iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Josh Grubbs @joshuagrubbsphd.com · 11h

“I’m gonna give a piece of my mind to the pope, a figure who is historically well known for changing course in response to criticism, generally being afraid of offending people, and easily being swayed by random outbursts”

static.klipy.com

I Am Pretty Wisdomous

ALT: I Am Pretty Wisdomous

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Josh Grubbs @joshuagrubbsphd.com · 22h

I can speak Spanish decently, but I remember being in a very not touristy part of Vegas listening to two locals speak in something that was between Spanglish and Spanish and understanding only like every third word and not even all the English ones

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See, it was Duncan that brought me into the fandom (grew up watching him play at wake forest) but I agree

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My lab door… my students seem to think they are funny

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Truly, this would be like assuming that you could schedule a meeting with the commissioner of the NFL and convince him that football should be played with a large duffle bag full of bricks instead of a ball because you’re convinced it’s a type of ball

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Fundamentally, folks, the notion that AI could become conscious, and therefore, in some sense, alive, is absolutely irreconcilable with Christian faith And this isn’t even like a bold take on my part, it’s baked in to the essence of the entire faith, across factions, denominations, and affiliations

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Everyone is caught up on the hubris and they should be, but I want to point out the boneheaded stupidity of thinking that you could convince the most prominent Christian in the world that man could create imago dei on his own

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I mean, I’ve been fanning for the Spurs since the 90s, and Wemby is my favorite player in the league right now, but this is the cherry on top

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Yeah, Russell Vought hates universities and scientists more than he hates science per se, but it’s a distinction without difference

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it's a good feeling, especially with the UG students... I expect some of that from my phd students, but when you see that spark in an undergrad, it's special

It’s kinda my schtick, we started it with a focus on sexuality but our 2022 registered report suggests it might extend beyond that

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Maybe it will happen tomorrow

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Daniel P. Moriarity @dpmoriarity.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

True psychopathy is rare! Basic math means that most war crimes and monstrosities are carried about people who are not psychopaths, which is why there is so much propaganda dehumanizing and othering the target group (have to blunt the empathic impulse)

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Reposted by Josh Grubbs

Bluesky @joshuagrubbsphd.com : eggplant emojis for new porn paper LinkedIn Josh Grubbs: no eggplant emojis Who is left to speak truth (a sense of personality) to power (LinkedIn)?!?!?

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Believe me when I say that those of us in the US are very aware that 80-year-olds don’t just randomly keel over and die no matter how much you might hope that they do

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NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 30/09/2026

wasn't the average life expectancy for those who made it to adulthood (in Europe/U.S.) prior to the 20th century something like the early/mid 60s?

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Reposted by Josh Grubbs

ok leaving this up on the conference room whiteboard

“they don’t know” meme but the man wears a NEORSD hat and stands waist deep in water with otters swimming around him. he says “they don’t know this river burned 13 times”

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lol, I WFH as much I could before the pandemic and still do now; but I don't think I WFH more now than before the pandemic, it's just that the role of professor allows more flexibility in this

Shoutout to the co-authors who helped make this happen, @kristicarrasquillo.bsky.social, Christopher Floyd, and Shane Kraus Preprint again: osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Where does this leave us? Well, frequency alone is a lousy measure of whether porn use is "problematic." The line between troubling and untroubling use is partly moral, not just behavioral — which is exactly why ICD-11 wrote a moral-distress caveat into the CSBD criteria.

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this is contemporaneous, not prospective. Elevated use didn't predict problems 6 months later. Our read is that moral incongruence is an acute, in-the-moment appraisal — not something that slowly accrues over half-year gaps.

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Sure enough, the results indicate that they do... At waves when someone uses more than their own average, that tracks higher problematic use ~3x more strongly if they're high in trait disapproval. The reactivity is real, and it's conditional on morals.

but we also tested for the possibility of a cross-level effect between trait moral disapproval and state porn viewing frequency... more simply, do people who experience an increase in their own use, relative to their own average, report more problems if they have higher trait levels of disapproval?

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Between people, the findings replicated cleanly, again. Folks higher in trait disapproval show a much steeper link between how much they use and how addicted they feel. Disapproval doesn't manufacture problems on its own — it amplifies the use→problems connection.

quick note on methods: 5 waves, ~2 years, ~4,300 US adults (census-matched, w/ a sports-betting oversample). We used multilevel models to pull apart two questions: is moral incongruence a stable between-person trait, a within-person moment-to-moment thing, or both?

But nearly all of that replicated work is between-person and cross-sectional. It tells us people who use-while-disapproving report more problems than people who don't. It doesn't tell us whether the process actually plays out within a person over time... a gap that led to this paper

"moral incongruence" is engaging in a sexual behavior while also believing it's morally wrong. That mismatch — not disapproval alone, not frequency alone — is what often predicts feeling addicted to sexual behavior. It's one of the most replicated findings in this whole literature

seems like, these days, most folks think of me as the sports gambling guy... but, for longer-term followers, you might know that I'm actually the porn guy... well, the compulsive sexual behavior disorder research guy. and, a lot of my work in this space is about moral incongruence

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🍆🍆NEW PAPER ALERT🍆🍆 in press at the Journal of Psychopathology & Clinical Science. It's on moral incongruence & problematic porn use — and it's the rare project that got genuinely better through peer review. Preprint 🧵👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Reminding myself to savor the good times and celebrate them has been one of the things that has helped me remember why I love doing what I do, particularly over the past couple of years So yeah, celebrate those wins, especially now, when they seem less significant in the grand scheme of things

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second, I'm a pathologically low neuroticism person... I genuinely don't find this job stressful, but then again, I don't find anything stressful, which I realize is rare for academia (and certainly comes with drawbacks) but the absence of stress is not the presence of satisfaction or joy

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and this reaction from me is strange for a couple of reasons. First, it's just hypocritical: while experiencing those feelings myself, I've always told my students to celebrate each and every win... despite probably not modeling it the way that I should

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A big paper acceptance was great, but I'm already getting ready to submit the next manuscript A grant is wonderful, but I have to get the next application in soon so there's no lapse A dissertation proposal in the lab is great, but now let's think about running the study & prepping for the defense

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early in my career, I was overjoyed with the wins: Every acceptance/award was amazing. But, as is familiar to many academics, I reached a stage where big wins were basically just a box to be checked as I moved on to the next thing... particularly in the current climate and state of the world

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academia is such a roller coaster, but in the past week or so, our lab has had a big paper acceptance, a successful dissertation proposal, and a notice of a new grant award and yet, I still sometimes find that trying to savor the good is always a struggle

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Shoutout to @davidleyphd.bsky.social and our next governor talking about real crises that need real solutions in our state

Frances: Meh and Loving It @francesmeh.reviews · 30/09/2026

Reposted by Josh Grubbs

one thing i understand more and more as i get older is that i do not have to post every half-baked inane thought that blows through my weary, addled brain. i do it by choice. i can stop anytime i want.

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