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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 15d

Currently attending a conference & our field is quite a bit into fancy modeling, so it’s time to repost this blog post.

Don’t try to squeeze your research question into whatever model is fashionable right now; try to build the right model for your research question.

www.the100.ci/2024/08/27/l...

Let’s do statistics the other way around

Summer in Berlin – the perfect time and place to explore the city, take a walk in the Görli, go skinny dipping in the Spree, attend an overcrowded, overheated conference symposium on cross-lagged pane...

www.the100.ci

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 29d

📣 NEW -- In The Economist, discussing the privacy perils of AI agents and what AI companies and operating systems need to do--NOW--to protect Signal and much else!

www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

An illustration of me, and the headline: "AI agents are coming for your privacy, warns Meredith Whittaker
The Signal Foundation’s president worries they will also blunt competition and undermine cyber-security"

To put it bluntly, the path currently being taken towards agentic AI leads to an elimination of privacy and security at the application layer. It will not be possible for apps like Signal—the messaging app whose foundation I run—to continue to provide strong privacy guarantees, built on robust and openly validated encryption, if device-makers and OS developers insist on puncturing the metaphoric blood-brain barrier between apps and the OS. Feeding your sensitive Signal messages into an undifferentiated data slurry connected to cloud servers in service of their AI-agent aspirations is a dangerous abdication of responsibility.

Happily, it’s not too late. There is much that can still be done, particularly when it comes to protecting the sanctity of private data. What’s needed is a fundamental shift in how we approach the development and deployment of AI agents. First, privacy must be the default, and control must remain in the hands of application developers exercising agency on behalf of their users. Developers need the ability to designate applications as “sensitive” and mark them as off-limits to agents, at the OS level and otherwise. This cannot be a convoluted workaround buried in settings; it must be a straightforward, well-documented mechanism (similar to Global Privacy Control) that blocks an agent from accessing our data or taking actions within an app.

Second, radical transparency must be the norm. Vague assurances and marketing-speak are no longer acceptable. OS vendors have an obligation to be clear and precise about their architecture and what data their AI agents are accessing, how it is being used and the measures in place to protect it.

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Aug 21

It's like an association, but more causal.

This reasoning is very prevalent in psych as well (in particular when it comes to "lagged effects", aka lagged associations, and "within-person associations") which is why we wrote a paper about it:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

These Are Not the Effects You Are Looking for: Causality and the Within-/Between-Persons Distinction in Longitudinal Data Analysis

In psychological science, researchers often pay particular attention to the distinction between within- and between-persons relationships in longitudinal data analysis. Here, we aim to clarify the relationship between the within- and between-persons distinction and causal inference and show that the distinction is informative but does not play a decisive role in causal inference. Our main points are threefold. First, within-persons data are not necessary for causal inference; for example, between-persons experiments can inform about (average) causal effects. Second, within-persons data are not sufficient for causal inference; for example, time-varying confounders can lead to spurious within-persons associations. Finally, despite not being sufficient, within-persons data can be tremendously helpful for causal inference. We provide pointers to help readers navigate the more technical literature on longitudinal models and conclude with a call for more conceptual clarity: Instead of letting statistical models dictate which substantive questions researchers ask, researchers should start with well-defined theoretical estimands, which in turn determine both study design and data analysis.

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Jul 26

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Katrina Forrester · ‘I appreciate depreciation’: Dynastic Capitalism

Austerity is a choice. The protection of the family at the expense of other ways of living is a choice. The transfer of...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Jun 28

If you agree with our 5 requests to our universities, please sign 🖊️ the open letter and don’t forget to confirm your email! ☺️🙏

openletter.earth/open-letter-...

• Resist the introduction of AI in our own software systems, from Microsoft to OpenAI to Apple. It is not in our interests to let our processes be corrupted and give away our data to be used to train models that are not only useless to us, but also harmful.

• Ban AI use in the classroom for student assignments, in the same way we ban essay mills and other forms of plagiarism. Students must be protected from de-skilling and allowed space and time to perform their assignments themselves.

• Cease normalising the AI hype and the lies which are prevalent in the technology industry's framing of these technologies. The technologies do not have the advertised capacities and their adoption puts students and academics at risk of violating ethical, legal, scholarly, and scientific standards of reliability, sustainability, and safety.

• Fortify our academic freedom as university staff to enforce these principles and standards in our classrooms and our research as well as on the computer systems we are obliged to use as part of our work. We as academics have the right to our own spaces.

• Sustain critical thinking on AI and promote critical engagement with technology on a firm academic footing. Scholarly discussion must be free from the conflicts of interest caused by industry funding, and reasoned resistance must always be an option.

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Jun 12

"Simpson's gender-equality paradox" surely deserve some award for best title 👑
The gender-equality paradox seems really central to some narrative people have constructed (and successfully sold). I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if it turned out 100% confounding.>

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Maximilian Kasy @maxkasy.bsky.social · Jun 6

In case somebody missed this yesterday, while watching a political car-crash unfold:

"The Means of Prediction - How AI Really Works (and Who Benefits)"
is now in the UChicago Press catalog, and available for pre-order online!

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

The Means of Prediction

An eye-opening examination of how power—not technology—will define life with AI. AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms,…

press.uchicago.edu

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Mauricio Romero @marome1.bsky.social · May 28

Don’t forget to check @dmckenzie.bsky.social (blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...) and @berkozler12.bsky.social coverage of our paper (blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...)

