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Rob de Vries

@rob-devries.bsky.social
26 followers 17 following 57 posts

Quantitative Sociologist at the University of Kent. Author: Critical Statistics - Seeing Beyond the Headlines (www.bloomsbury.com/uk/critical-stat…)

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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Watching 70up and there is a lot of talk (from the participants) about opportunity but in reality only modest, short-range upward mobility (Nick as a possible exception). And - strikingly - *no meaningful downward mobility from elite backgrounds*.
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National Centre for Social Research @natcen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Our latest #BritishSocialAttitudes analysis examines how attitudes to welfare and disability benefits have changed over time, against the backdrop of recent debates around welfare reform. Read the full report: natcen.ac.uk/publications...
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
BBC article is probably the best summary of mine and @benbgeiger.bsky.social's BSA chapter. Includes the important point that non-pensioner welfare spending **has not** been rising (as a % of GDP) chahttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4grdk95vgno
bbc.co.uk
Public opposed to disability benefit cuts, major survey suggests
Around 7% of those polled wanted disability benefit cuts, according to the latest British social attitudes survey.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
@benbgeiger.bsky.social and my report for BSA on attitudes to disabiltiy benefits is out today. Basic message: politicians shouldn't assume that there is a strong public appetite for cuts to disability benefits natcen.ac.uk/publications...
natcen.ac.uk
BSA 43 | Attitudes to welfare | National Centre for Social Research
This chapter analyses public attitudes towards spending on disability benefits and relevant trends in attitudes to welfare spending more broadly.
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Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I Study Projects that Select on the Dependent Variable. They Have One Habit in Common.
nytimes.com
Opinion | I Study Successful People. They Have One Habit in Common.
Being a successful self-starter doesn’t mean pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
New paper out in RSSM with Mark Hill and @lauraruis.bsky.social showing how the associations embedded in LLMs can give us clues into the structure of occupational prestige perceptions: authors.elsevier.com/a/1ndzS%7EuW...
authors.elsevier.com
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Killer line from Peter Gray about Jonathan Haidt: "“His strong point has always been kind of large, somewhat philosophical arguments based on general observations and a **certain amount of evidence**, and he’s very good at that.” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
theatlantic.com
What if It’s Not the Phones?
An evolutionary psychologist is challenging the popular understanding of kids and technology.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Really struck by this quote: "I enjoy spending months or years on projects that consume my life, make me obsessed with their quality, and are imbued with the full integrity of my creative spirit." www.wordsfromeliza.com/p/direct-add...
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
This about the elife kerfuffle says it all: "They wondered if papers published there would “count” for their career". Piecemeal reform won't work. Gatekeeping has to go all at once, or scientists will preferentally publish in 'gatekept' journals for the prestige nikomc.com/essays/elife...
nikomc.com
eLife Fallout
When a prestigious journal scrapped accept-reject decisions on submitted papers, some scientists rebelled, and the editor-in-chief was fired.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
it's a shame David Graeber didn't live to see the rise of AI. It would have really helped him test his Bullshit Jobs theory. Basically on the principle that if an AI can do a task without much supervision, then it probably wasn't a task that needed doing...
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Proposal: all arguments about the validity of traditional economic principles (efficient markets, meritocracy) should start with the fact that history's first trillionaire is a racist fuckwit running 4 unprofitable companies
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Exactly this. Jess Phillips describing her mother as an NHS worker when she was a senior executive. People describing Thatcher's dad as a 'grocer' when he owned two shops and was Mayor of Grantham
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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
This isn't helped by those politicians who tell selective stories about their social background to make themselves seem more working class, or more middle class for the super-posh, than they actually are.
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
There's no "study," this is based on a crank manifesto with only four footnotes written by a bunch of health grifters. Why is the Guardian covering this like it has any academic credibility?
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
@urisohn.bsky.social not particularly statistically interesting, but check out these flatly misreported findings in one of the more highly cited studies on the role of 'manfluencers' in encouraging misogyny in young men: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
just been listening to this www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... Other problems with it, but one thing: it assumes that reading things gives a more accurate view than watching video. Given how print media sanewashes (esp.) Trump, arguably people watching video of him actually talk have the clearer view
bbc.co.uk
BBC Radio 4 - Radical with Amol Rajan, The Reading Recession: Are We Making Ourselves Less Intelligent? (James Marriott)
Tracing the historical relationship between reading, intelligence and democracy.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Another clear-sighted post from Adam Mastroianni about the problems with academic publishing. For-profit academic publishers need to be burned out of the system entirely. For some reason we gave up on that project in like 2015 and it needs to be revived. www.experimental-history.com/p/the-one-sc...
experimental-history.com
The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do
OR: the long overdue forest fire
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
