Micah Goldwater
@micahgoldwater.bsky.social
100 followers 100 following 16 posts
Cognitive scientist at The University of Sydney. All my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success.
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Reposted by Micah Goldwater
mcopelov.bsky.social
I know we're desensitized, but it's important to note, again, that today's events would have led to the immediate impeachment & removal of any president from at least Truman to at least Obama. We're hundreds of miles on the interstate past Richard Nixon's high school prank-level crimes compared to 👇
atrupar.com
Trump wraps up a speech to military leaders that represented a major escalation of his effort to weaponize the armed forces into a tool he can use to violently quash domestic dissent. Hard to imagine how anyone with a shred of dignity can keep serving after this, which of course is the point.
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
mehr.nz
this is a very sharp piece on why it makes no sense to run universities as if they are businesses. They're not businesses.

www.afr.com/work-and-car...
The net result is the worst of both worlds. Universities invoke the rhetoric of business discipline, but they lack the governance structures that give that discipline bite. They operate without the checks that private ownership provides, yet subject staff and students to the cost-cutting and efficiency drives that profit-maximising firms pursue. The result is waste at the top and insecurity at the bottom.
micahgoldwater.bsky.social
Thanks. In the older “school as factory” model, students were the products, which isn’t necessarily a better metaphor, but certainly different implications.
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
timgames.bsky.social
Excited to announce my first ever published game, for the @halcyonfrequency.bsky.social gamejam.

”Social Media Manager", a shady deskjob simulator with #roguelike elements. I hope you enjoy it and would love to hear any feedback

#indiegames #indiedev

timothyjgraham.itch.io/social-media...
Social Media Manager by Timothy Graham
A roguelike management sim about social media manipulation and corporate
timothyjgraham.itch.io
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
osmanfaruqi.bsky.social
This is a bizarre thing to publish on the day the federal court awarded a journalist $220,000 for being unfairly dismissed from an on-air role for their political views.

In Australia it isn't just private companies that cave to pressure, it's the public broadcaster

www.smh.com.au/national/why...
Why Jimmy Kimmel would have never been cancelled in Australia
We need to be careful about how we separate true hate speech from satirical speech. In America, it seems, differentiation is out of favour.
www.smh.com.au
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
naomiaklein.bsky.social
If you, like me, are the parent of a neuro-atypical child dreading this autism press conference, please remember: These are the people hurting our kids. Not us. They are the ones stigmatizing and pathologizing them. They are the ones peddling untested science. And we should be very, very angry.
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
swinda.bsky.social
Interesting new study! They attributed heatwaves🔥 to emissions of individual companies. Companies that emit a lot of CO2 contribute to climate change, making heatwaves more intense. Can this help in pushing them to reduce emissions and hold them accountable for the damage?

doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors - Nature
Climate change made 213 historical heatwaves reported over 2000–2023 more likely and more intense, to which each of the 180 carbon majors (fossil fuel and cement producers) substantially contributed.
www.nature.com
micahgoldwater.bsky.social
I teach developmental psychology and this is the most succinct way to summarise the class.
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
dcameron.bsky.social
As the fall semester begins, I'd like to send a call to anyone who would like to get involved in our Consortium on Moral Decision-Making. We're a dedicated network of morality and ethics researchers focused on breaking outside siloes to work together on big questions.
moralconsortium.psu.edu 1/n
Home - Consortium on Moral Decision-Making
Welcome to the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making A collaborative hub dedicated to unraveling the intricate threads of ethical choices. As a multidisciplinary alliance of scholars, thinkers, and prac...
moralconsortium.psu.edu
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
I often talk about the fact that MAGA does not access the same news as the left wing. I present to you Exhibit A.

Dr. Daskalakis’ resignation letter excoriated RFK Jr. and shared that RFK Jr. was lying to the public, manipulating data, and ordering unethical actions.

This what Fox News served.
Screenshot from Fox News that says 

CDC official includes
'pregnant people' terminology and pronouns in resignation letter
Daskalakis accused President Trump's administration of attempting 'to erase transgender populations'
By Alex Nitzberg • Fox News
Published August 28, 2025 1:47pm EDT
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
brianguay.bsky.social
New paper on misperceptions out in PNAS @pnas.org

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

Why do people overestimate the size of politically relevant groups (immigrant, LGBTQ, Jewish) and quantities (% of budget spent on foreign aid, % of refugees that are criminals)?🧵👇
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
tallbart.com
Sam Altman: I see humans achieving omnipotence using dark matter by… 2030 maybe? That’s if OpenAI is given a quadrillion dollars

Theo Von: Yeah

Altman: Or, we may become a race of slaves, genetically modified to be harvested by robot spiders. That’s if OpenAI doesn’t get the money

Von: Right
micahgoldwater.bsky.social
Is there a good piece on how the most famous economics & business school made bad terrible crypto investments?
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
mdmarques.com
"Public health campaigns should consider personality traits for more effective preventive interventions. They can target people high in openness, for example, by presenting health science as dynamic and evolving, not just a set of rules and prescriptions…"
Why do smart people get hooked on wellness trends? Personality traits may play a role
Certain personality traits may help explain why some educated, well-intentioned people sometimes reject conventional medicine in favour of fringe practices.
theconversation.com
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
simine.com
I know it’s gauche to share good news on here, but our university’s IRB (ethics office) just declared that low risk applications will no longer be reviewed by 4 people & then go to a committee. They’ll be reviewed by 1 person.
I almost can’t believe a change this positive is possible in this world.
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
philosophyblogs.bsky.social
In June, Kathleen Murphy-Hollies hosted a workshop on conspiracy theory and story telling at the University of Birmingham, featuring five exciting academics working on the topic. Today's post presents a brief summary of each of their talks.

#philsky #philpsy
Conspiracy Theories and Storytelling
A blog about imperfect cognitions, such as delusional beliefs, distorted memories, confabulatory explanations, and implicit biases.
imperfectcognitions.blogspot.com
Reposted by Micah Goldwater
chanda.blacksky.app
In light of the Columbia and Brown deals, I’m bumping these slides again about the Nazi takeover of German science, which includes discussion about how they took over academia, in a manner very similar to the Brown and Columbia deals
chanda.blacksky.app
In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪

🧵 1/26
drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...
nazi germany & physics
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, PhD
Department of  Physics,University of Washington, Seattle
APS April Meeting, January 2017
Dismantling the (Nazi) German Nuclear Reactor (Pile) at Haigerloch, 50 km SW of Stuttgart, in April 1945
micahgoldwater.bsky.social
unclear if it's anyone's goal, either with or without a phd, to spend more time with people with phds.