Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale. Physician. Author of Apollo's Arrow; Blueprint; and Connected. Luckily wed @ErikaChristakis
@littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #FBPE Profile picture DLlewellyn Profile picture eileen higgins Profile picture Ross Grayson, MPH, CIH Profile picture Adam Smithee Profile picture 112 subscribed
Dec 12, 2023 14 tweets 6 min read
How will AI affect the way we treat each other?

In "hybrid systems" of humans and machines, how will AI (whether simple or complex) affect not just human-machine interactions, but human-human interactions in the presence of machines?

Will AI change human ethical behavior? 1/ In new work in @PNASNews, we showcase a novel cyber-physical system of people driving cars via the internet in an experimental diorama. This system allows us to explore how forms of AI affect existing human norms of cooperation and coordination. 2/ pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
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Nov 26, 2023 10 tweets 3 min read
If you hide people's wealth, you can make the economic gradient in happiness go away, in part by making poor people relatively happier.

New (somewhat dispiriting) experiments spearheaded by @Nishi_Akihiro in @NatMentHealth #HNL 1/ nature.com/articles/s4422…
Image A lot of the economic gradient in subjective well being (SWB) with respect to wealth has to do with the invidious comparisons people can make with those around them. 2/
Oct 24, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Laundering of claims: This @CNN link () says that 2,00 children have died in Gaza recently, and attributes info to an 'aid agency,' namely @SavetheChildren, and provides an embedded link you can click to for possible independent data. But....cnn.com/2023/10/24/mid… When you click on link, you go to an article which reports that 'at least 2,000 children killed in Gaza' (which might be true and would be awful – the situation in Gaza is horrific, for sure!): But the article provides an embedded link for its source....savethechildren.net/news/least-200…
Mar 22, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Fantastic letter from Dean Jenny Martinez of @Stanford @StanfordLaw defending fundamental principles of a university and addressing the wrong-headed means of protest employed by lawyers-in training at her school a few weeks ago. Bravo. law.stanford.edu/wp-content/upl… I wish Presidents and Deans at universities had been able to forthrightly do such a thing for the past ten years.
Mar 18, 2023 5 tweets 4 min read
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/
Mar 15, 2023 4 tweets 3 min read
It's been exactly 3 years since I pinned this thread of threads re #COVID19. The early threads prompted me to write #ApollosArrow which has stood the test of time, I think (amazon.com/Apollos-Arrow-…).

And, as forecast, the pandemic is ending. I'm unpinning the thread—on schedule. *subject to the low-likelihood emergence of a novel strain of the virus that fully evades our vaccines or that is much deadlier. ;-)
Feb 11, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell compactmag.com/article/a-blac… via @compactmag_ Students said: "I had used racist language. I had misgendered Brittney Griner. I had repeatedly confused the names of two black students. My body language harmed them. I hadn’t corrected facts that were harmful to hear when the (now-purged) students introduced them in class...."
Jan 23, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
This is an absolutely fantastic teaching tool, on multiple levels, regarding philosopher John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_r… via @social_brains Just watch it, below! 1/ The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a "mind", "understanding," or "consciousness", regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. 2/
Jan 20, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Bravo to Dean Elmendorf! This is admirable: “It is important for institutions to be able to recognize where they have made an error that encroaches on free speech and academic freedom and to correct it.” chronicle.com/article/after-… Exactly what a university should do: “That’s fine and appropriate for that kind of institution,” because representing numerous viewpoints is part of the purpose of a “premier public policy program.” nytimes.com/2023/01/19/art…
Jan 13, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Ever since COVID vaccines were first developed, there's been some debate about whether & by how much they prevent not just illness, hospitalization, & death, but also transmission. The mRNA vaccines were not, alas, truly sterilizing and did not reduce infectiousness by much. 1/ This technical point has intersected with politics, as people have argued that the state and employers have no right to mandate vaccination if being unvaccinated does not place anyone else at (direct) risk. 2/
Jan 8, 2023 6 tweets 4 min read
"One of the most egregious violations of academic freedom.” Ms Aram Wedatalla &, more to the point, the ostensible educators here (Marcela Kostihova, @FayneeseMiller, & @Jaylanihussein) seem unable to understand a plural society or teaching of art history. nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/… The overwrought emotionality of so many of these absurd campus outbursts seeking to have a (typically female) teacher fired for the good faith performance of pedagogic duties, as described in this article (nytimes.com/2023/01/08/us/…) about the new @HamlineU case, evokes The Bacchae
Dec 20, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
What really is amazing about this situation at Stanford is that they willingly convened and *funded* a committee to do this and then promptly lacked courage to defend it by quickly withdrawing list from public availability. If you’re making a list of prohibited words, defend it. Or, better yet, do not waste university resources preparing reports that cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny.
Dec 11, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
A short thread of photos with other network scientists over the past decade or so. With Tom Snijders and @twvalente and another person whose name I cannot place (help me?). About 15 years ago in DC.
Nov 11, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Fine essay on absurd & dishonest attack on @hoovlet

