iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A short You Tube video on how to cope with others' apparent distress: youtu.be/pC82rmozANQ. From Greg Depow (@gregdepow.bsky.social) and cited in his paper journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

youtu.be

Wise Empathy: Responding to Negative Emotions Online

YouTube video by Greg Depow

010

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A short You Tube video on how to take pleasure from others' apparent happiness: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_9S.... From Greg Depow (@gregdepow.bsky.social) andcited in his paper journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

youtube.com

Wise Empathy: Responding to Positive Emotions Online

YouTube video by Greg Depow

011

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Greg Depow @gregdepow.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

My paper with @chrisoveis.bsky.social, Emily Zohar, and @minzlicht.bsky.social about regulating empathy on social media is now out in SM+S doi.org/10.1177/2056.... We show that training individuals to 'share not compare' for + emotions and 'care not share' for - emotions improves their well-being.

doi.org

Wise Empathy Improves Well-Being on Instagram - Gregory John Depow, Christopher Oveis, Emily Zohar, Michael Inzlicht, 2026

Two-thirds of the global population spends significant time browsing social media, making it critical to understand how to improve online experiences to support...

1118

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Huge replication finds no evidence of a(nother) ‘foundational’ finding onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

011

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Ryan @ryanwright.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is how I remember the order of Henry VIII’s wives.

263952743

Reposted by Tom Farsides

TW @twesq.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

this is fantastic and I learned something new

563212436

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"Consciousness Needs a Subject" - commentary with @cdj.bsky.social on target article by @anilseth.bsky.social. Now published, along with all (50!) commentaries and Anil's responses! 😊 cup.org/4h0wRmg

cup.org

Consciousness needs a subject | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

Consciousness needs a subject - Volume 49

74215

Reposted by Tom Farsides

another morgan @mheslin.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

imagining a grizzled hardboiled detective saying this while gripping some guy's lapels at a shady bar

264137493530

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Neil @nudgecloud.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

It is a great piece of writing. Alt-text added

My husband plays the trumpet, which is a sort of loud pretzel originally invented to blow down the walls of fucking Jericho and, later, to let Civil War soldiers know it was time to kill each other in a river while you chilled eating pigeon in your officer's tent twenty miles away, yet some-how, in modern times, it has become socially acceptable to toot the bad cone inside your house before 10:00 a.m. because it's "your job" and your wife should "get up." What a world! If one was feeling uncharitable, one might describe the trumpet as a machine where you put in com-pressed air and divorce comes out, but despite this-despite operating a piece of biblical demolition equipment inside the home every bright, cold morning of his wife's one and only life-the trumpet is not the most annoying thing about my husband.

2342

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Dr Panti Bliss-Cabrera @pantibliss.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Phew "not satanic"

108111

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Word of the Day: altruistic www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/l... “I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse,” George Bernard Shaw once wrote. “They were built only to serve.”

nytimes.com

Word of the Day: altruistic

000

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Nicole Rust @handle.invalid · 18/05/2026

My new @thetransmitter.bsky.social piece. Does Claude AI have emotions? *No*. Does Claude have nontrivial emotion-equivalents? *Yes*. Like your "memory" vs your laptop's; similar but not the same. Here, I unpack why that's interesting. www.thetransmitter.org/emotion/what...

thetransmitter.org

What can AI teach us about ‘emotions’?

Exploring why Anthropic’s AI, Claude, displays something like emotion could ultimately help us better understand the function that emotions serve in humans.

49229

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

The perils of inferring (especially multiple) motives from actions or outputs in restricted situations, #n+1. Smith et al. (2026). The “I” in egalitarianism: Hadza hunter-gatherers averse to inequality primarily when personally unfavorable. PNAS nexus, 5(2), pgaf328. doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

doi.org

The “I” in egalitarianism: Hadza hunter-gatherers averse to inequality primarily when personally unfavorable

Abstract. Many economists contend that humans have strong, universal, other-regarding equality preferences with deep evolutionary roots. Indeed, many hunte

100

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Paraphrasing Mae West, "Neither goodness nor God had anything to do with it"

011

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I hate league tables but... Reranking The World’s Billionaires By Wealth – And [Their Movement Of Money To The Accounts Of Organisations Identified As Charities] www.forbes.com/sites/mattdu...

forbes.com

Reranking The World’s Billionaires By Wealth – And Altruism

Forbes recalculated the wealth of the richest billionaires to add back in what they gave to charity. Here’s who moves up the ranks.

