Using science and technology to understand and improve how we think.
Be honest. How often do you pay to avoid physical activity and then pay again to reintroduce it? Paying to save some time or effort is not irrational. But we often pay again to spend that “saved” time and effort doing what we already paid someone else to do. Paying twice? Without net savings of time or Continue reading Cancel Your Gym Membership (And Uber Rides, Lawn Services, Dog Walker, etc.)
In late 2025, artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI automated the process of determining which model is best for a task. This allowed users to simply send their prompt and let the system determine whether to respond “fast or slow . In a 2022 paper, I suggested that this kind of strategic deployment of slow, more reflective Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 16: Strategic Reflectivism
Anyone else hate reading or grading loooong, generic, or unconvincing essays? In case I'm not alone, I'm sharing the 3-paragraph essay assignment I've been refining for a few years. Feel free to adapt it!
You may have heard me drone on and on about this thing called reflective thinking . We philosophers and cognitive scientists are preoccupied with it. However, the term reflection is sometimes used in different ways by scholars. To unify, make sense of, and guide our research, I synthesized a unified account from hundreds of years of Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 15: A Two-Factor…
You may have heard that atheists tend to score better on reflection tests than theists? But why do scientists find this analytic atheism correlation? Many studies have attempted to answer this question. Of course, even the best studies had limitations. So Steve Stich, Justin Sytsma, and I developed better methods and studied over 70,000 people Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 14: Analytic…
Suppose you glance at a clock that, unbeknownst to you, is broken, showing the same time all day. Nonetheless, you happened to look at the clock precisely when it showed the correct time. So your belief about the time is correct. My question is this: did you know what time it is? Perhaps you think Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 13: Reflection-Philosophy Order Effects and Correlations Across…
In 2002, a chapter from Kahneman and Frederick mentioned the bat and ball problem . A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.How much does the ball cost? By 2005, Frederick’s Cognitive Reflection Test paper added the lesser known Widgets and Lily Pad problems. In the intervening 20-ish Continue reading The Bat And Ball Problem 20 Years Later
J. Robert Oppenheimer “was widely known not just for his scientific success but for his remarkably wide-ranging knowledge of the humanities [,…] an extraordinary combination…”, says Ashutosh Jogalekar in his 8th and final post about Oppie over at 3 Quarks Daily (2023). Why do I start with this quote? I think it alludes to an Continue reading Oppenheimer: ‘Philosopher-Scientist-Statesman’
I have a question for you: If a bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? . Did 10 cents seem right? The authors of questions like this are attempting to lure you to accept this incorrect answer in order to Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 12: Tell Us What You Really Think
Sometimes philosophers complain that scientists do philosophy badly and that philosophers may thereby be underrated. The idea is that people could have better philosophy if they just turned to academic philosophers rather than the popular scientists that have done philosophy badly. (Perhaps analogous complaints about philosophers circulate among scientists). In this post, I want to Continue…
In this episode, I read my short paper with Morgan Thompson in WIRES Cognitive Science titled, Testing for Implicit Bias: Values, Psychometrics, and Science Communication . You may have heard about implicit bias. It is measured by indirect rather than direct measures of bias. We reconstruct arguments from debates about these measures, reveal some instances of Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep.…
This time I read my 2022 paper in Review of Philosophy and Psychology titled, Great Minds Do Not Think Alike: Philosophers Views Predicted by Reflection, Education, Personality, and Other Demographic Differences . As the title suggests, various psychological factors predicted variance in philosophers answers to classic philosophical questions. This raises questions about how psychological and…
In this episode, I read one of my 2022 articles in Metaphilosophy titled, Bounded Reflectivism Epistemic Identity . Does reflective reasoning help or hinder our judgment? In this paper, I take a middle view between reflectivism and anti-reflectivism that I call bounded reflectivism. The idea is that reflection is a tool that can be used Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 9: Bounded Reflectivism…
On this episode, I read one of my articles from 2021 titled, Reflective Reasoning and Philosophy in Philosophy Compass. Both philosophers and cognitive scientists seem to think that philosophical thinking could depend on whether we reason intuitively or reflectively. In this paper, I review the claims, scientific methods, evidence, and what we may need to Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 8:…
Every semester I begin courses by asking students to close their eyes and imagine a philosopher doing philosophy. When I ask students to share what they imagined, I get classic stereotypes. “An old guy” says one. “With a beard,” adds another. “Yeah, in a toga!” yells someone in the back. [ ] byrdnick.com/teaching#teachingstatement This is unsurprising. Continue reading 7 Philosophy Reading Lists…
Some colleagues and readers have asked about my experience with grant applications. Perhaps the most common questions is just Where do I find out about grant opportunities? That one is fairly straightforward. As usual, I recommend the automated or passive method: find websites that will crawl the internet for what you seek and then send Continue reading 9 Research Funding Resources
In 2020, I deferred a tenure track job one year to start a postdoc. By Fall 2021, I had started the tenure track position (restructuring the postdoc as an external grant). In this post, I will report my time-logging data for all of 2020 and 2021, which includes my final 7 months of graduate school, Continue reading Two Years Of Time Logs as a Postdoc. and Assistant Prof.
