Cat Hicks

Psychologist for the humans of tech
Evidence strategy for technical teams

Co-host at Change, Technically: https://www.changetechnically.fyi/

The Psychology of Software Teams (July, 2026): https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Software-Teams/Hicks/p/book/9781032963389

Seizing the means of scientific production. "Too much psychology for a software engineering audience" - Reviewer 2

She/her
Founded: Catharsis Consulting, Developer Success Lab
Neighborhood Cool Aunt of Science

Podcast: https://www.changetechnically.fyi/
Blog: https://www.drcathicks.com/blog
Developer Science: https://www.drcathicks.com/projects
Newsletter: https://fight-for-the-human.ghost.io/

Public Key

npub18g0d4j2g7k6zll4jkr4clkp6vuurlyakdsrs2f4fv0ywnqfmjhuqm00a9e

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsr58k6e9y0tdp0l6etp6u0mqaxwwpljwmxcpc9y65k8j8fsyaet7qpqq49mcfd

Publishing to

Author Public Key

npub18g0d4j2g7k6zll4jkr4clkp6vuurlyakdsrs2f4fv0ywnqfmjhuqm00a9e

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-05-07 15:15:55 GMT

"there is little evidence that the brain’s fundamental ability to concentrate has been impaired. This suggests that if we can shut down the distractions of our environment, it is possible to recover focus."
Inevitability and "ability decay" explanations essentially teach us learned helplessness about the things we experience, when really, we could change our environments. This is why I'm so against brain-based scare tactics.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01407-w

2026-03-20 15:50:55 GMT

- reply

I will figure out a path to my own sharing of work, but it is sad to me to feel there is this intellectual community you need to have a FAANG credit card to be part of. That's just not how it should work and we will see the consequences of these structures quickly in who gets to be on stage. This isn't a call out of any single organization, I'm always really honored to be thought of, but it's hard for me to understand how you can sell $1000 tickets on our content and not support creators

2026-02-23 20:18:02 GMT

- reply

https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116121459251617437

2026-02-13 19:08:09 GMT

Wow, your open source community isn't behaving with respect for people's effort and generosity in contributing to knowledge? The same open source community that tolerated people harassing women out of it on the regular and still put those people on stage? That open source community doesn't have the social norms to protect YOU now?
Shocker

2026-01-26 21:41:09 GMT

- reply

everyone is going to bring a small and relevant to them project, I personally have a couple ongoing things we could work on if people stall out. We're getting some basic tools and workflows set up across all

2026-01-26 20:41:54 GMT

I am planning a hackathon with my neighborhood queer lady friends what is happening to me

2026-01-24 20:46:53 GMT

- reply

Literally nothing feels like enough but we are finding what tiny ways to connect and be in person with neighbors and say do you see what's happening, what can we do here and now

2026-01-24 20:46:42 GMT

- reply

Put a note in your neighbor's mailbox with your phone number to text if they are in trouble
We are putting out coffee and donuts tomorrow and sitting outside
You can't help people if you don't know people

2026-01-24 20:46:27 GMT

If you are feeling as helpless and no words are enough enraged as we are, get together with neighbors. We are doing that today and tomorrow and the next day

2026-01-22 16:32:08 GMT

- reply

I think some people have a problem reasoning with numbers. When a field is 80-90% male and we can compare its segregation to other similar fields it is now demonstrated that something is going on with gender and a field. Well explored and documented across the literature. This is not something I need to prove and I'm not going to waste my time defending this position when I could instead be spending my time working on the next steps around what helps shift this kind of problem.

2026-01-22 16:29:44 GMT

Obviously scicomm doesn't always work and when you are trying to speak succinctly online it won't always work but I do find it very shocking how OFTEN I am told, by men in software, that my talking about gender effects and how they operate in technical cultures is CAUSING the problems in technical cultures. It is not. My thoughts on that:
https://bsky.app/profile/grimalkina.bsky.social/post/3mcxins3qok26

2026-01-18 17:13:28 GMT

"You see, it's about making sure we restrict working in technology to the people who were born with the innate gift of CRAFT, you can't understand" - software people chirping at me while I'm trying to log into a website generated by their Craft that has two different log-in pages for separate issues