'While activists insist biological reality of sex binary is wrong-headed & pernicious, the true threat to science and human dignity is idea that in order to support anyone’s rights we must deny reality.' link.springer.com/content/pdf/10… "While some who are fighting for the rights of gender minorities may sincerely believe that subverting science is necessary to protect an oppressed population, department chairs and university presidents are tasked with ensuring that the campus environment....
Oct 30, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Since the late 1990s and into the 2000s, many scientists have been engaged in what I call the "assembly project” of modern science. For the past few centuries, swept by a reductionistic fervor and by considerable success, scientists have been purposefully examining ever-smaller parts of nature in order to understand the whole.
Oct 29, 2022 11 tweets 2 min read
We wanted to formulate an assessment about certain aspect of the boards of various American universities. 1/ To assess one aspect, we found all the members of each board for an illustrative set of American universities, and then looked up the wikipedia pages, if any, of every board member, in order to compute the average notabilitiy of board members. 2/
Oct 25, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Graduate students are primarily students and trainees, not ordinary workers. Academia is a calling. I suspect unionization will tip the balance so faculty prefer, at the margin, to hire post-docs to do research in their labs rather than students. yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/10/2… I wonder whether alternative will emerge whereby PhD students are simply told to pay for their education, like MD, JD, MFA, and other graduate students. This will have the effect of raising inequality, as only the rich or those willing to borrow would be able to get the education
Oct 13, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
“We welcomed a new Dean of Students who is focused on ensuring students learn to resolve disagreements among themselves whenever possible rather than reflexively looking to the institution to serve as a referee.”

Let’s see if this is reflected in actions law.yale.edu/yls-today/news… The problem I have with all of these very positive developments is that they should all have been present from the very beginning in one of the country’s leading law schools.
Sep 10, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59 Million to a Local Bakery.

Three details that catch the eye: nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/… “Oberlin had stopped ordering from the bakery but had offered to restore its business if charges were dropped against the three students or if the bakery gave students accused of shoplifting special treatment, which it refused to do.”
Aug 23, 2022 10 tweets 4 min read
Europe is having a 500 year drought. bbc.com/news/world-eur…

This may result in us seeing warnings from our ancestors long ago, in a particular manifestation of cultural transmission that has always amazed me. #BLUEPRINTbook 1/ In #BLUEPRINTbook (amazon.com/Blueprint-Evol…), I talk about very old warnings regarding low-water marks in European rivers. For instance, the Elbe is dotted with “hunger stones” commemorating old droughts, with inscriptions like IF YOU SEE ME, WEEP, going back 500 years. 2/
Aug 15, 2022 28 tweets 9 min read
Serious epidemics, like COVID19, affect mental health – both in short and intermediate terms. Let’s talk about this. 1/ Some initial analyses of the COVID19 epidemic suggested that mental health impact might not be as bad as many had feared. Indeed, in early days of the pandemic, people were surprised to not see a stark rise in suicide (though other mental health indicators did show problems). 2/