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Andrew Perfors

@andyperfors.bsky.social

11K followers 5K following 3.2K posts

Prof at UniMelb. I'm a computational cognitive scientist studying human inference, learning, information systems, culture, and (mis/dis)info. Nerd & opinionated loudmouth in Oz, originally from America, citizen of both. Parent of two. 🏳️‍⚧️ perfors.net

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Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · Apr 29

I wrote an article about the psychology by which disinformation campaigns work, with examples from anti-trans propaganda. It's not just about individual beliefs, but also the way our institutions and norms are manipulated.

Please read and share!

pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/Ant...?

Anti-trans attitudes have existed for years, but organised disinformation campaigns are increasingly driving them

Disinformation exists across all parts of the political spectrum, but it goes far beyond simple lying when it comes to the campaign against the transgender community, says a University of Melbourne ex...

pursuit.unimelb.edu.au

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 6h

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 6h

SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

heatmap.news

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 1d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social · 12h

Anyway I wrote an article back in 2013 analyzing permutations on Benedict Cumberbatch which you may read and sub in Timothée Chalamet should you so desire
web.archive.org/web/20250322...

A Linguist Explains the Rules of Summoning Benedict Cumberbatch -The Toast

A willing foe, and sea room.

web.archive.org

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Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · 13h

Hello fellow lapsed Catholic! Can't say this is making me believe in God anymore, but for all of its (many, many) flaws the church as an institution is meeting this moment so much better than I would have expected.

Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · 13h

Younger me did not foresee a world in which I am ideologically far more aligned with the current Pope than with most major US institutions, but here we are.

He puts his finger on much of what's at the heart of the moral rot we see all over.

Lucius Fox In The Box @carnegro.bsky.social · 20h

Pope Leo is spitting.

www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

Leo questioned a world where the wealth of the elite grows
"exponentially" while many "millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings." He also criticized "ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,"
with false promises "that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty."

Leo described a "new tyranny," which shuns any kind of oversight and where the economy is structured "in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful." The poor, he wrote, are only allowed "drops that trickle down."

The pope openly challenged "prosperity theology" and called Christians to the practice of giving charity. "It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility," he wrote.

Popular movements that challenge "the empire of money," invite people to take on the cause to combat poverty alongside the poor, instead of on their behalf, and "make history," the pope said. It our duty, Leo said, to "make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve."

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 20h

It really can't be said enough: the goal of the "anti-woke" movement was always to destroy social norms against bigotry. And it worked. And there's a whole lot of purportedly "left" thinkers & commentators who helped it -- indeed, it couldn't have been done without them.

They should feel bad.

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 15h

If this stuff would end up on the news it would absolutely motivate voters. Plenty of people who don't give a shit about politics would absolutely give af about this.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 19h

CHICAGO — Outside an elementary school during dismissal… horrifying. What have we become?

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 22h

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 1d

We’re not dealing with brilliant strategists cleverly laying traps, we’re dealing with impulsive whiners whose advantage is contempt for laws, norms, and morality.

They’re not pulling some elaborate trick, they’re just willing—even eager—to do things regular, principled people consider off limits.

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Gordon Bonnet @gordon227.bsky.social · 1d

If you needed another reason to avoid using AI, here you go www.skeptophilia.com/2025/10/the-...

The image and the reality

critical thinking blog skeptic analytics skepticism science rational education alternative medicine conspiracy theories debunk misinformation skepto

www.skeptophilia.com

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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 2d

“Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims.”

Lea Ypi @leaypi.bsky.social · 2d

no words

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

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Chris Morran @themorrancave.bsky.social · 2d

NEW: As Linda McMahon guts the Dept. of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how future kids will learn -- seeking to dismantle the public school system in favor of private and Christian schools or homeschooling.

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

www.propublica.org

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Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · 2d

This is good and worth reading.

