM is a tiny minority opinion.

How can so many people watch the same event yet “see” so many different realities? @davidmcraney.bsky.social and I discuss why people often come to different conclusions--even if they watch the same video Listen: youarenotsosmart.com/2026/02/16/y... Read here: www.romolocapuano.com/wp-content/u...

I listened to this ep of You Are Not So Smart with guest Steven Franconeri from Colorado State, and I think every jurisdiction in the country oughta be looking to his lab for help. Episode webpage: www.youarenotsosmart.com Media file: stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/aa9f2648-25e...

Got to meet @davidmcraney.bsky.social at a conference last summer. Knew his books well before we met. He is a journalist who is great as translating research and practice to broader audiences. Last week I had the chance to chat w him on his podcast about my work. youarenotsosmart.com/2026/01/23/y...

Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

⌛️ Two days left to double your donation to @give-directly.bsky.social for #PodsFightPoverty! Donate: givedirectly.org/pods

Want to avoid a terrible holiday dinner? Cognitive scientists at Northwestern have created a game (that you can download for free) that makes it possible to avoid fights and find common ground when addressing the issues you likely avoid discussing. youarenotsosmart.com/2025/12/22/y...

According to actual, real studies into this sort of thing, the number of people needed to ensure a protest movement succeeds is much lower than you might assume: youarenotsosmart.com/2025/05/14/y... Apple Podcats: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6og4...

Always relevant: youarenotsosmart.com/2024/01/20/y...

My first morning as the writer-in-residence at Ernest Hemingway's house. Info about this place: comlib.org/hemingway/he...

Great case for knowing your most cherished identities to recognise when your misinformation radar is likely to fail. @davidmcraney.bsky.social @matthewfacciani.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/y...

Had to use a VPN to get on BlueSky to let you know that I drank chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast out of a Mason jar for lunch before writing about the role of hermeneutics in the pursuit of intellectual humility when avoiding the fallacy of reification concerning abstractions like "genius" 👋

A big THANK YOU to @davidmcraney.bsky.social for featuring the #LoveFactually podcast on #YouAreNotSoSmart! The episode delves into #TheNotebook, figuring out what the movie gets right -- and what it gets wrong -- about how relationships work. Enjoy! youarenotsosmart.com/2025/08/04/y...

I think this is super rad and want you to know about it: I am headed to Chicago right now to attend a conference of scientists who study disagreement at the Center for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern. Article about the launch of this place: www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/blog/20...

@davidmcraney.bsky.social talking to Britt Frank is one of my favourite things. I loved this episode both times I listened to it. I just hope it won’t take a third time before I put into practice some of the really useful advice that Britt doles out. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/y...

As this episode of one of the best podcasts around explains, people who believe in conspiratorial narratives are often intelligent, & their retreat into dangerous nonsense like Q can be seen as a rational (but flawed & fearful) attempt to make sense of an irrational world. @davidmcraney.bsky.social

Reminder: The smarter a person is and the more education they earn, the better they will become at rationalizing and justifying their incorrect beliefs if so motivated.. Critical thinking is a skill, like playing guitar. It must be learned and practiced (and the person must want to do both).

Seems a good time to re-share this episode of YANSS about why civil resistance is incredibly powerful and how that works (scientifically), but also what it takes to make it work after the soldiers and police arrive. Guest: @chenoweth.bsky.social - Links: youarenotsosmart.com/2025/05/14/y...

Why civil resistance works, and why the number of people needed to reach a protest movement's goals is much lower than you might assume: New episode with Erica Chenoweth - @chenoweth.bsky.social - youarenotsosmart.com/2025/05/14/y...

Why civil resistance works, and why the number of people needed to reach a protest movement's goals is much lower than you might assume: New episode with Erica Chenoweth - @chenoweth.bsky.social - youarenotsosmart.com/2025/05/14/y...

@davidmcraney.bsky.social introduces a special critical thinking issue—featuring @critikid.bsky.social, @thinkingpowers.bsky.social, @quackwatch.bsky.social, and more. Explore the intro and full issue: skepticalinquirer.org/2025/04/teac... #CriticalThinking #ScienceEd

Why the people who are most likely to suggest that you “do your own research” are also the least likely to do their own research: youarenotsosmart.com/2023/08/19/y...

Hey everyone wondering if you can ever get through to people stuck in cult-like thinking and change their minds (spoiler - you can). How Minds Change is, right now, a Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon. You can grab the ebook for $1.99 Limited time, ends at midnight, here's a link: a.co/d/gMmjgU0

Saved a turtle. Found him in the garage, took him to a pond. Put down 1,000 words in the manuscript for my next book (about the cognitive linguistic beauty of difficult to define words). Edited tomorrow’s podcast about psychology of parts work. Now learning Money for Nothing on guitar. Good day.

New episode: The science behind how our propensity for magical thinking can lead us to deceive each other by first deceiving ourselves – youarenotsosmart.com/2025/03/03/y...

On the 10th anniversary of The Dress, I checked in on Pascal Wallisch, one of the NYU psychologists whose research revealed why we see it differently. He told me he considers it “the ultimate temporal touchstone” of the before COVID times. He was also wearing the dress (will post to YANSS Patreon):