Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #hnl
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Super-cool @PNASNews study examines historical changes in decision-making by professional Go players from 1950 to 2021, focusing on changes in game play after the advent of superhuman AI (i.e., AlphaGo). pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.10… 1/ 
Human players in human-human matches began to make significantly better decisions in Go following the advent of superhuman AI. Players’ strategies across time changed to reflect more novelty (in the first 60 moves of a game). 2/
The development of superhuman AI programs may prompt human players to break away from traditional strategies and induced them to explore novel moves, which in turn may have improved their decision-making or even enjoyment of the game. 3/
Is it possible to easily identify people who wield influence within online or offline social networks, by virtue of how they are connected, without actually mapping networks? Do large-scale field experiments show how to use this to change behavior of whole populations? Yes! 1/
This week, our lab #HNL published new work in @PNASnews on “network targeting algorithms” to identify “structurally influential” people within social networks, in order to accelerate behavior change at scale.
We can artificially create tipping points.
pnas.org/doi/full/10.10… 2/
We can artificially create tipping points.
pnas.org/doi/full/10.10… 2/
To change the behavior of whole populations, we take advantage of the “friendship paradox,” which is the mathematical fact that, on average, your friends have more friends than you do. 3/
Want to find an appealing (or irritating) four-letter or five-letter arbitrary word for use as a character name for your game or novel, or as a place name, or as a medicine or product name, or any other use? 1/
Want to tell if there is a difference between similar arbitrary names, whether nice-sounding or off-putting? Want to improve audit studies of possible bias by judges? 2/
Want an empirical test of Phonological Cue Theory, which predicts that word terminal fricatives should be preferred, word terminal stops should be dispreferred, nasals early in word should be preferred, and voiced obstruent in the word terminal position should dispreferred? 3/
A key to controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is decreasing social mixing, eg, by bans on gatherings. But what about elections? Let’s talk about whether the 2020 primaries changed the course of the COVID19 pandemic and what this might mean for general election on November 3. 1/
Many people are asking if in-person voting is sensible in the middle of a pandemic. COVID19, like any serious outbreak of a contagious disease, can place the virtues of public health and civic engagement into direct conflict. 2/
But we find that the voting that took place in the primaries in the Spring of 2020 had no discernible impact on the course of the COVID19 epidemic in the USA, *at the county level*, as we describe in this essay at @fivethirtyeight: fivethirtyeight.com/features/votin… 3/
Today, we are happy to release a COVID19 app that is unlike any others available.
HUNALA allows you to track & FORECAST your personal risk for respiratory disease daily. It’s like traffic apps (eg Waze) for coronavirus & respiratory disease. Get it at hunala.yale.edu 1/
HUNALA allows you to track & FORECAST your personal risk for respiratory disease daily. It’s like traffic apps (eg Waze) for coronavirus & respiratory disease. Get it at hunala.yale.edu 1/
Users contribute information anonymously and get aggregated risk predictions, just like Waze forecasting traffic jams miles ahead on a highway. The data users contribute is statistically combined with public information about respiratory disease and COVID19. 2/
The more people who use HUNALA overall (get it here: hunala.yale.edu), and the more who use it in any particular area, the better it gets. HUNALA is released by @yale and by HumanNatureLab.net. #HNL 3/
Here is our first COVID-19 publication, submitted to @nature on February 18, and thereafter carefully reviewed. It’s out today. It’s got all kinds of goodness. Let’s talk about the role of “imported” cases in “community transmission” in an epidemic. nature.com/articles/s4158… 1/
Let’s also talk about travel bans, the use of #bigdata to forecast and monitor epidemics (something my lab #HNL is working on), and the accuracy of Chinese COVID19 case data (which this paper inter-alia also addresses). nature.com/articles/s4158… 2/
This paper reflects a longstanding collaboration between my lab #HNL and colleagues at @HKUniversity and @CUHKofficial, with whom we have been using phone data to study diverse phenomena, including the impact of earthquakes or of high-speed rail on human social interactions. 3/
New publication from our lab in @SciReports.
Mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and it improves emotional regulation. But does mindfulness meditation alter pro-social behavior and make us nicer?
nature.com/articles/s4159… 1/
Mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and it improves emotional regulation. But does mindfulness meditation alter pro-social behavior and make us nicer?
nature.com/articles/s4159… 1/
Using a simple donation game, we randomly assigned 326 online subjects to a short mindfulness meditation session (or to a control group) and measured their willingness to donate a portion of their payment for participation as a charitable donation to others. 2/
Subjects who underwent the brief online meditation treatment donated at a 2.61 times higher rate than the control (p = 0.005), after controlling for socio-demographics. They were more altruistic after being asked to meditate. 3/
In ongoing work in our lab #HNL, we explore ‘hybrid systems’ of humans & machines. How does addition of AI to our midst affect how we treat each other? New work spearheaded by @MargaretTraeger & Sarah Sebo, along w @dscaz & @whatsmalteupto is just out: pnas.org/content/early/… 1/
In this @PNASNews paper out today, we show that adding a humanoid robot to a social system engaged in a collective problem helps. When the robot makes vulnerable statements, it enhances communication among the humans *themselves*. pnas.org/content/early/… #hbyridsystems 2/
Video of our experimental set-up for our latest @PNASNews paper via @yale is here: news.yale.edu/2020/03/09/rob… 3/
If we want to understand how powerful an opponent SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is, let’s take a look what has been required to stop it in China. The Chinese government has essentially used a social nuclear weapon in its efforts. Let’s talk about this, to understand what US is facing. 1/
The Chinese have had the most COVID19 cases so far (80,859), but the number of new cases has dropped from 100's per day a month ago to ~46 per day now — in a country of 1.4B people. This is an astonishing achievement from a public health point of view. who.int/docs/default-s… 2/
We can get a sense of how strong something is by getting a sense of what sort of force is required to stop it, to borrow a Newtonian physics metaphor. COVID-19 requires a powerful force to stop. This is clear from the Chinese response. 3/
Today, I visited @TSA agents at #HNL who have been working without pay for 31 days. They shared so many heartbreaking stories. For ex.: some workers are taking out personal loans, considering moving in with their parents, and facing eviction because they can’t pay their rent
Appalling and every other synonym you can think of describe what’s happening to these workers and hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors across the country being held hostage by @realDonaldTrump
.@senatemajldr, meanwhile, continues to do @realDonaldTrump's bidding instead of doing his job to end the shutdown