2026-01-07 17:00:52 GMT

This is like social media for babies, but I offer it anyway, I started asking "how am I going to sit around feeling, anticipating, and bracing myself if I post this?"
have found it a helpful habit of mind for identifying things where I do have thoughts/experience, but don't want the activation

2025-12-15 17:46:19 GMT

- reply

yes totally. That's actually why I like Campbell's law because it explicitly names the distortion of social processes

2025-12-15 17:19:57 GMT

- reply

Of course, many people come to these conversations so convinced that no shared meaningful measurement is ever possible, they would prefer to say: all measures are always going to be subject to goodhart's law
I don't believe that, though. I think for most of us, if you're going to take a medicine you will want to know how many people were helped or died after that medicine was administered. Measurement is necessary. I do understand we may have reasonable disagreements about the when and how

2025-12-15 17:18:21 GMT

- reply

First of all I actually think people usually mean to reference behavioral incentive change, in which case you should say Campbell's Law probably; second of all neither of these "laws" ever meant that measurement can't be meaningful
"So the message of Goodhart’s Law is that if you’re setting targets, they ought to target the thing that you care about, not something which you believe to be related to it, no matter how much easier that intermediate thing is to measure."

2025-12-15 17:17:17 GMT

"Goodhart’s Law is really a statement about the process of trying to make policy based on proxy measures of “internal states of complex systems” which are not themselves directly observable. "
Got to this piece from a link from Ben Recht and it finally nailed something that's always bothered me about the constant reference to Goodhart's law across software.
https://backofmind.substack.com/p/goodhart-as-epistemologist

2025-12-11 21:47:38 GMT

I just saw a tiktok where this woman said "leaders get paid, helpers get thanked" and it's really sitting like a rock in my stomach tbh
capitalism is just destroying us isn't it

2025-12-10 15:49:07 GMT

- reply

"For a substantial group of U.S. researchers, 2025 will be remembered as the year their path to a career in science was closed off, their dreams dashed."

2025-12-10 15:48:28 GMT

A series worth sitting with
https://www.statnews.com/american-science-shattered/

2025-11-25 22:40:47 GMT

- reply

In addition: "Women earn 46% of the Ph.D.'s in biology but, despite evidence for gender similarities, they earn only 25% of the Ph.D.'s in physical science and 15% in engineering. Women comprise 30% of the assistant professors in biology but only 16% in physical science and 17% in engineering"
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1132154?casa_token=JZb4VBMANcUAAAAA%3AemIlIevFmmDvQCncw5rEwmdFH7aWLieK2rnNWGLF5Mg-Hi_4Ezyg1h7Y-BGDAy4RTIzIVA4MPKMNHw
Many differences are larger by *culture* than by gender, and fall away or are different for disaggregated identity groups, once again indicating a social explanation

2025-11-25 22:31:35 GMT

- reply

"It is easy to assume that these differences are “hard wired” and that they explain gender differences in performance, but an equally viable interpretation is that males and females have different experiences related to mathematics as they grow up, and that these different experiences have, on average, enhanced synaptic connections in some regions for males and in other regions for females."
Janet + Me: CAN YOU EVEN LOGIC.

2025-11-25 22:31:10 GMT

- reply

from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00516.x?casa_token=0Ho5Eu_an2sAAAAA%3AjaYbXyFxDaRzvfoqvFoGp6021Q-0iwSXW3ZNS1nw_OjhbhpTnKLonfwNYpOtPbN5kVLNt74UzVDj
"In the era of functional magnetic resonance imaging research, it is common to see reports of studies finding that different brain regions are activated in males compared with females during activities such as solving difficult mathematics problems."

2025-11-25 22:22:11 GMT

- reply

you may get the impression that gender and ability assessment is a professional area of mine. It is not really and it's just something I HAVE to know SO MUCH ABOUT to survive these psychological onslaughts, it's required to work anywhere near software conversations, it's wild

2025-11-25 22:14:23 GMT

- reply

also Hyde, responding to 'historical' arguments with the drollness that you must HAVE to have to do work on this: "With women prohibited from pursuing doctoral studies in mathematics at essentially all universities in the world before the 1890s, let alone being mathematics professors at major research universities, their extreme scarcity before the 20th century was, undoubtedly, largely due to very few women having had the opportunity to develop and use their mathematical talents. "

2025-11-25 22:08:41 GMT

- reply

And the main psychological one? Aggression. Also obviously.