LLMs are the product of tech's (and capitalism more generally) exclusive focus on efficiency. If an idea, or a piece of art can be statistically predicted from existing work, then what's the point of using human labour to create it? /1
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Kind of ironic how Matt Goodwin's trajectory mirrors the evidence on status threat and the ascent of RW populism. Looked down on by elites (no elite professorship), so pursue alternative route to pride / status www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/philos...
prospectmagazine.co.uk
Matthew Goodwin, Reform and the politics of resentment
The ‘heterodox intellectual’ turned populist is a morbid symptom of the digital age
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
/1 Listening to the back catalogue of @fivefourpod.bsky.social and the episode on Garland v. Cargill has finally persuaded me out of my instinct towards textualism. Textualism is tempting as a solution to subjectivity. Determining the purpose or spirit of a law feels problematically subjective...
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
/1 Interesting because there seem to be two separate phenomena here. He references the 'angry vegans' stereotype, which Benoit Monin at Stanford has shown comes from 'moral status threat' (psychological defense against idea that people are lookind down on you).
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
The "she does not own a car..." part is so telling. They just can't conceive of a politician who isn't already rich. She's not poor, just not one of the wealthy class of people who are allowed to be 'serious' political candidates.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Are they actually using LLMs here (which doesn't seem necessary), or is this going to be a conventional statistical model that they've branded as "AI"? If it's the latter they have radically missed the public mood on having AI shoved down their throats: www.gov.uk/government/n....
gov.uk
Education Secretary sets roadmap to improve attendance levels
Every school to be set an individual minimum target to improve attendance and set up every child to achieve and thrive.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Overheard on the train yesterday: a nice example of small ways in which a privileged background can help in getting 'top jobs'. A father and daughter discussing her career choices. She dismisses Oxbridge because their degrees are all BA and she wants to do a more scientific BSc /1
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Found this guy in the garden yesterday. Looked crazily like a hummingbird. Apparently it's a hummingbird hawk moth
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
I've spent far too much time making up a game to simulate inequality for my 2nd year sociology students. Lacking anyone stupid enough to test it with me, I got chatgpt to simulate it and it managed remarkable well: chatgpt.com/share/68dd39...
chatgpt.com
ChatGPT - Game simulation results
A conversational AI system that listens, learns, and challenges
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Would be interesting to see what this looks like with prestige/social status as a dimension. Lots of 'low PMC' (e.g. journalists, creative professionals) are actually the most prestigious jobs in society - and well within most people's conception of the 'PMC'
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Business Secretary Peter Kyle: "Too often people go to university to explore research and knowledge...I want people to go to university to start businesses in our country" Welp, goodbye Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, we had an OK run... www.lbc.co.uk/article/brit...
lbc.co.uk
British students lack ‘drive’ of their American peers, says Business Secretary | LBC
The Business Secretary has defended comments he made at a meeting with investors where he said British students lack the ‘drive’ and ‘vigour’ of their American peers.
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
This also just seems like a statistical fluke? 2025 isn't even over yet. It's weird to publish an article about a "trend" that applies to 6 months out of the last three decades.
Right-wing terror attacks and plots exceed left-wing attacks and plots every single year since 1995
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Facts in the article: 1. RW extremists have been responsible for vastly more (and more lethal) political violence in the US since the 1980s. 2. In 2025, there have been 5 LW attacks & 1 RW 3. You can't infer a trend because violence fluctuates so much. Headline www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
theatlantic.com
Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise
For the first time in more than 30 years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Just been reminded that I wrote this on THES quite a while ago: www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/yes-pee... Nobody read it, but now I'm on social media finally I can see if anyone is interested...
timeshighereducation.com
Yes, peer review sucks. But attention-economy hellscapes would be worse
Obliging everyone to undertake post-publication review would aid discoverability in a world without traditional journals, says Robert de Vries
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
"“Free speech culture” tells people they should shut up about the things that make them passionate so other people feel more comfortable disagreeing with them" www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...
popehat.com
How "Free Speech Culture" Is Killing Free Speech: Part One
Blurring The Lines Between Official Censorship And Individual Criticism Built The Intellectual Foundation For Trump's Assault On Free Expression
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Interesting argument from @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social on Search Engine podcast: Gen Z are having a 'coolness' crisis because: 1) finding something obscure but good is 'cool', 2) popularity metrics are now how people know things are good. Hence no-one will like your video/post or think you are cool
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
The big problem with the current Labour party is that they seem to have accepted that they have no way to set the agenda. The right persuades people that small boats and refugee hotels are an existential threat to the nation so we have to 'meet the public where they are'.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
my attempt to visualise @michaelhobbes.bsky.social point about why US Democrats struggle with messaging
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