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Dan Williams@danwphilosophy.bsky.social |
280 followers 281 following 72 posts
Philosopher. Interested in: Philosophy, Psychology, Evolution, Artificial Intelligence, Social Science, Politics.
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Neil Stenhouse
@nstenhouse.bsky.social
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Philosopher @danwphilosophy.bsky.social has this idea of “the marketplace of rationalizations” and business certainty appears to be booming for FedSoc types www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
1 replies 1 reposts 8 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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“One objection to cynical stories is that they are wrong. It is often a good objection”, writes
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
—when is cynicism warranted, and when is it not? Thought provoking stuff: buff.ly/3x8XuRy
0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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How could—evolved—human niceness ultimately be driven by anything else than self-interest?
Another top post by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social explaining the strategic nature of altruism by laying bare the Machiavellian roots of human kindness: buff.ly/3yCfGmX
0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Last week, a group of prominent misinformation researchers published a commentary in Nature on misinformation and misinformation research. I strongly disagree with their analysis and explain why here: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/misinforma...
1 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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Brendan Nyhan
@brendannyhan.bsky.social
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New in Nature: Misunderstanding the harms of online misinformation www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Debunks unsupported claims about social media exposure/effects and shows low exposure concentrated in motivated fringe. We recommend holding platforms accountable for exposure in high-risk tails.
2 replies 48 reposts 87 likes
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Anna Alexandrova
@annaalexandrova.bsky.social
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"This Element argues that cultural selection is not necessary for the explanation of cultural adaptation; it shows how to build hybrid explanations that draw on aspects of cultural selection and cultural attraction theory..." #philsci
#philsky
1 replies 3 reposts 13 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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There's a popular idea that evaluating whether communication (eg. media coverage, political speech, etc) is *misleading* is a relatively simple matter, a task which can be delegated to a class of objective experts. I explain why I strongly disagree here: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-danger...
1 replies 4 reposts 6 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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How (not) to evangelize.
(Maybe you simply should let go if the idea, but in case you really must do some evangelizing, @danwphilosophy.bsky.social compares two common strategies in this fine piece): buff.ly/3xOo02E
0 replies 1 reposts 3 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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New blog post on the difference between selective and universal cynicism.
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/cynicism-f...
0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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New essay 👇 exploring the evolutionary roots of human kindness and why the subtle incentives of reputation management explain why human altruism is both sincere and strategic. Our moral psychology is more Machiavellian than we like to admit. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/strategic-...
0 replies 1 reposts 6 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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Demonizing narratives help us navigate the tricky path between being self-serving and cooperative— @danwphilosophy.bsky.social explains how motivations to eliminate or dominate people seen as rivals, threats, or burdens drive us to embrace and propagate demonization: buff.ly/3w3yXNj
0 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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The media rarely make things up. That doesn’t stop much media coverage being highly misleading. Another cracking article by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social, arguing misleading information arises from media bias and motivated reasoning, often in response to demand: buff.ly/3Q5E8mO
0 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Are the experts and organisations that fight "disinformation" as objective as they claim to be? My new essay has some thoughts on the biases and blindspots of the influential "Big Disinfo" complex that emerged in response to the populist revolts of 2016: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/debunking-...
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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Are (other) people either tragically gullible or ridiculously pigheaded? There’s plenty of evidence to believe so. But
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social is not so sure.
In this👌post he argues (!) that rational arguments are sometimes overrated. (If only we knew when...): buff.ly/3xC3B0z
0 replies 1 reposts 4 likes
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Gavin Wilde
@gavinwilde.bsky.social
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This is a phenomenal list from @danwphilosophy.bsky.social for anyone seeking more perspective and less panic on information and propaganda studies 👇
0 replies 4 reposts 8 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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I write excessively and unreadably long blog posts
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Suppose you are strongly motivated to spread a belief. Should you try to bully people into accepting it, or should you try to spread it by presenting evidence and arguments? Some thoughts:
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/rational-p...
1 replies 1 reposts 1 likes
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Gavin Wilde
@gavinwilde.bsky.social
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There's a story in here about propaganda and misinformation - one which recognizes human beings' dogged ability to hold two or more wildly conflicting views within the same head. This, as @danwphilosophy.bsky.social points out, is why it's hard to "do a science" about falsehood in the media.
1 replies 3 reposts 12 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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People are often motivated to attack, dominate, and eliminate others. To get away with this, they must recruit social support and maintain a reputation as moral and decent. Demonizing narratives often emerge to solve these problems. New essay: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/demonizing...
0 replies 4 reposts 4 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Yeah just checked out a couple of your papers - really good stuff and persuasive. My speed when it comes to writing research papers is super slow at the moment but when I have a draft I'd love to send it over for feedback.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Completely agree. Great thread. Am working on just this kind of thing at the moment as it happens - that is, the highly selective ways in which concepts like "misinformation" get deployed.
1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Matt Shields
@mattbshields.bsky.social
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This piece from the New Yorker (www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...) is a nice overview of some important research, but its framing is a good representative of the genre that’s worth briefly critically delving into.
3 replies 2 reposts 5 likes
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Henry Farrell
@himself.bsky.social
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Self promotional riff - pairs nicely with this piece with Hugo and Melissa Schwartzberg on what a realistic theory of human cognition actually means for democracy doi.org/10.1017/S000...
0 replies 6 reposts 11 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Read this excellent essay by Manvir Singh on misinformation: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
0 replies 3 reposts 10 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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New post. I argue: (1) The media rarely makes things up. (2) Media bias is nevertheless widespread. (3) Media bias is identified by biased individuals with beliefs acquired via biased media. (4) Misinformation is therefore hard to study objectively. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-media-...
