Rob Sica (robsica.bsky.social)
@SicaRob
Social Sciences and Humanities Librarian, CSU Libraries More active account with edgier stuff: @RobSica
An ongoing thread for me to keep track of favorite recent papers in social epistemology...
"People are less gullible than you think" reason.com/2020/02/09/peo… "Misinfo on misinfo" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20… "Misunderstanding the harms of online misinfo" researchdmr.com/files/Misunder… "Don't panic (yet)" knightcolumbia.org/content/dont-p… "Scapegoating the algorithms" asteriskmag.com/issues/11/scap…
"The division into coalitions maps onto a pro-establishment/anti-establishment political cleavage, [...] with the addition of one faction (skeptics) that is ideologically aligned with the pro-establishment camp but epistemologically more agnostic" cambridge.org/core/journals/…
"The fact that demand drives misinformation consumption and sharing is perhaps the most important lesson from the misinformation literature."
New blog! ‘Consequences of a skewed discourse around generative AI and elections’. Read why @_FelixSimon_ @oiioxford and @Sacha_Altay @IPZ_ch believe claims about the impact of generative AI on elections have been overblown: bit.ly/46YTZg7 1/2
“The appeal of the “wrecking ball” narrative lies partly in its promise of a simple fix to complex problems.” Excellent summary, as usual, from @danwilliamsphil asteriskmag.com/issues/11/scap…
"these findings arguably constitute the clearest and strongest kind of empirical support that we will find for the claim that studying philosophy makes students better thinkers"
How harmful is GenAI around elections? Will it trigger a misinformation apocalypse and upend elections? I am happy to finally be able to share @Sacha_Altay’s & my answers to these and other questions on which we have been working for a year and which is out via @knightcolumbia.
Debunking academic nonsense one podcast at a time. Great convo w/Ryan. Spiced w/a bit more methods/stats than many of my recent pods.
Can a test tell you if you are secretly racist? Is stereotype threat the reason for disparities in test scores? Are women discriminated against in science? Are stereotypes accurate? I went over all of these questions and more with @PsychRabble in a fascinating interview about…
"the truth is that people who are in broad philosophical agreement with me—while they can and do provide robust criticism—are just less likely to hit me with the toughest and hardest objections" dailynous.com/2025/07/08/the…
I wrote about epistemic trespassing and why it is bad for my Substack. Tl;dr: it is tempting to talk about it as a moral failing but I think it is often more helpful to view trespassing behaviour as a rational response to bad incentives. Link in the reply.
"The purity of one’s motives seems to have no bearing on the truth of one’s factual beliefs about society and how it operates. History is littered with examples of well-intentioned people who believed completely false things and caused immense harm." conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-standpoi…
When it comes to interpreting evolutionary psychological research, readers also have a responsibility to ensure they develop an accurate understanding of evolutionary psychological research. psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/darwin…
Should Universities Restrict Generative AI? In this @JusticeEverywh1 blog post, Karl de Fine Licht discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on the moral concerns of banning Generative AI in universities. justice-everywhere.org/general/should… #philosophy
"misinformation receives excessive attention and distract us from more pressing and important problems, some of which may provide a fertile ground for misinformation to take hold, such as democratic backsliding, polarization, or rising inequality" osf.io/preprints/psya…
More thoughts on the virus metaphor for misinformation w/@Prof_PhilH & @tinaseabrooke 🔽🔽🔽 skeptic.org.uk/2025/06/the-vi…
Feedback on DEI Plans at My University My 200th post on S*bstack! [Link below.]
This is a slide, but it originally appeared in the Gullibility paper linked above. It constitutes the foundational principle for (my) scientific skepticism. So, the issue is not really "is there a case to be made for the phenomena" (ST or anything else). The scientific issue is,…
Are you a student or professor in psychology -- or any of the social sciences? If so, you've definitely seen this mistake before. It's all over the textbooks and journal articles. You might have seen it formulated in any of these ways: - Is that behavior evolved or learned?…
Want to know how to cultivate collective intellectual humility? Being smart is knowing what you don’t know. From work meetings to book clubs, use these tips to boost your group’s thinking: Many groups would benefit from cultivating the value of collective intellectual humility.…
Fwiw, if I had to pick a single document at this moment which authoritatively & comprehensively summarizes the causes of & remedies for addressing disinformation, it would be this Institut Jean Nicod policy brief. Highly recommend uploading it into a chatbot for translation.