Why we should rethink causal mediation, and what to do instead? Come to hear the answer from Vanessa Didelez at the next CIIG seminar!
The seminar will be hybrid. If you are in London, come join us in person at UCL! Otherwise, you can join on Zoom as usual. Registration links in comment below.
How do you align AI in a world of plural, conflicting, and evolving human values?
A starting point is human society itself.
@sydneylevine.bsky.social and I are hiring a postdoc at NYU to combine insights from cultural evolution, computational moral cognition, and AI safety.
Please share widely!1/
The synth backing track takes the vibe to an unexpected place 🥲
I wonder how these rates of sycophancy (and their effects) compare against realistic counterfactuals like talking with one’s close friends or spouse.
Really helpful framework for thinking about the utility of survey experiments for practitioners by @benmtappin.bsky.social 👇
www.benmtappin.com/publication/...
Georgia Tomova
Closing out the teaching semester this week with one of my favourite topics. Sadly its pedagogy was forever and unforgivably mar'd by the truly worst naming convention of all time...
Yes. Then if you push on this the claim becomes “okay it may not cause but it’s still useful because it predicts”. But then it’s like if predictive accuracy was your goal the design and analysis should be different e.g., CV + more predictors. I’ve been fully Westfall & Yarkoni-pilled on this point.
📣 New job at Oxford's Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM)! 📣
The Departments of Politics & IR (DPIR) and Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) are hiring an Associate Professor of Causal and Experimental Methods.
Come work with me and amazing Oxford peeps! Deadline NOON April 27th.
Michael Muthukrishna
Important @benmtappin.bsky.social on the need to carefully consider the relevant counterfactual when evaluating AI chatbots (also applies to social media!) benmtappin.substack.com/p/are-ai-cha...
Ben Tappin
Ben Tappin
Ben Tappin
University salary from £58,265 - £77,645 per annum which is inclusive of an Oxford University Weighting of £1,730 p.aPermanent upon completion of a successful review. The review is conducted during th...
A research note in which I articulate a simple framework to try and facilitate clearer thinking about the value of survey pretesting for practitioners.
www.benmtappin.com
Ben Ansell
Brendan Nyhan
A new paper in Science measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models. The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
Video
Psychology has a whole cottage industry in which people come up with some construct that is essentially "attitudes/beliefs/expectations/feelings about X", and then the central claim is that this construct is a super important determinant of future X outcomes.>