0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes
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Experimental Philosophy
@xphilosopher.bsky.social
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This new cross-cultural study is pretty amazing
People show a complex pattern of judgements as to whether false implicatures count as lies — but that whole complex pattern seems to be extremely robust across cultures
Work by @alexwiegmann.bsky.social et al.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
1 replies 10 reposts 15 likes
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Justin Caouette
@drjustincaouette.bsky.social
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Recalibrating Evolutionary Debunking
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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People are generally persuaded by rational arguments. This is often a good thing. But when there is massive variation in arguing abilities and power, or decisions are not best settled via rational argument, it might not be. Some thoughts: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/people-are...
0 replies 5 reposts 5 likes
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Sacha Altay
@sachaltay.bsky.social
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"lots of the bad ideas emerge not through top-down attempts to manipulate audiences but from competition to win attention, respect, and trust from audiences who reward content that aligns with mistaken intuitions"
0 replies 3 reposts 6 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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In a new essay, I give some thoughts on:
- When the "marketplace of ideas" works.
- When it merely generates appealing falsehoods and rationalisations
- What these failures mean for questions about censorship, expertise, and public debate.
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-market...
0 replies 4 reposts 14 likes
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Prof. Catarina Dutilh Novaes
@cdutilhnovaes.bsky.social
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I wrote a paper with Merel Talbi on paradoxes of (in)tolerance and epistemic networks (in Dutch, #OpenAccess). Abstract in English below 👇 An English version of the paper will appear as a chapter of Merel's dissertation. @kevinzollman.com much inspiration from you!
www.aup-online.com/content/jour...
2 replies 1 reposts 6 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Great essay!
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Gavin Wilde
@gavinwilde.bsky.social
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In which I argue that fears of foreign subversion online are likely overblown--and that the damage to democracy is more likely to stem from the assumption that online manipulation is more prevalent, our neighbors more gullible, and human behavior more dependent on media than is likely the case. A🧵:
2 replies 37 reposts 80 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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Hour-long media literacy intervention delivering tools and tips to identify misinformation did not significantly increase respondents’ ability to identify misinformation on average—non-partisans got better, but partisans got worse:
buff.ly/3wzh0WM HT
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
0 replies 1 reposts 2 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Many people are "naive realists" in politics. They treat their political beliefs - even about complex issues - as self-evidently true and view those who disagree with them as either deceptive, stupid, or insane. I explore what gives rise to this attitude: www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/in-politic...
0 replies 1 reposts 0 likes
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Henry Farrell
@himself.bsky.social
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"If our model is right, we would likely be in much the same situation .... even if platform companies had never discovered machine learning. People would still be driven by their own wants to discover and create the kinds of shared rationalization that dominate online political debate today"
3 replies 13 reposts 23 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Yes completely agree - Stewart seems strangely thoughtful and knowledgeable when I've heard him talk in ways I wasn't expecting.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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New essay in which I explore and evaluate Walter Lippmann's critique of democracy in his very underrated 1922 book "Public Opinion". www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/can-democr...
0 replies 1 reposts 4 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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I also find that challenging.
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Yeah I'd be interested in that too. I'm similar to you, I think. Though I' m surprised by how big the audience seems to be for normie establishment politics podcasts that seem pretty continuous with legacy meda , e.g., the "rest is politics" and "the news agents".
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Yeah I think that's exactly right, although these things are difficult to generalise about (e.g., I suspect this is v. different in, say, the US and Germany), and I think people generally overestimate how much the general public engages with politics/current affairs via social media.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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Can machines learn your political attitudes in domains like immigration, democracy, climate etc from the websites you visit? German study by @norakirkizh.bsky.social et al (1k users/20M website visits) concludes the ability of algorithms to do so is very limited: buff.ly/3OVWjKU
0 replies 3 reposts 5 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Spreading the woke mind virus to students today. (Lecturing on the important contributions of feminist philosophy of science).
0 replies 1 reposts 13 likes
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Anna Alexandrova
@annaalexandrova.bsky.social
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This was such a meaningful talk and conversation. Thank you @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social for showing that open science can be much more exciting and admirable than just disclosure. Read the writings of Sabina's ERC project team and her Element on the topic #philsci #metascience
1 replies 10 reposts 25 likes
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Rob Sica
@robsica.bsky.social
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"There’s little useful advice we can give to novices about how to choose trustworthy experts."
1 replies 1 reposts 4 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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I've been really frustrated with the conventional wisdom among many people that we are living through a new "informational crisis", "disinformation age", or "post-truth era". Drawing on a wide range of evidence and arguments, I argue against such views:
www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/debunking-...
1 replies 3 reposts 6 likes
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Matt Graham
@mattgraham.bsky.social
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Great to see @pewresearch.org debunk the recent misinfo about Holocaust denial among young people.
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
0 replies 2 reposts 4 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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- A viral survey from Dec 2023 claimed that 20% of under-30s in the US are Holocaust deniers.
- The survey method was highly vulnerable to "bogus respondents" (i.e. people who answer surveys quickly at random).
- New survey suggests it's actually 3%.
www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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I like some of Graeber - he could be very insightful - but have big issues with a lot of his work. Going to be writing up a lengthy essay on 'The Dawn of Everything' at some point in the nearish future. Would love to hear your thoughts when it's done.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Dan Williams
@danwphilosophy.bsky.social
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Always welcome at Sussex if you're ever in this neck of the woods of course :) (I realise this is zero help for this specific tweet or whatever tweets are called on this site...).
1 replies 0 reposts 0 likes