2025-11-25 22:08:09 GMT

- reply

by the way all those gender differences in group averages that people scream about forever? largely miniscule compared to the size of socioenvironmental effects. You want to know what the biggest ones are? For motor tasks. Obviously.

2025-11-25 22:06:22 GMT

- reply

Here is an actual citation used correctly:
"Furthermore, data from several studies indicate that greater male variability with respect to mathematics is not ubiquitous. Rather, its presence correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes"
KICK. ROCKS.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0901265106

2025-11-25 22:05:10 GMT

- reply

YOU ARE GOING TO CITE THHHHHHHEEEEEEE DR. JANET HYDE IN THIS WAY!!!!
not on my watch

2025-11-25 22:01:20 GMT

- reply

holy fucking shit, I need to go work on something else but I looked up one of the citations they use in the section where they argue for *female deficits* and it is LITERALLY FROM JANET HYDE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. THE AUTHOR OF THE GENDER SIMILARITIES HYPOTHESIS
am I THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN READ

2025-11-25 20:36:43 GMT

- reply

Written by women by the way. Lord Almighty

2025-11-25 20:33:23 GMT

- reply

I hate when it SNEAKS IN and you're AMBUSHED

2025-11-25 20:32:59 GMT

- reply

This stuff doesn't usually get me by surprise anymore but sometimes it just does

2025-11-25 20:32:38 GMT

I just read a piece about women and STEM ability that I disagree with so much I'm physically shaking God damn

2025-11-24 16:52:33 GMT

- reply

what would be the way to "make sure they're unemployable"?

2025-11-24 16:18:02 GMT

- reply

Our tech community needs SO much more repair, processing, and collective reflection. The people who worked to support government and science were so betrayed by other groups. The people in flashy big tech cos feeling like their values were betrayed. Just so much repair needed here

2025-11-24 16:13:08 GMT

- reply

I do not believe that the majority of the software people I have worked with all these years sit around thinking, "I want cancer research to be destroyed." We have mountains to climb no doubt, we are trapped in some bad cultures no doubt, but I do not believe this of you for one moment.

2025-11-24 16:05:00 GMT

- reply

Engineering can be so much better than this and more than this. It's absurd how much we're resigned to this entire area of human work being held hostage by this kind of culture.

2025-11-24 16:00:42 GMT

- reply

I would write it except I want to stay safe

2025-11-24 16:00:31 GMT

- reply

all I see are "they're not engineers" "that's not what engineering is" I want a thick good really real piece to sink my teeth in about all the parts of this that IS "like engineering"

2025-11-24 15:59:57 GMT

There actually has not been enough reflection in the tech community about DOGE

2025-11-17 23:47:29 GMT

I cannot finish these book edits under these conditions
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/567/699/932/957/062/original/7155b9eb9cb88792.jpg

2025-11-11 17:42:35 GMT

RE: https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/115532267025434060
long story short, we have a "psychological immune system" to protect the self from threat, but just like the real immune system can become damaged by persistent viral threat and become an autoimmune reaction... so too, people facing chronic psychological threat can develop maladaptive internalization of how they've been treated.
This is why "tough love" interventions might work for privileged students and not for marginalized ones. An entirely different belief structure is in place
#note15sd…5x26

2025-11-11 17:34:52 GMT

- reply

My area of psychology has been much more about focusing on groups of people for whom *negative* appraisals happen too often, whether from discrimination by others or inability to safely make mistakes. So a counterpoint to the idea that everyone needs to correct the FAE, is that some people are a better served by support with consistently re-affirming a positive view of the self. This is especially true for ppl who experience greater environmental threat
https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/sherman/david/sites/labs.psych.ucsb.edu.sherman.david/files/pubs/self_defense.pdf

2025-11-11 17:32:48 GMT

- reply

FAE is part of what we call "self-serving attribution biases" of which you can identify *a lot*, including people overclaiming personal responsibility for team success but less for team failure, that positive self-attributions are "overly stable", that failures are "externalized."
But, right in the era when you learned about it, we also started to question the cultural and other interactions with these biases, e.g.:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amy-Mezulis/publication/8347816_Is_There_a_Universal_Positivity_Bias_in_Attributions_A_Meta-Analytic_Review_of_Individual_Developmental_and_Cultural_Differences_in_the_Self-Serving_Attributional_Bias/links/0deec517175a025084000000/Is-There-a-Universal-Positivity-Bias-in-Attributions-A-Meta-Analytic-Review-of-Individual-Developmental-and-Cultural-Differences-in-the-Self-Serving-Attributional-Bias.pdf