I have been considering changes to my Philosophy of Mind syllabus. One kind of change would be to include non-Western philosophies and philosophers. So I did what every scholar of our era does when it s time to venture in to new territory: I asked #PhilosophyTwitter. In this post, I ll share the results. 1. The Twitter Continue reading Non-Western Philosophy of Mind
On this episode of Upon Reflection, I read my 2021 paper in Logoi titled, On Second Thought, Libet-style Unreflective Intentions May Be Compatible With Free Will . Imagine if I could predict your behavior before you even became conscious of your intention to behave that way. Would this mean that you don t have free will? I Continue reading Upon Reflection, Ep. 7: Unreflective Intentions Are…
Welcome to the latest episode of Upon Reflection. This time, I read my paper with Michał Białek, Your health vs. my liberty: Philosophical beliefs dominated reflection and identifiable victim effects when predicting public health recommendation compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic (Total N = 998). As the title suggests we found that complying with public health Continue reading Upon Reflection,…
I defended my doctoral dissertation in 2020—yes, remotely. I also defended a master s thesis a few years earlier. I learned a few things and sought plenty of advice between these two defenses. In this post I will share the checklist that I used to prepare for the dissertation defense. (This checklist assumes that your committee Continue reading How To Prepare For A Thesis Defense
Like many academics, I ve given dozens of academic presentations and dozens more audio and video interviews in the past few years. After a series of subpar presentations, plenty of feedback, and lots of practice, I now get remarkably positive feedback on these presentations. For example, some professors have advised their graduate students to model their Continue reading 6 Tips For Academic…
The data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) has suffered for years now (Byrd, 2023; Chandler Paolacci, 2017; Moss Litman, 2018; Chmielewski Kucker, 2019; Ahler et al., 2020; Kennedy et al., 2020; MacInnis et al., 2020). There are a few ways to protect online survey data quality. In this post, I will Continue reading 5 Ways To Overcome Junk Data From mTurk (and online surveys more generally)
Philosophers and cognitive scientists tend to think that reflective reasoning will improve our judgments and decisions. The idea reflection will lead us to test our judgments by looking for their coherence with our beliefs about similar cases and our beliefs about a broader range of issues a la reflective equilibrium. This sounds intuitively plausible. But is Continue reading What good is…
Organizing a conference or workshop is time-consuming yet important work. I have organized a handful or international conferences, in-person and online. In this post, I distill my conference organizing experience into a list of 10 steps to make your conference or workshop a success. To find out more about organizing conferences/workshops—especially online—see Online Conferences: Some history,…
What is the source of morality? There are many proposed sources of morality. Here are eight, with links to peer-reviewed resources where you can find out more about each proposed source of morality. 1. Science What? Science as a source of morality? But, but—calm yourself. Morality may have begun as something unscientific—e.g., a way to Continue reading 8 Sources Of Morality
I was on the job market in the Fall of 2019 and the Spring of 2020. I submitted over 280 job applications to universities, governments, companies, think tanks, and grant agencies. After some interviews, job talks, and a few offers, I thought that I would share my experience here (and in this video conversation). If Continue reading A Year On The Job Market With A Ph.D. – Some Data
Welcome to Upon Reflection. In this episode, I review the major take-aways and findings from my dissertation titled, Reflective Reasoning For Real People . I explain what cognitive scientists mean by terms like reflective reasoning , how reflection is measured empirically, how reflection can either help or hinder our reasoning, how more reflective philosophers tend toward certain Continue reading…
Why did otherwise life affirming people flout public health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic? Was it leaders messaging? For example, are flatten the curve graphs about statistical victims less effective than information about identifiable victims? Was it people s reasoning? Do some people not think carefully enough about public health? Might people who better at math Continue reading…
Who is more likely to be killed by police officer in the US: A white person or a black person? You might think, "More white people are killed by police than black people. So the white person is more likely to be killed by a police offer than the white person." That's a fallacy. It's known as the base rate fallacy. In this post, I'll explain.
