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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
Given limited 'space', upward mobility into elite occupations REQUIRES the possibility of downward mobility.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
All four of the children from wealthy backgrounds end up in very advanted positions: Andrew (Solicitor) Charles (TV producer and commisioning editor) John (QC - there are also several gratuitous shots of his palatial home and grounds) Suzy (bereavement counsellor, married to a solicitor)
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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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Reposted by Rob de Vries
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
Spending on disability/caring related benefits _has_ increased, but non-disability spending has declined, leaving the total spend basically flat
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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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Reposted by Rob de Vries
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 · 24/08/2026
For most people, explicit arguments about racial hierarchy meet the criterion of being wrong enough and harmful enough to exclude from normal academic enquiry. Not to be banned from the earth (there's always substack), but enough not to continue paying someone to expound them.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This idea of red lines is crucial. *Everyone* has red lines about what speech we would reasonably tolerate from a colleague at our institutions. We are arguing about where the lines should be - usually based on some calculation of wrongness + harm - not whether there should be any.
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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
This type of social science - big, simple ideas based on 'a certain amount of evidence', and shorn of negative or complicating evidence - is one of the biggest problems in the field
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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
Replace 'creative spirit' with something academic and this is what you want academics to be doing. But the incentives aren't there. Why spend your time or full integrity on quality, when prestige and progression depend on you moving onto the next paper or grant?
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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
The basic idea being that AI is a bit like factory automation. We'll still have 'artisinal' human produced work (like we still have handmade shoes), but AI will be producing the 'factory' version. The difference is that people need shoes. People don't need AI generated presentations
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Inspired by this sentence from an Atlantic article: "There may soon come a day when consultants reminisce about creating PowerPoint presentations by hand"
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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
Yeah, so the ideal is always a disadvantaged (or working class background) but current success. With the best 'current success' signal being different for different audiences (Conservative = business). No-one out here boasting about having 'good breeding'
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
My 'selective' social background stories: 1. Raised by a single mum who worked as a school dinner lady, lived in a council house, grandad worked in a factory 2. Grandad was a factory manager, lived in a 4 bed detached house with an acre of land, mum was a council administrator
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
though @drjennings.bsky.social are there _any_ examples of politicians making themselves seem more middle-class? Or does this only happen in private, not in public? @aaronreeves.bsky.social?
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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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Reposted by Rob de Vries
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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Reposted by Rob de Vries
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
I understand the appeal of this idea! Extraordinary amounts of labour are devoted to just reinventing or rehashing things that already exist. Fighting this temptation requires remembering that efficiency is not the pre-eminent human value. Probably not even top five. /2
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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 · 06/02/2026
Prediction: In <1m, The Atlantic will run an article comparing the Epstein Files to the Mueller Report. Once again leftists made too much of a big deal about some terrible inustice involving Trump, then it turned into a nothingburger. Just a few crass emails. Nothing to get worked up about
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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 · 05/02/2026
Totally agree - lots of things that are obviously missed if we only look where the light is already shining, and talking to people w' lived experience is the way to catch this. A bit more iffy on the implication that lots of this experience is 'unquantifiable' though...
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
/3 There are almost always multiple possible, equally correct interpretations - and choosing between them is just as subjective (and usually ideologically informed) as attempting to determine purpose in context.
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Rob de Vries @rob-devries.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
/2 But *textualism is subjective too*. For a text written by humans the length of a law *there just is no single, objectively correct interpretation based purely on the text*...
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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
/2 The coffee thing clearly not a moral status threat. Is it still a status threat of a kind (as he suggests - being perceived as 'basic')? Or is there actually no threat here and the status assertion ("I am better than people who drink effete coffees") is coming from elsewhere?
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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
A parent who understood elite education would have been able to tell her that the 'BA' things is meaningless to the content, and of the value of 'hyperelite' educational credentials. Of course you can look that up online, but it's not the same as having it 'internalised' /2
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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
it managed to keep track of a lot of the underlying data much better than I expected.
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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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Reposted by Rob de Vries
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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