2025-11-11 17:25:07 GMT

- reply

But the FAE is a totally great entrypoint to all of this because it is a great way to start to realize that we DO make systematic errors in our attributions about the world. Realizing the differences between how we explain the patterns between "self" and "other" is a phenomenal place to start.
That being said, also important to note some people are much harder on *themselves than others*, especially if they've been marginalized. So you might see the reverse, too much internalizing!

2025-11-11 17:23:01 GMT

- reply

We also do it between *domains* of human activity! Fields-specific ability beliefs (the FAB rather than the FAE :D ) differ reliably, such that we are more likely to attribute success in a domain like physics to an innate trait of brilliance compared to other fields (this then leads us to make stereotypes about the "type of person who can be good at physics")
Attributions are absolutely fascinating and a rich area of emerging theory, for the last decade!

2025-11-11 17:21:00 GMT

- reply

we do this across social identities: men's emotions like anger are more likely to be explained as a reaction to the environment, whereas women's are more likely to be explained as deriving from an internal source (high sensitivity, unjustified)

2025-11-11 17:19:47 GMT

- reply

I love this and just to add on as a beliefs psychologist, it's not *just* FAE you're describing, but we exercise domain-specific and contextually-different attribution errors about this type of explanation.
For instance, we do this across groups with ingroup bias. We attribute greater morality to the actions of ingroup members, and are more likely to see justified reasons for their actions, but flatten the reasons we see for outgroup members' actions

2025-11-03 17:31:08 GMT

- reply

I have many goals and they include being able to take care of my family and thrive and hey maybe even feeling like I could pay out of pocket without much worry if Ashley or I needed an expensive drug our insurance wouldn't cover. Those are as real to me as anything
But I also believe that the success of that one person out there might have some connection to people like us being able to thrive and I'm willing to keep betting on it

2025-11-03 17:28:17 GMT

- reply

I face this animosity from other scientists sometimes because I explicitly say I work with software teams and to them, it's like, how on earth could the richest industry around possibly be a place that needs scientific compassion and generosity?
What they don't see is that I really don't care if 100 people who didn't "deserve" to get a thing for free get it as a side effect of the fact that one person who really NEEDED it does get it when they're trying to fight some battle we don't know about

2025-11-03 17:22:34 GMT

- reply

I value my work so highly that I KNOW the tech community often can't afford it actually, but none of us really can "afford" each other. Science is a societal gamble on something else, a collective good. And if you can't understand that some of us see a path to creating an ecosystem in which *different jobs will be possible* then that's a gap in your vision.
"People will believe x is too abundant" is a problem that's way downstream of "people believe x actually exists at all"

2025-11-03 17:05:39 GMT

- reply

I feel mildly angry that people seem to so often think what I do is by accident and that I need Jobs 101 explained to me rather than the possibility being considered that I have a strategic point of view on this

2025-11-03 17:03:54 GMT

I got an interesting accusation that providing science education stuff for free is devaluing the work and suppressing the fair payment of scientific/research labor
It's like a lot of concepts that I believe are real in general but arranged into an argument I strongly disagree with and believe is pretty unkind to level at a single individual using her energy in the way I use mine
I distinguish very carefully between things I consider gifts and services I do not

2025-10-30 17:30:45 GMT

Omg I have been on the candidate pool lists for some long covid RCT clinical trials for nearly three years and I just got a serious eligibility inquiry for a super exciting RCT, cross your fingers for me that 1) I get selected 2) I get assigned to the treatment condition !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2025-10-28 15:09:04 GMT

Honestly, if you value content you've created always make sure it has a home outside of a single company. Always.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/tech/google-diversity-programs-women-techmakers

2025-10-25 16:27:50 GMT

- reply

The constant chant that "x nation will win now" misses the real global picture of science. Unfortunately (this is a bad thing that makes our world more fragile) many many fields really do only exist at the cutting edge in the US. But also this framing doesn't really reflect the truly international nature of the best of science. It's a knowledge ecosystem that capitalist competition won't give the right language for.