I m lucky to share updates about new jobs, new projects, and what s happening next on the blog, the podcast, and the YouTube channel. I ll explain below. New Jobs I spent the last year on various job markets. I submitted over 280 applications to academic jobs, public sector jobs, private sector jobs, and some non-government organizations. Continue reading New Jobs, New Projects, What s Next
My colleagues and I are deeply saddened about the unexpected passing of Anders Ericsson on June 17. Dr. Ericsson was not only a massive figure in psychology, philosophy, performance, and beyond but—in my experience—an outstanding person. Standout Memories There is much to say about Anders. I can speak only to the past few years—and only Continue reading Anders Ericsson (1947-2020)
In this episode of Upon Reflection, I explain how academics should conference better. More accurately, I read my chapter, Online Conferences: Some History, Methods, and Benefits from Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene. This chapter reviews some history of online academic conferencing going back to the 1970s, explain the potential advantages of Continue…
In my last post, I considered whether reflective reasoning is a virtue. One possibility was that reflection cannot be a virtue. However, if reflection is not a virtue, then we need another account of why many people value reflection. One such account might be that reflection is a skill. In this post, I ll briefly consider Continue reading On Whether Reflection Is A Skill
A timely guest post by Katlyn Proctor Recording a conference presentation is helpful for many reasons, from wanting to share the presentation with others to having it simply to look back on and refer to. Having a high-quality recording is therefore essential and needs to be done right the first time. There are different ways you can Continue reading How to Record Professional-Quality Conference…
Some philosophers think of rationality in terms of virtue. For them, the rational thing to do is what the epistemically virtuous person would do. One type of reasoning that I study is reflective reasoning in which we step back and reconsider a gut reaction. So I have found myself asking, Is reflective reasoning a virtue? Continue reading On Whether Reflection Is A Virtue
In the wake of virus outbreaks in multiple countries, many scholars are reconsidering conference plans. As someone that has organized multiple online conferences—sometimes during states of emergency—I have thought a lot about how online conferences can be more resilient to such emergencies. I have also found online conferences to be preferable in many other ways, Continue reading Online…
In this podcast, I read my chapter, "Causal Network Accounts of Ill-being: Depression Digital Well-being". The paper reviews how well-being and ill-being can be understood in terms of the causal networks studied by economists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and other scientists.
I have had some side gigs in graduate school that involved creating invoices for hourly work—web development, copyediting, research assistance, etc. I used Toggl to log my time. At some point, I realized that I could log all of my work time—not just the billable time. So in 2018 and 2019, I logged all of Continue reading Two Years In The Life Of A Grad Student: Time Logging Data
Philosophers are stereotyped as studying things like, "What is a good life?" To break this stereotype, I've spent some time studying a different question, "What is a bad life?" More seriously, I have applied causal network accounts of well-being to ill-being, particularly depression and digital well-being. My latest paper on this has now been accepted for publication. So now I can share it. While…
I m rereading James Lang s Small Teaching (2016). The first time I read it, I found it to be outstandingly helpful for thinking about course design, lesson planning, assignments, and more. In this post, I want to share my notes from Lang s chapter on The Retrieval Effect (Chapter 1). 1. Practice, practice, practice Here s the basic Continue reading How Questions Can Enhance Teaching Learning
I’ll be presenting new data from a pre-registered replication at some conferences in the next few months. The study replicated findings that those with a Ph.D. in philosophy are more reflective, that less reflective philosophers tended towards certain philosophical views, and that some of these reflection-philosophy correlations are partly confoudned with culture, education, gender, or Continue…
A 2019 paper in the Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science found that most psychology textbooks, instructors, and students misinterpret 'statistical significance' and p values. Talk about a headline! More important than the headline, however, are the right interpretations and what we can do to correct widespread misinterpretations. In this post, I explain what the authors'…
In this podcast episode , I ll be reading Paul Conway s and my recent paper about moral dilemmas entitled, Not all who ponder count costs: Arithmetic reflection predicts utilitarian tendencies, but logical reflection predicts both deontological and utilitarian tendencies . In this paper we find that—contrary to some dual process theories claims—consequentialist responses to moral dilemmas may…
Welcome to the first episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about what we think as well as how and why we think it. In this podcast, I ll be reading my paper entitled, What We Can (And Can t) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments . I argue that implicit bias is not entirely unconscious or involuntary, Continue reading Upon Reflection Podcast Ep. 1: What We Can Infer About Implicit…
Welcome to the first, introductory episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about the philosophy of cognitive science and the cognitive science of philosophy. In this podcast I ll be sharing my own and others research with you. For instance, I ll talk about the differences between intuition and reflection and how intuitive reasoning predicts different philosophical beliefs Continue reading The Upon…
Below are the syllabus and materials for my Introduction to Philosophy course. You are welcome to use any of the material as a student or as an instructor. The usual creative commons license applies to my portion of this—i.e., only the stuff to which I would have a copyright. (If you are my student, remember Continue reading Introduction to Philosophy: A Free Course
I recently attended a working retreat. There was nothing to it really. Just a day of working around colleagues. But it was outstandingly productive. Research suggests three reasons for this extraordinary productivity.
I share a 5-year-old MacBook Air with my partner. We need more storage than this laptop offered when we bought it. However, Apple no longer makes our 11-inch model. So we had to consider something else. In this post, I explain what we considered—from new drives to brand new computers—and why we chose to replace Continue reading Upgrading My Laptop From A 2014 Macbook Air to ?
People often ask me how they can learn the basics of statistical analysis. In this post, I share my answer.