David Gordon

Strengthening collective labor rights can help reduce economic inequality A research team’s findings suggest that when workers are free to advocate for better wages and benefits for themselves, it also benefits society as a whole.

Interesting piece in @uk.theconversation.com, my colleague and I just published experimental evidence for the same effect! 👇
"fairness is what you can get away with" doi.org/10.32872/spb...

Strengthening collective labor rights can help reduce economic inequality
theconversation.com/strengthenin...

Great night on Tuesday presenting my work on power and collective action @pintofscience.uk #pint25. some great questions from the audience 🙂

Oh to be rich enough for politics to just be a fun game played for vague self-esteem reasons

I made a silly meme about conferences for my private FB account and it was flagged as false information... about billionaires paying tax? Two questions.
1) didn't Facebook stop fact-checking?
2) given the c**p in my newsfeed, why is the algorithm so sensitive to info about billionaires?
🤔

With Google pretending it has invented an AI scientist, how long before 'prompt biochemist' starts appearing in LinkedIn profiles?

For all his vast failings Johnson was pretty firm on Ukraine, but looser with words, so possible for a bigger more public disagreement? But Johnson (apparently - will never meet either) has more personal charm, and Trump is very ego-motivated 🤷‍♀️

Hear a lot about the academic migration to bluesky, but why are there still so few journal accounts here? Maybe we should start making peer review contingent on that? 🤷

I think we know the reason. 14 years of Austerity and nearly a decade of Brexit have put us in dire financial and diplomatic waters. Starmer just cannot afford to p**s Trump off too much.

SPSSI Journals Science denialism is at the heart of many conspiracy theory beliefs. We propose that such beliefs are manifestations of a distal social process: spite. In three pre-registered studies, we test the hy...

Collaborator and I have a paper in the SPSSI special issue on #science denial.
"Spite and Science-Denial: Exploring the Role of Spitefulness
in #conspiracy Ideation and COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs" @bpsofficial.bsky.social
Open access @ doi.org/10.1111/josi...

Margo Wilson, and how to do evolutionary human science In October 2024, I had the great honour of travelling to Hamilton to give the Margo Wilson Memorial Lecture.  It was fifteen years since Margo’s death. Preparing the lecture gave me the oppo…

If only the evolutionary social sciences had more Margo Wilsons. Lovely piece from Daniel Nettle on how her work is "a particularly successful example of how you can bring evolutionary understanding to social science topics and be genuinely constructive; rather than just irritating people"

i sent an email to DOGE and suggested replacing the entire Department of Defense with Warhammer 40,000 miniatures but they actually did the math and it turns out that would be much more expensive

I think it's a neat solution. Based on some assumptions (only complex social behavior = problem solving intelligence) and the exclusivity problem, but these are true for every Fermi Paradox solution 😄👽

We could probably model this, or we could just watch what happens over the next four years... 😬

5) There will be a tippling point where such a high % of individuals are in point 3) that point 4) is so easy and occurs so often that society destabilases and collapses
6) This will always occur before the societal complexity required for interstellar travel is reached.

4) Ignorance in the face of such complexity generates an underlying uncertainty. This uncertainty amplifies those social brain biases, e.g., fear of the other, which can be manipulated with greater ease by other individuals for status and power.

3) Most individuals will not have the capacity or the time to understanding most of the workings of a society capable of producing interstellar travel

2) Such 'social brains' comes with fundamental behavioral biases that are predictably irrational. These influence social behavior regardless of the level of technology, and can be destructive at large scale (e.g., in/out group, status/power)

My “social brain” solution to the #Fermi Paradox 👽 [short 🧵]
1) Only an evolutionary history of high sociality / cooperativeness can create organisms that have the individual metacognitive problem-solving intelligence necessary to produce a technological society

It's often claimed that tax cuts will "pay for themselves".

A thread on when this is and isn't true, the real constraints on tax cuts and tax rises, and the live experiment being conducted by Scotland.

‘Enigmatic’ cave art was made by ice age children Charcoal doodling appears 14,000 years ago, as adults drew more proficiently nearby

“Charcoal doodling appears 14,000 years ago, as adults drew more proficiently nearby” www.science.org/content/arti...

Great time to make setting up a small start-up easier: "Americans, want to run a business AND not have children with polio? Come to the UK"

YouTube video by Angela Collier physics crackpots: a 'theory'

Came across this video by physicist and YouTuber @acollierastro.bsky.social. I honestly think 'playdough facts' or 'playdough reality' should become a recognised term in conspiracy theory research (skip to 18.00 to see what I mean). Works perfectly. youtu.be/11lPhMSulSU?...

The University of Silent Hill bids you welcome

Driving to/from work with Christmas songs playing, I am worryingly aware I'm in the prologue re-enactment to the festive special of shows called "missing person" or "unsolved murders". 🧑‍🎄☃️💀

NEW: Why do we always think crime is rising, even when it isn’t?

This week I looked at one of the big data mysteries. Britain is 2/3 less violent than the 1990s; thefts were higher pre-lockdown

Why, then, doesn’t it feel like it?

1/8

@thetimes.com

🔗 www.thetimes.com/article/b63d...

Gatekeeping as a slur depends on what's on the other side of the gate, and I think if overnight we abandoned the journal system, we'd return to it in a few years. If you can stomach going back to the other platform, I wrote a thread a while ago on "the day after peer review"
x.com/DavidSGordon...

In sum, I don't see how sprinkling scientific inquiry with mechanisms from the social media hellscape is beneficial. The current system has serious flaws, but many - from uncompensated labor to the propagation of questionable research - would be multiplied by a more 'open' system, not diminished.

[#3 cont]. These notions are exactly what the early creators of the modern web envisaged. There's a famous interview where Terry Pratchett explains how the internet would spread and legitimize fake news while Bill Gates insists it will create a utopia of rational thought. Who was right?

[#3 cont]. I find the the idealized community of scholars spending all day critiquing one another’s work like a cyber-punk Enlightenment party imagined by those who propose more 'open' systems confusingly naïve. And this isn't cynicism, because we've been here before.

[#3 cont]. It's hard to explain to non-researchers about predatory journals and that 'published' isn't a mark of 'Truth', now try explaining why my manuscript has any more claim to fact that some pseudo-science nonsense: both are posted & people are agreeing or disagreeing, you're just biased 🤷‍♂️