Charlene Lew

How writers can rise above the noise in a world of AI-generated content:

@PhD_Genie significant

What is the best word in academia?

“Correlation does *not* imply causation” is not the last word—it’s only the beginning. @cesarchavezp29 tracks how modern economics has been approaching causality (and the causality fallacy… and its reverse): bit.ly/4cpiLsm

@SpencrGreenberg When you watch a magician, you enter a tacit agreement to be amused by being deceived. Therefore, even though the magician lies about it being psychological, any form of magic is a lie. Not unethical, as you agree to it.

Is it unethical for a magician to pretend they are doing their tricks using psychology when they are actually using classic magic techniques (like sleight of hand) and they continue to claim this untruth when not on stage (e.g., during interviews about how they do their work)?

This young man is going places

The importance of living up to one's moral ideals

Amazing 😱🗣️🎶

Can we predict the past? 🔮 New open-access paper in American Historical Review proposes 'Retrodiction'—using gaps in the archival record to test historical theories. Interdisciplinary collab feat. David Gill, Marc Trachtenberg, @PTetlock @cendripetalfrce, and more 🧵👇

I've had all these Christmas days. Lovely message. Today I'm blessed to be with my sons.

Next time I teach logical fallacies to the freshmen, I am totally using this video

No matter who you are, you probably don't know enough about group dynamics! Watch this superb conversation with @ColinMFisher to learn the basics. Author Talks: Getting group dynamics right mck.co/4n2QUzZ via @McKinsey #groups #teams

The Siebel Scholars program honors top students from leading graduate schools in business, computer science, bioengineering, and energy science. Meet five second-year Stanford MBAs recognized for their achievements and commitment to shaping the future. brnw.ch/21wWxBi

" ... in the end, life rewards those who understand the game they're actually playing. And it's not chess." robin-guo.com/p/life-is-poke…

A 101-year-old says the key to his longevity is refusing to act his age

Does deliberate cognitive effort reduce or boost the tendency to resist belief-incongruent information (hence for wilful ignorance)? Hutmacher eg al argue it depends on the underlying goal—accuracy goals → less bias; directional goals → more bias: buff.ly/BxLvTGa

Extreme partisans love to censor their political opponents.

Hey Claude: "Please create the PowerPoint shared by the high powered management consultants hired by Hamlet after seeing his fathers ghost" That was the only prompt. Loved that Claude made this from the McKinsey Elsinore office (with the right colors!), also that SWOT analysis!

I want to experience something like this one day

@koenfucius @SpencrGreenberg Interesting contingencies proposed. Could it be that people use social media excessively because of mental health? The inverse mechanism certainly also plays a role.

@SpencrGreenberg I think that makes good sense, but it is somewhat unsurprising—as your non-prescription drug analogy suggests. Doesn’t it really boil down to “some practices are largely fine in moderate use, yet problematic for (rare) extreme, excessive use”?

It's interesting how studies on the negative effects of social media on mental health are mixed: some find an effect, some don't (or only find a very small effect). Some take this as proof that social media is actually fine for mental health. My hypothesis is different. I think that the effects of social media are extremely heterogeneous based on app, population, and dosage: that in some subgroups, some social media apps (when used in high doses) have substantially negative effects on mental health, but in other subgroups, using other social media apps in moderate doses has no negative effect on mental health. For instance, 13-year-old girls in the US using TikTok or Instagram for 4 hours a day may be very differently impacted than 25-year-old men in Denmark using Twitter/X or WhatsApp for 30 minutes per day. The current studies may be like trying to answer the generic question: "Do non-prescription drugs have a negative mental health effect?" This question can't be answered because it combines too many dissimilar things. In particular, the answer hinges on which drugs we're talking about (cannabis vs. fentanyl), the age of the person doing the drug (teenagers vs. adults), and the quantity of drug use (occasional vs. extreme usage). If my hypothesis is true, then getting to the bottom of the true impacts of social media on mental health will require carefully designed studies that subdivide by app and by population (ideally after preliminary research is done to figure out what apps and which populations are reasonable to group together - for instance, it may be essential to segment by gender and rough age group, but it's important to get these segmentations right if the research is going to make progress). Another thing that makes this research so tricky is that social media literally adapts itself to what you pay attention to. So if you tend to click on upsetting things, it will show you more upsetting things, which can create a self-reinforcing cycle, whereas if you click on things that are interesting and pleasant, you'll get more of those instead. So even at the level of the individual, social media can provide highly varied experiences. It's instructive to compare your social media feed to a friend's (on the same app). When I've done this, it's been remarkable to see just how different our experiences on that app are. Overall, my best guess is that most people’s social media use would be found to have little or no negative causal link to mental health. But I would predict that there is a moderately sized causal negative link to mental health for: • Teenage girls scrolling Instagram a large amount (e.g., checking it >25 times daily) • Teenage boys playing video games non-socially, very large amounts (e.g., > 5 hours per day) • People who are already predisposed to worry a lot about the state of the world, scrolling Twitter a large amount (e.g., > 3 hours daily) • I also would predict a negative impact on attention or focus for those who use TikTok a lot (>5 hours daily) • But I would predict little to no average negative mental health effects for apps that a person uses only 20 minutes per day or less, since I think that's unlikely to be a high enough dose to cause problems for many people I'd be curious to know: what would you predict in terms of links between specific app usage and mental health?