Andrea Stocco @andreastocco.com · 2d

A recent Nature paper has introduced Centaur, a LLAMA-based LLM that surpasses any cognitive models in predicting human behavior. Is this the ultimate unified theory of cognition? In this preprint, my colleagues and I expressed our doubts. Let us know what you think! arxiv.org/abs/2510.03311

Not Even Wrong: On the Limits of Prediction as Explanation in Cognitive Science

We offer a comment on the Centaur (Binz et al., 2025) transformer-based model of human behavior. In particular, Centaur was cast as a path towards unified theories of cognition. We offer a counter cla...

arxiv.org

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Rob Hawkes @robbhawkes.bsky.social · 6d

As more of my valued colleagues face the threat of redundancy, here’s a quick reminder that it takes years and years of public investment to train an academic. Cutting someone with this wealth of experience loose isn’t “saving” anything. It is a massive waste of our collective resources.

UK Universities in Crisis? Time to Transform Higher Ed Finance

by Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson Universities in the UK are in crisis. Job cuts in the sector are reaching ‘cataclysmic’ levels, with an estimated 10,000 already lost and many more at risk. Just da…

moneyontheleft.org

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Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences @psychunimelb.bsky.social · 2d

Education at Melbourne interviewed Professor @andyperfors.bsky.social, Director of the Complex Human Data Hub at the University of Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, and Academic Lead, LGBTIQA+ Inclusion at the University.

Read it here: go.unimelb.edu.au/t3qp

Storytelling, stats, and helping everyone belong with Andy Perfors

go.unimelb.edu.au

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Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · 2d

This is a really lovely, informative, and heartwarming thread about -- of all things -- working in an airport.

I love that the world is full of fractal coolness like this: whatever mundane thing you can think of is packed with insight and humour if you only take the time to notice it.

Nome @nome.bsky.social · 3d

Some things I've learned in my first few weeks:

1) There is a grey market candy swapping racket between janitors, TSA agents, CSRs, and everyone else who has to stand someplace all day at the airport.

Hi-chews, sour candies, and gummy anything are in highest demand.

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Lisa Fazio @lkfazio.bsky.social · 2d

New from me and @brendannyhan.bsky.social

Why Trump's "Compact for Academic Excellence" is a devil's bargain and should be rejected in all forms

www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Trump sent a 'compact' to our universities. They should reject this devil's bargain.

Any institution that yields to these broad and intrusive demands would forever be subservient to the whims of the government.

www.msnbc.com

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Zack Ford @zackford.bsky.social · 2d

These Supreme Court oral arguments on conversion therapy are going to be painful. No matter what is said, know that trying to force someone to be what they're not is psychological torture with measurable negative consequences, and anyone trying to defend such efforts is a bigoted monster.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 2d

more and more I am convinced a good share of why Trump 2 is so much worse than before is because of what Elon did to Twitter. it's like those group chats where people gassed themselves up to join ISIS, scaled up a millionfold

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Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen.bsky.social · 2d

This is Adelita Grijalva.

She was elected to Congress two weeks ago, officially making her the final vote needed to force the release of the Epstein files.

She has still not been sworn in because Mike Johnson refuses to do so.

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Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · 2d

Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 3d

quantitative methods, qualitative methods, mixed methods

Photo of a Kansas City Chiefs press conference with Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Patrick Mahomes. Reid is wearing a gray suit and red tie with a lapel pin. Kelce is wearing a camp-style short-sleeved shirt with a bird print, along with a suede cap, and Mahomes is wearing a white collared shirt, a pink checkered double-breasted vest, and a pale pink tie.

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Teresa Völker @tevoelker.bsky.social · 3d

New paper out with @dasalgon.bsky.social: “Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream” doi.org/10.1017/S1475676525100066 #openaccess in @ejprjournal.bsky.social🧵

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Andrew Perfors @andyperfors.bsky.social · 3d

That is such a great definition of supremacy!

Reposted by Andrew Perfors

Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 3d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 3d

Hopefully the whole Bari Weiss thing and Ezra Klein thing starts waking people up to the fact that corporate media is mostly populated with mediocre people who have made millions and gained unbelievable influence because they threaten nothing and tell wealthy people exactly what they want to hear.

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