Ryan Hagen
@alltheshapes.bsky.social
820 followers 1.2K following 180 posts
Sociologist studying risk, disaster, and social change http://ryan-hagen.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
alltheshapes.bsky.social
Very good thread here
jwmason.bsky.social
In all the endless discussions of LLMs, there’s a point that is, on one level, obvious, but that I feel does not get sufficiently foregrounded: LLMs are transforming material that people have put up on the internet.
alltheshapes.bsky.social
Etiology is when you study what to have for a snack
alltheshapes.bsky.social
September 30. October 1.
Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove.
alltheshapes.bsky.social
Oh definitely. You don’t believe material objects have agency? Well, now we made it you have to argue with your refrigerator, you’re welcome.
alltheshapes.bsky.social
Anthropic experimented with letting an AI run a little shop. It lost money, then went insane. I wrote about how the case illustrates the need for research on how the social world will be transformed by the massive increase of interactions between people and LLMs, and, crucially, between AI agents.
Living in a Synthetic Society
We need a sociology of AI interaction to describe and understand our weird future
open.substack.com
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
zoedrayson.bsky.social
When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions
AI Overview: "Dental realism"refers to the philosophical debate about whether teeth exist independently of human perception, a concept rooted in metaphysical realism. While realism asserts an objective reality for teeth, idealist philosophies contend that teeth's existence is tied to our consciousness and perception. Philosophers use this idea, for example, to discuss the ethics of tooth extraction, examining whether a procedure impacts a real entity or merely a subjective experience.
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
coelasquid.bsky.social
Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑
Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them.

Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!”

Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.”

Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face.

Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
katestarbird.bsky.social
New study by @brendannyhan.bsky.social, @jasonreifler.bsky.social & colleagues demonstrates that prebunking election fraud rumors — by warning about anticipated false claims & filling conceptual gaps that those claims exploit — helps to reduce belief in falsehoods: www.science.org/content/arti...
Trust in elections rises after ‘inoculations’ meant to preempt false fraud claims
New U.S.-Brazil study points to ways of countering election misinformation, political scientists say
www.science.org
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
ginsta.bsky.social
Very good article and thread about open alternatives to google scholar, which clearly will go away when its founder retires. The @barcelonadori.bsky.social movement is getting a lot if attention and OpenAlex.org a lot of support. The Lens currently looking for new home about.lens.org/expressions-...
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
yalesph.bsky.social
New research finds that high temperatures, increased rainfall, and water scarcity associated with climate change are creating “new vulnerabilities” for pandemics. Prof. Colin Carlson cautions that the study fails to capture some of the key drivers of zoonotic disease. ⬇️
www.carbonbrief.org/...
Climate change is creating ‘new vulnerabilities’ for disease pandemics - Carbon Brief
Climate change is creating “new vulnerabilities” for pandemics, according to new research.
www.carbonbrief.org
alltheshapes.bsky.social
And if your subfield is small enough, also probably your friends
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
katharinehayhoe.com
Both the frequency and severity of extreme weather disasters are increasing around the world, as climate changes.

Which country is most at risk? The US, the same country that stopped tracking their billion-plus dollar weather and climate disasters this year.

Figures by @climatecentral.org
A graph showing the number of US billion-plus dollar disasters per year from 1980 to 2024. A graph showing the time in days between US billion-plus dollar disasters each year from 1980 to 2024. A graph showing the average annual cost of US billion-plus dollar climate and weather disasters by decade beginning in the 1980s. A map showing which US states experience the most billion-plus dollar weather and climate disasters.
alltheshapes.bsky.social
Incredible AI interaction: I asked ChatGPT if there was any research on dealing with the problem of participants using LLMs to generate synthetic responses to qualitative studies (diary studies, free-text boxes in surveys). It responded by making up a fake paper about AI as “imposter participants.”
Screenshot from a ChatGPT conversation. The LLM’s output reads: 

“Key Academic & Working Papers
1. Al as "imposter participants" in qualitative research
Drysdale, Ridge, Roehl & Harland (2024): A study on the rise of "imposter participants" — individuals who misrepresent themselves (including via bots or Al-generated responses) in qualitative studies. They offer practical recommendations: using bot detectors (e.g. CAPTCHA), removing financial incentives to deter fraud, private invitation links, and inclusion/exclusion screening tasks. However, explicit discussion of participants submitting Al-generated diary entries remains limited.”
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
cbarrie.bsky.social
In addition to the original UK results, we have now ***replicated*** this (TWICE) in the US.