000

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Mail is running a poll on whether the UK should rejoin the EU. Takes seconds to vote and it's going hilariously well... www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

2751770968

Reposted by Tom Farsides

cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

in 2016 a group of strangers in Kazakhstan saved a dog from drowning by forming a human chain to reach him. they just unveiled a statue commemorating the event and I'm genuinely about to start sobbing

photo showing the rescuers saving the dog, next to the statue commemorating them

closeup on the base of the statue, showing a dog and a man in a ball cap

the top of the statue, where the person at the top of the slope has his hand outstretched so the viewer can "help" pull him up

4276992002

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Deniz Vatansever @neurodenizen.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

New from our @cognizelab.bsky.social in Advanced Science: Beneath the Big Five, personality consistently organises into two dimensions, each with distinct brain signatures. Amazing work by postdoc @kaixiangzhuang.bsky.social and thanks to all our collaborators! doi.org/10.1002/advs...

0127

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Blythe Terrell @blytheterrell.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

OK, I'm obsessed with this study in @science.org It took Reddit "Am I The Asshole" posts & asked LLMs if the poster was the asshole. Aaand (surprise) AI was more likely to tell people they were NOT the asshole ... even when humans said yeah YTA 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence

Despite rising concerns about sycophancy—excessive agreement or flattery from artificial intelligence (AI) systems—little is known about its prevalence or consequences. We show that sycophancy is wide...

11323139

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Nicole Rust @handle.invalid · 27/03/2026

(And here's a terrific piece of art I was unaware of: 16 faces expressing the human passions, J. Pass, 1821). wellcomecollection.org/works/a4yen3...

263

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Nicole Rust @handle.invalid · 07/01/2026

Excellent Mindscape episode with @neddo.bsky.social and @seanmcarroll.bsky.social - recommended! With a bonus reminder of this must-read scifi story by Terry Bisson "They're made of meat". users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSN...

“They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?” 
”Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.”
“I thought you just told me they used radio.”
“They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”

1262

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Horney (1950) discussed 'the tyranny of the shoulds'. Ellis (1977) talked about 'musturbatory thinking'. I am amazed that no one seems to have used the term 'petty ought-o-crats'!

000

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

BOLD signal changes can oppose oxygen metabolism across the human cortex - Nature Neuroscience

Using quantitative brain imaging, the authors show opposite fMRI BOLD signal to metabolic activity due to variable oxygen extraction across the human cortex. This questions the canonical interpretatio...

76922

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

"AI can ... mimick" Oliveira et al (2025). Culturally-attuned AI: Implicit learning of altruistic cultural values through inverse reinforcement learning. PLoS One, 20(12), e0337914. doi.org/10.1371/jour... Press release: www.washington.edu/news/2025/12...

washington.edu

AI can pick up cultural values by mimicking how kids learn

A new University of Washington study suggests that AI could learn cultural values by observing human behavior, similar to how children learn by watching and interacting with adults. Researchers had AI...

000

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 10/12/2025

A jar of pickle beetroot: 2/10 wobble dobble 4/10 jimmy jam My inner cynic says this has about as much construct validity as the average psychological rating scale…

281

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

"In 1923, Franz Kafka encountered a distraught little girl who had lost her doll and was inconsolable. Kafka told her the doll wasn't lost but traveling the world having grand adventures! To reassure her, Kafka began delivering letters from the doll ..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvNZ...

youtube.com

KAFKA AND THE DOLL | Read Along Story Time |

YouTube video by Audiobook Story Time for Children with Viola

230

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Martin McKee @martinmckee.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

