Michael A. Nees
@michaelnees.bsky.social
Professor of Psychology at Lafayette College. Interested in human factors, psychology of humans and tech, auditory displays, and accessibility. Opinions my own. https://sites.lafayette.edu/neesm
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
Rudy Bridges is younger than the Sitting President of the United States and 29 sitting United States Senators
It’s useful for people of my generation to be reminded that this wasn’t that long ago. Ruby Bridges isn’t just still alive—she’s only 71, not ancient!
65 years ago on Nov. 14, little Ruby Bridges was escorted into an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Norman Rockwell, renowned for blissful depictions of Americana, did this remarkable painting for Look magazine. Printed as a double page, over-size spread, it's his masterpiece.
November 15, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Rudy Bridges is younger than the Sitting President of the United States and 29 sitting United States Senators
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
I saw someone on my timeline shaming someone else for posting about college football in a time like this.
Folks, if we're going to survive a time like this, we're going to need to avoid burning out from an attitude of 24/7 vigilance and constant outrage.
Let people find joy where they can, please.
Folks, if we're going to survive a time like this, we're going to need to avoid burning out from an attitude of 24/7 vigilance and constant outrage.
Let people find joy where they can, please.
November 8, 2025 at 8:56 PM
I saw someone on my timeline shaming someone else for posting about college football in a time like this.
Folks, if we're going to survive a time like this, we're going to need to avoid burning out from an attitude of 24/7 vigilance and constant outrage.
Let people find joy where they can, please.
Folks, if we're going to survive a time like this, we're going to need to avoid burning out from an attitude of 24/7 vigilance and constant outrage.
Let people find joy where they can, please.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
You know how billionaires end up with severe cognitive deficits as a result of becoming surrounded by yes men who constantly tell them their every idea is genius? What if we made a bot that just does that to everyone. I think that would be a good idea.
October 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM
You know how billionaires end up with severe cognitive deficits as a result of becoming surrounded by yes men who constantly tell them their every idea is genius? What if we made a bot that just does that to everyone. I think that would be a good idea.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
October 17, 2025 at 12:16 PM
In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
A meme for the modern university...
September 29, 2025 at 8:44 PM
A meme for the modern university...
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
If you think the LLM told you something, ask yourself: What is your belief about who's talking? What is feeding that belief?
September 7, 2025 at 5:57 PM
If you think the LLM told you something, ask yourself: What is your belief about who's talking? What is feeding that belief?
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
"The care robots themselves required care: they had to be moved around, maintained, cleaned, booted up, operated, repeatedly explained to residents... Indeed, a growing body of evidence from other studies is finding that robots tend to end up creating more work for caregivers.":
Caregivers’ use of robots and their effect on work environment – a scoping review
Despite the lively discussion on the pros and cons of using robots in health care, little is still known about how caregivers are affected when robots are introduced in their work environment. The ...
www.tandfonline.com
September 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
"The care robots themselves required care: they had to be moved around, maintained, cleaned, booted up, operated, repeatedly explained to residents... Indeed, a growing body of evidence from other studies is finding that robots tend to end up creating more work for caregivers.":
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
Also eliminating disability and “perfecting humanity” are fundamentally incompatible because disability is a core element to the human experience and what makes us humans
July 29, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Also eliminating disability and “perfecting humanity” are fundamentally incompatible because disability is a core element to the human experience and what makes us humans
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
It's membership drive time! Sociology grad student ASA members who aren't pol soc members yet, Ziggy's looking at you! We're gifting FREE grad student political soc section memberships in return for cute pet pics. DM or email me for details. #ASA2025 Pls reskeet!
@asapolisoc.bsky.social
@asapolisoc.bsky.social
July 30, 2025 at 5:43 PM
It's membership drive time! Sociology grad student ASA members who aren't pol soc members yet, Ziggy's looking at you! We're gifting FREE grad student political soc section memberships in return for cute pet pics. DM or email me for details. #ASA2025 Pls reskeet!
@asapolisoc.bsky.social
@asapolisoc.bsky.social
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.
July 21, 2025 at 1:48 AM
In a stunning moment of self-delusion, the Wall Street Journal headline writers admitted that they don't know how LLM chatbots work.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
A man came up to us at a Tesla Showroom picket on Saturday to tell us he’d just had a test drive and it was *great* that FSD meant there was no longer any need for a human driver.
FWIW I found that people thought "autopilot" meant pretty much the same thing as "self-driving" and "autonomous" and I'm pretty sure what people think the word means is the only thing that matters here...
July 24, 2025 at 3:17 AM
A man came up to us at a Tesla Showroom picket on Saturday to tell us he’d just had a test drive and it was *great* that FSD meant there was no longer any need for a human driver.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
What--and I say this with my chest--the hell are we doing here people
AI-assistant caused DATA LOSS, destroyed projects, user files and a production database: issued faulty commands, overwriting data; another ignored freeze directives, fabricated test data, and dropped a live database. anuraag2601.github.io/gemini_cli_d... www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/r...