2025-10-25 16:25:50 GMT

People popping up in my mentions to hand wave about science in China should probably know I did an entire dissertation that was a cross-cultural collaboration with Chinese psychologists and with populations in the US and China. Not a topic where I enjoy stereotypes. We (scientists who have collaborated internationally) understand the stakes are for all of humanity. The typical internationally collaborating scientist is brave & generous like you wouldn't believe. Especially after covid.

2025-10-25 15:51:55 GMT

- reply

I'm adding onto this thread because I think I missed emphasizing an important take-away (protip -- read papers over a couple of days)
This isn't *inevitable*: men who didn't hold this strong belief in a masculine default for STEM careers actually embraced examples of the success of women in STEM, and the researchers found those success examples *lowered* rather than increased threat.

2025-10-25 15:10:09 GMT

- reply

I'm honestly really fucking angry I don't see anyone in tech talking about this, ever.

2025-10-25 15:09:41 GMT

- reply

Someone I know who is a young grad student studying genetics posted on LinkedIn that his grant was defunded, with zero political commentary literally just sharing the information about what his work was, and got drowned in hundreds of DOGE supporting, sickening comments attacking every single thing about him and making up endless other lies besides.
I have been online as a researcher for a while, but it's never been like this for science. It's like science gamergate happening everywhere

2025-10-25 15:05:11 GMT

- reply

In fact, we know people working in these areas who've gone entirely dark across social media and no longer can tolerate the stress and danger of doing public facing communication about their work. Think about that for a moment. Think about the people who have poured out their lives trying to help you, afraid for their families and afraid of being made a target on tv for it.
I will never forget what this year has been like for my loved ones in science, never.

2025-10-25 15:00:36 GMT

- reply

They deal out conspiracy theories that make anyone who researches vaccines fear for their lives and they've cancelled over 500 million in mRNA research -- YES, THE SAME RESEARCH THAT IS DISCOVERING CANCER TREATMENT
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-025-02826-2

2025-10-25 14:46:42 GMT

- reply

Also they hate biology because it's half women. No I completely believe a big part of our social issue is as simple as that and I will not be taking notes. They hate biology and need to sabotage it even though it is literally the thing that gives us a light in the darkness of all human disease because biology managed to desegregate gender.

2025-10-25 14:39:52 GMT

- reply

We should be throwing unbelievable amounts of money into funding science right now given how many frontiers are being pushed that could transform things WITHIN OUR LIFETIMES but instead we're fighting for our lives inside of a psyop that's convinced everyone nothing is worth anything unless it comes in a smartphone
The gaslighting we are all experiencing about science is monumental

2025-10-25 14:37:14 GMT

- reply

Also yet another demonstration of the critical power of retrospective analysis, not everything can be an RCT (obviously) and breakthroughs in disease treatment often have to come from real world observational studies coupled with careful mechanism work in animal models.
Exactly the methods RFK JR is trying to destroy and that the Republicans mock as unnecessary because they only have a kindergarten crayon drawing understanding of science
And unfortunately that's what techbros have too

2025-10-25 14:34:14 GMT

This is just unreal
mRNA vaccines are going to be a turning point in human history if we're ever allowed to fucking do science again in this country
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09655-y

2025-10-24 22:36:25 GMT

- reply

Banger quote: "A missing piece of the leaky pipeline metaphor may be that when men see more women entering the pipeline, they create more leaks" 💀

2025-10-24 22:34:08 GMT

- reply

I was curious whether the authors have followed up on this observational work by looking into any interventions that seem effective at changing these kind of belief states. They have. Here's an interesting example that looks at breaking the chain of sexist norm transference between supervisors and subordinates:
https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2022-86136-001

2025-10-24 22:32:09 GMT

- reply

This is a lab demonstration of an effect many of us have experienced in the real world, where success provokes threat response:
"successful gender diversity efforts may threaten men's sense of ownership over the STEM identity"
Without addressing and changing these responses, backlash continues.

