Simon van Baal
@svanbaal.bsky.social
Lecturer in Decision Making at University of Leeds. Main interests: time preferences, impulsivity, self-control. Incl applications like gambling, consumption/saving, difficult decisions. Check out the behavioural science feed I made, and tag #BehSci.
Ah fair! Ah I must have misread your bio, apologies.
August 20, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Ah fair! Ah I must have misread your bio, apologies.
Thanks for sharing! As scams go, this is quite well-done. The ones academics get are MUCH more obviously scams. If this one got a domain name that made more sense, one could easily be fooled. Have you seen an uptick in better-written scams since the widespread adoption of LLMs?
August 20, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Thanks for sharing! As scams go, this is quite well-done. The ones academics get are MUCH more obviously scams. If this one got a domain name that made more sense, one could easily be fooled. Have you seen an uptick in better-written scams since the widespread adoption of LLMs?
- Me: "write a small function that does one thing"
- LLM: would you like me to add a calculation for the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything?
- Me: [deletes, includes print("42")].
- LLM: would you like me to add a calculation for the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything?
- Me: [deletes, includes print("42")].
Vibe code is legacy code (quoting Steve Krouse) doi.org/10.59350/d3b...
Vibe code is legacy code
Quoting Steve Krouse
doi.org
August 5, 2025 at 10:36 AM
- Me: "write a small function that does one thing"
- LLM: would you like me to add a calculation for the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything?
- Me: [deletes, includes print("42")].
- LLM: would you like me to add a calculation for the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything?
- Me: [deletes, includes print("42")].
Reposted by Simon van Baal
Self-control in daily life is more than willpower — but how well do commonly used trait scales capture this recent, broader view on self-control?
New preprint with @kaihorstmann.bsky.social & @mhennecke.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Short summary below.
New preprint with @kaihorstmann.bsky.social & @mhennecke.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Short summary below.
OSF
osf.io
June 19, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Self-control in daily life is more than willpower — but how well do commonly used trait scales capture this recent, broader view on self-control?
New preprint with @kaihorstmann.bsky.social & @mhennecke.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Short summary below.
New preprint with @kaihorstmann.bsky.social & @mhennecke.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Short summary below.
Great to see this work! Also I love this angle on how impulsivity and self-control come apart (and are not opposite ends of a spectrum).
July 28, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Great to see this work! Also I love this angle on how impulsivity and self-control come apart (and are not opposite ends of a spectrum).
So true. Good to avoid unnecessary suffering!
Friends don't let friends collect data without adding data validation.
From Rebekah Jacob 😉
From Rebekah Jacob 😉
July 25, 2025 at 4:05 PM
So true. Good to avoid unnecessary suffering!
Reposted by Simon van Baal
I'm happy to share our latest manuscript "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience", coauthored with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman.
July 25, 2025 at 9:17 AM
I'm happy to share our latest manuscript "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience", coauthored with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman.
Reposted by Simon van Baal
@madselk.bsky.social, @benansell.bsky.social, Laure Bokobza, @aslicansunar.bsky.social, @mhaslberger.bsky.social, and @jacobnyrup.bsky.social. 2025. ‘Why Is It so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom’. World Politics. 77(3): 515–61. muse.jhu.edu/article/964464
July 14, 2025 at 8:51 AM
@madselk.bsky.social, @benansell.bsky.social, Laure Bokobza, @aslicansunar.bsky.social, @mhaslberger.bsky.social, and @jacobnyrup.bsky.social. 2025. ‘Why Is It so Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom’. World Politics. 77(3): 515–61. muse.jhu.edu/article/964464
100% agreed. So frustrating. Sometimes I’m unsure whether it’s just rhetoric or politicians truly don’t understand the ramifications.
July 14, 2025 at 9:47 AM
100% agreed. So frustrating. Sometimes I’m unsure whether it’s just rhetoric or politicians truly don’t understand the ramifications.
We need this badly. Unfortunately, there's also too little attention to cold-related deaths. Way more people die of the cold in Europe, and that nearly never makes the news. Though that balance will probably flip in a few decades.
July 14, 2025 at 9:08 AM
We need this badly. Unfortunately, there's also too little attention to cold-related deaths. Way more people die of the cold in Europe, and that nearly never makes the news. Though that balance will probably flip in a few decades.
Reposted by Simon van Baal
Sitting here bleary after another poor night's sleep, disinclined to engage in a day of cognitive effort, this chart from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com really strikes home on.ft.com/4eFZG4l
July 11, 2025 at 6:09 AM
Sitting here bleary after another poor night's sleep, disinclined to engage in a day of cognitive effort, this chart from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com really strikes home on.ft.com/4eFZG4l
Great PSA! To echo: please don't use the chat window (your research decisions are being made for you). Send me a message and I will happily provide you with code to prompt OpenAI's model endpoints and store the conversational context throughout.