July 25, 2025 at 12:14 PM
What--and I say this with my chest--the hell are we doing here people
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
The (Ed) Tech Industry has made citizens believe that the problem with education is reading, thinking, and writing when the problem with education is austerity.
Reading, thinking, and writing are not the problems to be solved. Austerity is.
Reading, thinking, and writing are not the problems to be solved. Austerity is.
July 24, 2025 at 1:44 PM
The (Ed) Tech Industry has made citizens believe that the problem with education is reading, thinking, and writing when the problem with education is austerity.
Reading, thinking, and writing are not the problems to be solved. Austerity is.
Reading, thinking, and writing are not the problems to be solved. Austerity is.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
How do you stop the incessant political text messages? I never have donated by phone, never heard of many of the politicians and campaigns I get texts from, often several a day. I now report them as spam but that doesn't seem to help any more than texting stop.
July 23, 2025 at 10:37 PM
How do you stop the incessant political text messages? I never have donated by phone, never heard of many of the politicians and campaigns I get texts from, often several a day. I now report them as spam but that doesn't seem to help any more than texting stop.
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
self-driving would seem, to the layman, to indicate that the car... drives itself?
July 24, 2025 at 2:54 AM
self-driving would seem, to the layman, to indicate that the car... drives itself?
Evidence shows lots of people learn to use ADAS by trial and error. This is knowable. (And not just from my small n study.)
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
agelab.mit.edu/static/uploa...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
agelab.mit.edu/static/uploa...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
July 23, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Evidence shows lots of people learn to use ADAS by trial and error. This is knowable. (And not just from my small n study.)
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
agelab.mit.edu/static/uploa...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
agelab.mit.edu/static/uploa...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
FWIW I found that people thought "autopilot" meant pretty much the same thing as "self-driving" and "autonomous" and I'm pretty sure what people think the word means is the only thing that matters here...
July 23, 2025 at 10:12 PM
FWIW I found that people thought "autopilot" meant pretty much the same thing as "self-driving" and "autonomous" and I'm pretty sure what people think the word means is the only thing that matters here...
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
I mean you could just ask people what they think the word means...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
July 23, 2025 at 4:50 PM
I mean you could just ask people what they think the word means...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
you say "i asked chatgpt"
i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]"
an improv group wrote this report
instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group
i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]"
an improv group wrote this report
instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group
chatgpt is much like an improv comedy group
1) you are the audience, giving it prompts
2) it produces things roughly shaped like your prompt
3) it is trained to respond with Yes, And
4) it has the factual accuracy of improv
5) it does not understand comedy
1) you are the audience, giving it prompts
2) it produces things roughly shaped like your prompt
3) it is trained to respond with Yes, And
4) it has the factual accuracy of improv
5) it does not understand comedy
This is fascinating: www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/I...
Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…
Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…
July 16, 2025 at 9:23 PM
you say "i asked chatgpt"
i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]"
an improv group wrote this report
instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group
i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]"
an improv group wrote this report
instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
Matt Walsh's imaginary professor: "good morning student-comrades. today we learn how to bayonet a white Christian capitalist while taking trans hormones"
actual average professor: "folks, I am begging you, please do the reading for tomorrow this time. it is five pages"
actual average professor: "folks, I am begging you, please do the reading for tomorrow this time. it is five pages"
one of the things that gets me about so many of the pundits who pontificate about "higher education" when they really mean a handful of elite private institutions is that most of them live within driving distance of either a community college or a non-selective public institution
July 16, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Matt Walsh's imaginary professor: "good morning student-comrades. today we learn how to bayonet a white Christian capitalist while taking trans hormones"
actual average professor: "folks, I am begging you, please do the reading for tomorrow this time. it is five pages"
actual average professor: "folks, I am begging you, please do the reading for tomorrow this time. it is five pages"
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
A good 70% of the fighting over AI would have been avoided if VC hucksters (and gullible access journalists) hadn't conflated incrementally useful automation with computational sentience to make money
July 11, 2025 at 2:15 PM
A good 70% of the fighting over AI would have been avoided if VC hucksters (and gullible access journalists) hadn't conflated incrementally useful automation with computational sentience to make money
Reposted by Michael A. Nees
In the U.S. in 1825, *452* out of 1000 children born died before their 5th birthday.
By 1925, that number was 135 out of a 1000 children.
Today, in 2025, that number is *7*
And it is entirely due to advances in medicine, public health, and technology.
9/
By 1925, that number was 135 out of a 1000 children.
Today, in 2025, that number is *7*
And it is entirely due to advances in medicine, public health, and technology.
9/
April 26, 2025 at 1:35 AM
In the U.S. in 1825, *452* out of 1000 children born died before their 5th birthday.
By 1925, that number was 135 out of a 1000 children.
Today, in 2025, that number is *7*
And it is entirely due to advances in medicine, public health, and technology.
9/
By 1925, that number was 135 out of a 1000 children.
Today, in 2025, that number is *7*
And it is entirely due to advances in medicine, public health, and technology.
9/