The main findings hold strong: information diets are a lot more diverse in attention than in engagement.

New version here: osf.io/preprints/os...
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
amydiehl.bsky.social
Study finds A.I. LLMs advise women to ask for lower salaries than men. When prompted w/ a user profile of same education, experience & job role, differing only by gender, ChatGPT advised the female applicant to request $280K salary; Male applicant=$400K.
thenextweb.com/news/chatgpt...
ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds
A new study has found that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT consistently advise women to ask for lower salaries than men.
thenextweb.com
alltheshapes.bsky.social
“we may find that the fabric of our lives is Canvas.” Students love going into debt to create with their labor something that later confronts them as an alien force blocking their dreams.
louiseseamster.bsky.social
Out of curiosity I wanted to know how the massive LMS Instructure (company that runs Canvas) is using the massive amounts of data it collects on students.

Oh.
(This article is nominally not a press release?)
www.forbes.com/sites/rayrav...
As more becomes known about individuals more and more data about learner journeys and the alignment of courses to skills and skills to careers, Instructure will become increasingly capable of providing optimal pathways for students. Moreover, by combining learning management system, student work repository, transcripts, and credentialling services through the integration of products such as Portfolium, Parchment, Scribbles, and Concentric Sky, Instructure will be able to provide students and prospective employers with deep longitudinal insight into capabilities and qualifications. Rather than just being able to provide information about course outcomes, as with the traditional transcript, Insturcture could make available the entire student data set leading to that outcome. This would make it possible to distinguish between the student earning a “B” in a course who started rough but was a solid “A” for the last month of the course, and the “B” student who started strong but grew progressively weaker as the course progressed. One struggles to diferentiate between such students when reviewing traditional academic records, but it will become clear as more data is available. As the data set grows, developing AI-enhanced interfaces into the data will become increasingly important to help viewers find precisely what they are looking for. One can easily imagine a world where the degrees become less valuable than the incremental steps recorded en route to the degree. This would move the ultimate stamp of approval on the finished product (students) from the supplier’s (university) quality control staff (faculty, registrar) to that of the buyer (potential employer), who could use the AI to make find exactly what they are looking for independent of the grades assigned. As this happens, students may find themselves with many more choices on how to meet a prospective employer’s requirements than simply going to a name-brand university and majoring in a pre-approved subject. The ultimate democratization of education may reside not in its universal availability but in its deinstitutionalization. If this comes to pass, we may find that the fabric of our lives is Canvas.
alltheshapes.bsky.social
Also in the red deck
Image of a Magic card: the text reads “Mountain Goat. 1/1, mountainwalk (If defending player controls any mountains, this creature is unblockable.)

‘Folklore has it that to capture a mountain goat is a sign of divine blessing. I just know it's a sign that dinner is on the way.’
-Klazina fansdotter,
Leader of the Order of the Sacred Torch”
alltheshapes.bsky.social
This is young Nathan Fielder
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
weatherwest.bsky.social
It is difficult to describe just how disastrous it would be if just-released NOAA budget proposal (or even large portions) were to be enacted: It would involve a wholesale dismantling (decimation, really) of entities relevant to weather, climate, & ocean research & prediction.
Reposted by Ryan Hagen
michaelrlowry.bsky.social
It's hard to adequately summarize how destructive NOAA's 2026 proposed budget released on Monday is for hurricane forecasting, but I crammed all I could into today's newsletter. I encourage everyone with interests along the coast to read it carefully. ⬇️
NOAA Proposes Permanently Closing Premiere Hurricane Research Institute
In its proposed 2026 budget released Monday, NOAA closes all federally funded weather and climate research labs, including the one responsible for maintaining the nation’s top hurricane models
michaelrlowry.substack.com