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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · 9h

On morning Munich commutes, I see surprisingly little tech use. People read newspapers, nap, or chat. Occasionally someone knits, and I watch a bit wistfully.

Kids seem perfectly well-adjusted: those in groups chat and tease each other, those commuting alone do homework or use phones.

Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · 9d

"the crypto lobby is pushing Congress to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which ... would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing or even piloting a government-issued digital currency ... without congressional approval" www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/o...

Opinion | We Really Want to Trust Crypto Interests With the Future of Money?

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Jan Zilinsky

Dietram A. Scheufele @dietram.bsky.social · Sep 3

"Acceptance of the scientific consensus was very high in the sample as a whole (95.1%), but also in every sub-sample (e.g. no trust in science: 87.3%) ... [P]eople are motivated to reject specific scientific beliefs, and not science as a whole."

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · 13d

Motivated reasoning (and responding!) is a huge issue for polling - BUT, the magnitude of the problem also depends on what else is asked within a given survey: www.cambridge.org/core/service...

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · 17d

I thought GPT-5 was supposed to tone down the flattery 😂

Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · 19d

A friend’s kid told me in 2015: “I can learn anything I want by finding a tutorial on YouTube.”

Did I find it credible? Not quite, but the sentiment was fascinating.

Still think about it sometimes and also wonder how many people now use video-sharing platforms as their search engines

Reposted by Jan Zilinsky

Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 3

Very cool that people can be open-minded

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · 20d

If you've felt that broadcast news is less informative, you're probably right.

Information density of ABC, CBS, and NBC news segments has declined, according to LLM-based classifications: 5harad.com/papers/no-ne...

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Reposted by Jan Zilinsky

Thomas Zeitzoff @zeitzoff.bsky.social · 24d

Thanks to the folks at APSA for organizing a great conference, and Vancouver for being a great host city!

cc @janzilinsky.bsky.social

Award from the ITP section for my paper with Jan Zilinsky

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Reposted by Jan Zilinsky

Thomas Zeitzoff @zeitzoff.bsky.social · 26d

Finally, as I found in research my on nasty politics, elite rhetoric matters—especially from national leaders.

Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has sought to reduce the political temperature following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. www.axios.com/local/salt-l...

Axios article headline about Spencer Cox taking a quieter approach

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Reposted by Jan Zilinsky

Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 28d

The pretty draft is now online.

Link to paper (free): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

Our replication package starts from the raw data and we put real work into making it readable & setting it up so people could poke at it, so please do explore it: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the
power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles in 46 areas of the
discipline. Under generous assumptions, we show that quantitative research in political science is greatly underpow-
ered: the median analysis has about 10% power, and only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the
consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with
some being characterized by high power but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey
political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the
statistical power of political science research.

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 29

Used it last year, and wrote a LlooM-inspired article the other day (and could've run the concept through the Lloom infrastructure of course...) goodauthority.org/news/the-eps...

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 29

People in Denmark have varied concerns about tech giants:

- Impact on young people's development (83.5% concerned)
- Role in spreading misinformation (81%)
- Ability to influence public opinion (79.5%)
- Economic power (79%)
- Collection of personal data (78%)
- Impact on social cohesion (75%)

Digital Democracy Centre @ddc-sdu.bsky.social · Aug 29

Danes are concerned about Big Tech’s influence on both their everyday lives and society as a whole – but few are willing to change their habits to limit the companies’ impact.
Read the new report from DDC to gain insights into Danes’ attitudes & actions:
portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/publicati...

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 25

So why do most of us rarely switch on the airplane mode?

(Not dismissing what the respondents are saying, just wondering what exactly they are telling us about their unhappiness with the current tech)

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 25

Every generation discovers that the latest technology is destroying civilization.

Every generation is wrong.

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 24

Also... close to nothing for a few of these:

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 20

Different AI systems are optimized for different tasks.

Expecting precise instruction following from current image models shows a misunderstanding of their architecture and training objectives:

Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · Aug 8

500 billion dollars and the robot can't even count to twelve

show me a diagram of the first 12 presidents of the united states
with an image of their face and their name under the image
(D ~ image2.png @®aa ac @
4 eS za eA a a 2
: x
= Gearge John Adams Thomasen
4 Washingion 1887—1801 Jefferson
a James John Quincy Andrew
5 Monroe Adama Jackson
= 1825—1829 1829—1837
= i ba , % 4
I Ne, N&
iy William Henry John Zachary
Harrtson Tyler Tavlor
1841 1841-1845 1849—1850

$show me a diagram of the past 12 Presidents of the United States with an image of their face and their name under the image Image created (D ~ image.png @aa a ac ®@ Elsle| = — aay ee Richard Gerald R. Ror J y/ eg Harry S. Dwight D. Jehn E. Truman Eisennower Kennedy oOsS j / Y P yi: Ve Mees. 1) \ , \ y Richard Gerald R. Ronald Nixon Ford Reagan h mS ‘ ae George H. George W. George W. Bush Bush Bush$

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 15

I asked 4 AI models to rate the quality of different ideas (all about changing jobs, but for different reasons)

1) Models seems to take users' happiness seriously
2) Gemini flatters users the most, Grok is harsher as an evaluator
3) Overall, it doesn't seem like LLMs were excessively deferential

Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 14

Here are my lecture slides on the behavioral economics of political persuasion

Slides: zilinskyjan.github.io/information-...
Repo: github.com/zilinskyjan/...

GitHub - zilinskyjan/information-and-influence-course

Contribute to zilinskyjan/information-and-influence-course development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 14

True for young adults and for many of us older adults too :)

But right, I should have said I hope 'many will choose the latter'.

As faculty it seems we need to think hard about how we encourage students to use the new tools well

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 14

"Using ChatGPT to write your essays is like bringing a forklift into the weight room"

Not quite.

It's like bringing a fitness trainer to the gym with you; she's *willing to lift weights* for you, but stands ready to give you excellent feedback on your form

It's up to students to choose the latter

Thiago Krause @thiagokrause.bsky.social · Aug 14

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview.
cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 13

Tried making an image of an economics seminar :)

Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 11

How did I miss this amazing news?

Excited to keep learning from your research, Dominka!

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Reposted by Jan Zilinsky

Thomas Zeitzoff @zeitzoff.bsky.social · Aug 11

If you want to understand the timing of Trump’s authoritarian political theater around DC policing, check out @janzilinsky.bsky.social in @goodauth.bsky.social.

He shows how critical coverage of Trump and Epstein spiked with both liberal & conservative media

goodauthority.org/news/the-eps...

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Jan Zilinsky @janzilinsky.bsky.social · Aug 11

The GPT-produced chart makes me want to read more books!

An outcome I didn't ask for (and my wallet didn't ask for...) but I'll take it