In a strange circularity, it seems that all the work I was doing in the early 1990s on concealment/distortion of statistics by USSR & DDR is becoming very relevant now academic.oup.com/ije/article-...

academic.oup.com

Commentary: The health crisis in the USSR: looking behind the facade

My first visit to the USSR was in February 1981, by coincidence at exactly the same time that Nick Eberstadt published a commentary on ‘The health crisis i

0331111

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

As I move into the “Recycling the last hard copy of my PhD” stage of clearing my office, it gives me pause to see just how unrelenting my malcontent and snark have been. 🤪

Final part of the contents page from my PhD report, in which I complain about poor conceptual specification in a major social psychological theory.

020

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Dr Jay Watts @shrinkatlarge.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Silly psy cartoon for the weekend!

The image is a black-and-white cartoon showing a bull sitting on a couch in a therapist’s office, speaking to a woman therapist who is taking notes. The bull appears frustrated, gesturing with one hand. The therapist is seated across from him with a notepad in her lap. A lamp sits between them. The caption underneath reads:

“I mean, I know it’s coming and I think to myself ‘hold it together, man…’ But then he waves that red cape and I just lose it!”

2656

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

299244315123

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 13/07/2025

Modern theories of emotion (especially “interoceptive inference”) often cite William James as a key inspiration. But what did James actually say about emotion, and is it supported by the data? Here’s a brief look at the core arguments and classic evidence. 🧵

58125

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Is it “brash” to be concerned if societies foster freedom of thought or insist on the “narrow, mean, intolerable and brainless prejudice of soulless … maniacs”?

000

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Institute for Replication @i4replication.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

GiveWell sought an independent check on the evidence supporting >$1 billion it has granted to its top charities. This fall, Alex Cohen asked whether we could obtain the datasets needed to reproduce the underlying RCTs. We said yes; charging only a modest fee to cover our time. 🧵 + 🐀 + blog post!

36433

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Today I learned about the empiricist's moustache. Steinmetz, G. (2004). Odious comparisons: Incommensurability, the case study, and “small N's” in sociology. Sociological theory, 22(3), 371-400. doi.org/10.1111/j.07...

A drawing of a moustach as seen from the viewpoint of the artist looking down at it

010

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

I like this framing a lot. Whether intelligence is a thing, various things, a combination of things, or different things to different people, what do we mean and what are we trying to say when we use the label?

000

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

On the difficulty of inferring motivation from behaviour and the risks of inferential biases, e.g., anthropomorphism. Arakawa, H. (2025). Interpreting mouse’s intention from analysis of prosocial behavior. Lab Animal. doi.org/10.1038/s416...

doi.org

Interpreting mouse’s intention from analysis of prosocial behavior - Lab Animal

Recent research provides evidence of potential altruistic social behavior in mice. Laboratory mice appear to attempt to rescue an unconscious cage mate by investigating its mouth and pulling out its t...

000

Tom Farsides @tomfarsides.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

People’s ‘moral circle’ sometimes shrinks, including standardly during some stages of development. Marshall, J., Wilks, M., Caviola, L., & Nelder, K. (2025). When development constricts our moral circle. Nature Human Behavior. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

doi.org

When development constricts our moral circle - Nature Human Behaviour

Although many believe our moral circles expand with age, this Perspective discusses an early-emerging tendency to care for others.

010

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

K. Ring, 1967, doi.org/10.1016/0022...

doi.org

Redirecting

031

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

"There is also a self-righteous aspect to whistle-blowing, so that some people - even whole university departments or academic sub-fields - seem to relish challenging the integrity of the procedures and conclusions of others." Abelson (1995/2009, p103) on #p-hacking ("fishiness") and #metascience

A one page quotation, including the skeeted text

7132

Reposted by Tom Farsides

Erin Westgate @erinwestgate.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Since 1954, "The Handbook of Social Psychology" has been the field’s most authoritative reference work, and today is the launch of the 6th edition. Best news? The HSP is now open-access—free to read, download, and share. the-hsp.com

112749