2025-10-24 22:30:52 GMT

- reply

Juicy little tidbit, this result holds when controlling for masculinity insecurity! "prototypicality legitimacy" is its own distinct belief system here (likely domain specific imho)
Source: Danbold, F., & Huo, Y. J. (2017). Men's defense of their prototypicality undermines the success of women in STEM initiatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 57-66.
I found a copy here: https://huolab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2013/03/Danbold-Huo-JESP-2017.pdf

2025-10-24 22:29:29 GMT

One reason diversity initiatives are sabotaged?
If you think it is valid & right that your subgroup represents and defines a category, for instance, men considering themselves the rightful prototypical members of STEM careers, you will be more likely to resist opening up the group to others and more likely to demand that anyone entering the category conforms to YOUR norms.
This effect is reversed when you do not have a baseline belief that your group has the default right to be the prototype

2025-10-16 13:05:24 GMT

- reply

It's fine if you are struggling with the hard problems. Lord, we all are!
But the nihilistic assumption that NO ONE ELSE knows how to create change? Yeah that's gonna be a no from me.
If I listened to voices like this I would have given up years ago. Years ago. Every single step of my career people have said that's impossible, no one will care, no one will care about what you're doing, Cat, no one will care about the truth, or data, or evidence.
And they have always. Been. Wrong.

2025-10-16 13:04:02 GMT

- reply

I often tell people I used to work in and with schools. That's because schools are devastating places.
- society's cruelest outcomes and disparities all present
- the subject of endless power struggles and turmoil
Yet schools are also incredible places
- lives transformed forever
- one of our greatest single experiments as a society

2025-10-16 13:02:47 GMT

- reply

- it's diagnostic of an industry that has forgotten, or perhaps never knew, how to tackle hard problems
- it's diagnostic of a culture that doesn't understand how to support people doing challenging work we want in this industry over drowning them in trauma dumping
- I'm not a clinician so ethically speaking I'll stop there but I'll suggest as your psychologist friend, that you consider talking to someone about a worldview of "nothing matters or could ever matter"

2025-10-16 13:00:51 GMT

Super grateful that our No Silver Bullets paper has had such a nice response.
Additionally, getting some engagement on it has yielded the kind of interestingly depressed messages my work always, always, always provokes:
- thanks for doing this, it's meaningless
- great work, no one will care
- you have the data, but data won't matter
- how about instead of doing this study, you get rid of all managers
It is, to me, a diagnostic more than anything

2025-10-13 03:39:10 GMT

Reply guys: you're wrong because SCIENCE says so.
Me: that's a shitty study and I can tell you exactly why
Reply guys: stop being so pedantic geez be grateful for the studies we have no one could do it better
Me: I actually contributed a decent amount of methods development here and it's open access so
Reply guys: it would be nice but no one's paying for research
Me: I funded an open science lab for three years?? And proved its value in a tech co??
Reply guys: guess we'll never know

2025-10-11 06:30:43 GMT

ICYMI, I am putting together a free Developer Science "office hour" where you can join me to walk through the basics of designing a study....as long as enough new folks sign up for fight for the human 🤠
Why do this when research isn't your job??
- backstage pass to science when you learn methods
- no better way to think carefully about data
- get better at criticizing BAD research designs!
- it's genuinely fun and you might inspire real future science!
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/115344101004741880

2025-10-10 06:57:12 GMT

- reply

A few of my favorite creativity insights from psychology:
- diverse teams are more creative
- mind-wandering and other "unproductive" cognition can often be a driver of creativity (maybe even necessary)
- repetition and creativity have a very interesting relationship, we often think of creativity as pure novelty but the skills underlying being able to make novel recombinations are often formed from lots of learning the basics
- exposure to others' diverse solutions has a big impact

2025-10-10 06:48:10 GMT

Completely surreal to be wrapping up our Dagstuhl today. This was an intellectual bucket list experience for me and I'm so grateful for the warmth, open mindedness and strategic thinking of the organizers which bridged so many gaps, including industry and academia, career stages, & many countries

2025-10-09 15:04:29 GMT

- reply

Mike 😭😭😭 this is awesome. That is what it did for me personally long ago as well

2025-09-26 16:43:14 GMT

- reply

Generally we have come around to the idea that there are social interventions we can believe in, like "children should get to go to school" (THIS IS NOT SOMETHING PEOPLE BELIEVED ABOUT ALL CHILDREN, FOR MOST OF HUMAN HISTORY)

2025-09-26 16:42:33 GMT

Sort of tired of people saying "things are complex" as a way to avoid ever committing to a belief about a positive change. Yes ok things are very complex with illness and we still try to develop medicine.