Social scientists should not use chat interfaces when using LLMs in their research: they are impressively inefficient, and obscure/impose important methodological decisions that require thought.
THREAD🧵
THREAD🧵
July 8, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Great PSA! To echo: please don't use the chat window (your research decisions are being made for you). Send me a message and I will happily provide you with code to prompt OpenAI's model endpoints and store the conversational context throughout.
Reposted by Simon van Baal
WIRED loves Fairphone and everything it stands for—but people just aren’t buying its devices, and the few who have don’t need to upgrade. www.wired.com/story/fairph...
Fairphone Has a New Plan to Get You to Care
WIRED loves Fairphone and everything it stands for—but people just aren’t buying its devices, and the few who have don’t need to upgrade.
www.wired.com
June 29, 2025 at 11:04 AM
WIRED loves Fairphone and everything it stands for—but people just aren’t buying its devices, and the few who have don’t need to upgrade. www.wired.com/story/fairph...
Great article linked below. I was unaware journals could negotiate and inflate the metric by excluding article types. I suppose that is part of the reason why there are always a bunch of different article types. Yet another example of Goodhart's Law!
journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
June 24, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Great article linked below. I was unaware journals could negotiate and inflate the metric by excluding article types. I suppose that is part of the reason why there are always a bunch of different article types. Yet another example of Goodhart's Law!
journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
Reposted by Simon van Baal
Registration is open for the Summer School on Computational Decision Sciences, 8–12 Sept
Join us in London for a week of cutting-edge research on decision-making, AI, cognitive science and more!
(free, register by 11Aug)
center-decision-sciences.com/cds-summer-s...
#PsychSciSky 🧠 #neuroskyence🧪
Join us in London for a week of cutting-edge research on decision-making, AI, cognitive science and more!
(free, register by 11Aug)
center-decision-sciences.com/cds-summer-s...
#PsychSciSky 🧠 #neuroskyence🧪
CDS Summer School
Program Registration Schedule Directions 8th – 12th September, 2025 The Center for Decision Sciences will be hosting a summer school during the second week of September, 2025 and taking place…
center-decision-sciences.com
June 19, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Registration is open for the Summer School on Computational Decision Sciences, 8–12 Sept
Join us in London for a week of cutting-edge research on decision-making, AI, cognitive science and more!
(free, register by 11Aug)
center-decision-sciences.com/cds-summer-s...
#PsychSciSky 🧠 #neuroskyence🧪
Join us in London for a week of cutting-edge research on decision-making, AI, cognitive science and more!
(free, register by 11Aug)
center-decision-sciences.com/cds-summer-s...
#PsychSciSky 🧠 #neuroskyence🧪
Reposted by Simon van Baal
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 17, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Love to see it. Thoughtful piece too :)
June 17, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Love to see it. Thoughtful piece too :)
I love a good traffic violation (especially if you don't operate heavy machinery for your travel), so I will grab the popcorn for this conversation. Imo if many pedestrians are crossing where/when they "shouldn't", it's a design error - they're deprioritised for automobile traffic flow.
June 17, 2025 at 10:55 AM
I love a good traffic violation (especially if you don't operate heavy machinery for your travel), so I will grab the popcorn for this conversation. Imo if many pedestrians are crossing where/when they "shouldn't", it's a design error - they're deprioritised for automobile traffic flow.
Added it to the list! Re your point: not to mention the history of the term jaywalking!
June 17, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Added it to the list! Re your point: not to mention the history of the term jaywalking!
I can hear a faint echo of: “Rotgänger, totgänger!!!”
June 17, 2025 at 10:40 AM
I can hear a faint echo of: “Rotgänger, totgänger!!!”
First, that’s so valid. Second, sorry but I have to say that’s the most German complaint you could make 😂 I’m so here for it!!
June 17, 2025 at 10:39 AM
First, that’s so valid. Second, sorry but I have to say that’s the most German complaint you could make 😂 I’m so here for it!!
That’s definitely part of it. Another point is that we get a lot of negative press about gun violence, lack of public transportation, expensive healthcare etc. From the outside, it’s difficult to see how localised some of these things are.
June 17, 2025 at 10:26 AM
That’s definitely part of it. Another point is that we get a lot of negative press about gun violence, lack of public transportation, expensive healthcare etc. From the outside, it’s difficult to see how localised some of these things are.
Oh absolutely, arguably even more so in the US! Especially in the North East and the West Coast. But the US market has a finite supply for faculty positions… Also probation is usually less intense than tenure, so that could contribute!
June 17, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Oh absolutely, arguably even more so in the US! Especially in the North East and the West Coast. But the US market has a finite supply for faculty positions… Also probation is usually less intense than tenure, so that could contribute!