Be careful with inference from 2x2 experiments and other cross-cutting designs

blogs.worldbank.org

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Liz Ananat @lizananat.bsky.social · May 27

New research from [email protected]

Congress is pushing work requirements for Medicaid&SNAP. You’ve heard these kick eligible folks off (@pamherd.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social), don't increase work&cause hunger (@laurenhlb.bsky.social @chloeneast.bsky.social). But wait there's more! 1/n

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · May 23

And here's the link to two of the papers being discussed:

doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...
doi.org/10.1215/0070...

Families of austerity: benefit cutbacks and family stress in the UK

Abstract. Benefit cutbacks have been prominent after the Great Recession. The Family Economic Stress Model (FESM) theorizes how financial losses such as th

doi.org

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Hans Henrik Sievertsen @hhsievertsen.bsky.social · May 21

In a new WP @pietrobiroli.bsky.social and coauthors combine an 🍕 time use survey with questions on

1. who is responsible for the organisation of household tasks

Answer: women

1/N

#EconSky

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · May 20

Income changes and the design of social security can have disparate impacts on health, caregiving, child well-being, and more.

I was lucky enough to discuss work on these urgent issues with @usociety.bsky.social @cpaguk.bsky.social here:

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/podcasts/fam...

Families and benefit cuts - Understanding Society

podcast about families and benefit cuts, effect of fluctuating income on stress and parenting

www.understandingsociety.ac.uk

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · May 19

New at Can We Still Govern?
Greg Leiserson is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury.

He explains how the GOP tax bill will add new administrative burdens - "precertification" - to EITC recipients so to limit access. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-gop-pl...

The GOP plan to cut the EITC via administrative burdens

Their tax bill will use new reporting requirements to reduce access

donmoynihan.substack.com

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Jan Brülle @janbruelle.bsky.social · May 16

How effective are policies of predistribution or redistribution for reducing in-work poverty? How do their effects differ by household type? Some answers in my paper using EU-SILC data out in @europeansocieties.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1162/euso...

No one-size-fits-all solution. Effects of social policies on in-work poverty

Abstract. The paper studies effects of social policies on in-work poverty risks, distinguishing between measures that either intervene in labour market processes - i.e. predistribution policies - or r...

doi.org

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Adam Corlett @adamcorlett.bsky.social · May 7

One thing the Government should do this year is a big Free School Meal policy. That would be popular, good for child poverty, and easily deliverable... 🧵

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Kate Pickett @profkepickett.bsky.social · May 1

My new column: The False Economy of Cutting Disability Benefits www.socialeurope.eu/the-false-ec...

The False Economy of Cutting Disability Benefits

Financial insecurity destroys lives. Slashing disability benefits isn’t reform—it’s cruelty disguised as cost-saving.

www.socialeurope.eu

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.bsky.social · Apr 28

Is Starmer’s Labour far right?

This question sounds absurd, but today, it is not only necessary but urgent to ask for anyone who still cares about democracy

My thoughts on @reacpolrn.bsky.social

reacpol.net/starmer-far-...

Article: Is Starmer's Labour far right? (Aurelien Mondon) - Reactionary Politics Research Network

This article by Aurelien Mondon explores whether the Labour government under Starmer can be considered far right

reacpol.net

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Apr 25

I would love to be added, thank you!

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · Apr 24

Why is the administration trying to get rid of Head Start?

Because it challenges their narrative of waste, fraud, and abuse. And because it gets in the way of their efforts to trap people in precarity and make them easier to exploit.

My latest for @msnbc.com:
www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Opinion | Head Start is government that works. No wonder the Trump administration wants to get rid of it.

The gutting of Head Start would force vulnerable people to labor in more difficult or demeaning conditions for the benefit of the privileged.

www.msnbc.com

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Apr 15

Sources:
- www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/u...
- policyinpractice.co.uk/publication/...
- www.gov.uk/government/s...

www.nao.org.uk

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Apr 15

3 numbers bear repeating:

- Outstanding debt for (past) Carer's Allowance recipients: > £250m

- Carer's Allowance unclaimed despite entitlement: £2.3 *billion*

- Both are multiples of DWP's estimates of alleged fraud within the program: £110m

Focus on access and debt cancellation, not fraud.

patrickjbutler.bsky.social @patrickjbutler.bsky.social · Apr 15

My @theguardian.com story: DWP to overhaul carer’s allowance checks in wake of overpayment scandal: www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

DWP to overhaul carer’s allowance checks after overpayment scandal

Department previously investigated only 50% of earnings limit alerts, meaning many carers fell into debt

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Gabriele Mari

Patrick Dunleavy @patrickdunleavy.bsky.social · Apr 11

How AI can reinforce inefficiency blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessrevi...

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Mar 31

Buffering rather than deepening income changes might alleviate strain on family life.

Taken together, findings like these might call for a renewed focus on an accessible, generous and predictable tax-benefit system.

Link to paper here: read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a... /END

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Mar 31

Some caveats: Findings don't cover many aspects of 'parenting', from expenses to time to parenting logics, all of which might be influenced by income instability.

This survey was fielded among parents of teenagers, and the effects of instability could be more or less pronounced at other stages 8/

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Gabriele Mari @gmari.bsky.social · Mar 31

Parents with lower incomes seem to shield their children from instability, and report less strain when they are supported by the benefit system.

When losing benefit income, though, it's mental health that takes a dip (see here in the context of austerity: doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...) 7/

Families of austerity: benefit cutbacks and family stress in the UK

Abstract. Benefit cutbacks have been prominent after the Great Recession. The Family Economic Stress Model (FESM) theorizes how financial losses such as th

doi.org

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