2025-09-24 15:01:34 GMT

We're only at the beginning of what we can start to accomplish because of science. This is why no matter how antiscience this era is, we can't let them win
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/24/huntingtons-disease-treated-successfully-for-first-time-in-gene-therapy-trial

2025-09-21 16:08:58 GMT

Cannot believe that tech people will with a straight face try to convince me that hypervigilantly monitoring ten thousand microfeuds and the mental health statuses of OSS Big Deal Guys is an acceptable way to live

2025-09-20 16:48:06 GMT

- reply

This is just silly
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/237/640/098/612/120/original/95dc43692d93da89.png

2025-09-20 16:45:43 GMT

- reply

But if you needed a "pleasant old positive psychology papers you can read" alternative to the "individual flow state" fixation I offer: Sternberg

2025-09-20 16:44:08 GMT

Software got obsessed with Csikszentmihalyi for some reason ("flow state") and I sometimes imagine an alternate history where tech got obsessed with Sternberg ("practical and adaptive intelligence"/creativity) and what would've happened to the implicit models of developer problem-solving in that universe
I mean I don't like the Great Man Said a Thing thing we have going on in software but it's fun to imagine

2025-09-16 17:06:35 GMT

- reply

- open request especially for any junior researchers, early career folks, or folks in transition moments who are starting out doing research or work at the intersection of technology and psychology to email me your work (or chat with me about it), I love to see/amplify/support it
#positconf2025

2025-09-16 17:06:20 GMT

- reply

Other prizes, subject to my energy level, include:
- open offer to talk shop about funding research teams, building research depts from the ground up, and the path to being a VP of research (spoiler alert: make your own job)
#positconf2025

2025-09-16 17:06:06 GMT

- reply

Note, I am promising some workbooks before figuring out if the hotel has a printer, but it's 2025 and this is like, my one millionth conference of the year....we're going to make it work 😀

2025-09-16 17:02:18 GMT

Find me at posit::conf to get ->
- a very tiny sticker (the smallest at the conf?? we'll have to see)
- a keynote about believing in open science so hard you create the missing evidence about technology work + thriving
- a research-backed code review anxiety workbook
#positconf2025

2025-09-11 15:44:14 GMT

Me slapping this paper down every time some online comment about psychology annoys me
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/186/420/966/833/075/original/7bacb6b4a7ed46d9.png

2025-09-10 18:07:44 GMT

- reply

ok, it sounded like you were maligning scientists working to study diseases not policy makers.

2025-09-10 16:59:48 GMT

- reply

of course I have but you're just fearmongering with this and at a time that legitimate and important and ethical science is completely under attack, it's a weird thing to slam in and say

2025-09-10 16:46:01 GMT

- reply

what are you talking about

2025-09-10 16:40:34 GMT

- reply

every time you hear some politician soundbite that's like "we're wasting money on a mouse study" I want you to remember it is the only way certain mechanisms can be directly studied for certain disease states. They want us to be ignorant, then sick, then dead.

2025-09-10 16:34:27 GMT

This science story has everything:
- a superheroic scientist who has the condition she is battling to drive work on
- a riveting scientific breakthrough story (I was gasping)
- an absolute gutpunch about whether her work will be defunded
https://www.science.org/content/article/driven-pain-endometriosis-scientist-uncovering-clues-its-causes

2025-09-09 14:08:09 GMT

When you are about to interview an empirical security researcher you have to do your homework
It always amazes me to think how years of work get compressed into these artifacts
We've still got a little room, join us this week at an open "dev science" office hour with Dr. Ariana Mirian at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/empirical-security-now-with-dr-ariana-mirian-tickets-1670289674379
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/174/713/023/317/691/original/15ba55ed892e783e.jpg

2025-09-08 15:33:28 GMT

- reply

More scientists and doctors need to learn to say things like, "I also feel scared when I think about getting sick," and "I also struggle to know what to do when healthcare costs so much," and "It sounds like you really needed someone to listen to you and that naturopath doc did" and all that is the only way imo