Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

Online Conferences: Some history, methods & data

In the wake of virus outbreaks in multiple countries, many scholars are reconsidering conference plans. As someone that has organized multiple online conferences—sometimes during states of emergency—I have thought a lot about how online conferences can be more resilient to such emergencies. I have also found online conferences to be preferable in many other ways, which I explain in a paper about the history, methods, and findings of online conferences. The paper is ~~currently under review for~~ forthcoming in a collected volume about sustainable academic practices (see my CV). More links to free versions of the chapter are below.

Upon Reflection, Ep. 3: Causal Network Accounts of Ill-being: Depression & Digital Well-being

Welcome to the third episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about what we think as well as how and why we think it.

In this podcast, I read my chapter, “Causal Network Accounts of Ill-being: Depression & Digital Well-being” from Ethics of Digital Well-being: A Multidisciplinary Approach. In this chapter, I review how well-being and ill-being can be understood in terms of the causal networks studied by economists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and other scientists. As with all of my writing, the free preprint can be found on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv under “Publications“.

If you want to hear more, you can subscribe wherever you find podcasts. You can also find out more about me and my research on Twitter via @byrd_nick, or on Facebook via @byrdnick. If you end up enjoying the Upon Reflection podcast, then feel free to tell people about it, online, in person, or in your ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:21 — 73.9MB)

Two Years In The Life Of A Grad Student: Time Logging Data

I have had some side gigs in graduate school that involved creating invoices for hourly work—web development, copyediting, research assistance, etc. I used Toggl to log my time. At some point, I realized that I could log all of my work time—not just the billable time. So in 2018 and 2019, I logged all of my work time. In this post, I will summarize the 2018 and 2019 data and mention some take-aways for 2020.

New Paper — Causal Network Accounts of Ill-being: Depression & Digital Well-being

Philosophers are stereotyped as studying things like, “What is a good life?” To break this stereotype, I’ve spent some time studying a different question, “What is a bad life?” More seriously, I have applied causal network accounts of well-being to ill-being, particularly depression and digital ill-being. My latest paper on this has now been accepted for publication in The Ethics of Digital Well-being (2020). So now I can share it. You you check out the abstract and acknowledgments (below), listen to the free audiopaper, and/or read the free preprint.

How Questions Can Enhance Teaching & Learning

I’m rereading James Lang’s Small Teaching (2016). The first time I read it, I found it to be outstandingly helpful for thinking about course design, lesson planning, assignments, and more. In this post, I want to share my notes from Lang’s chapter on “The Retrieval Effect” (Chapter 1).

New Talk: Great Minds Do Not Think Alike

I’ll be presenting new data from a pre-registered replication at some conferences in the next few months. The study replicated findings that those with a Ph.D. in philosophy are more reflective, that less reflective philosophers tended towards certain philosophical views, and that some of these reflection-philosophy correlations are partly confoudned with culture, education, gender, or personality.

March 2022 update: these data are in a paper that was accepted by Review of Philosophy & Psychology.

The meaning of ‘statistical significance’ and of p-values

A 2019 paper in the Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science found that most psychology textbooks, instructors, and students misinterpret ‘statistical significance’ and p-values. Talk about a headline! More important than the headline, however, are the right interpretations and what we can do to correct widespread misinterpretations. In this post, I explain the authors’ findings and the three solutions they propose.

Upon Reflection, Ep. 2: Not All Who Ponder Count Costs – Reflection & Moral Dilemmas

In this podcast episode , I’ll be reading Paul Conway’s and my recent paper about moral dilemmas entitled, “Not all who ponder count costs: Arithmetic reflection predicts utilitarian tendencies, but logical reflection predicts both deontological and utilitarian tendencies“. In this paper we find that—contrary to some dual process theories’ claims—consequentialist responses to moral dilemmas may not be more reflective per se, but rather more influenced by mathematical information. As with all of my papers, the free preprint of the paper can be found on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv under “Publications“.

A screen shot of Nick Byrd and Paul Conway's 2019 paper "Not All Who Ponder Count Costs"

If this sounds like the kind of research that you want to hear more about, you can subscribe to Upon Reflection wherever you find podcasts. You can also find out more about me and my research on Twitter via @byrd_nick, or on Facebook via @byrdnick. If you end up enjoying the Upon Reflection podcast, then feel free to tell people about it, online, in person, or in your ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:35 — 72.9MB)

Upon Reflection Podcast Ep. 1: What We Can Infer About Implicit Bias

Welcome to the first episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about what we think as well as how and why we think it.

A screenshot of the first page of the paper "What We Can (And Can't) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments".

In this podcast, I’ll be reading my paper entitled, “What We Can (And Can’t) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments“. I argue that implicit bias is not entirely unconscious or involuntary, but it probably is associative. As with all of my papers, the free preprint of the paper can be found on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv under “Publications“.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:23 — 48.9MB)

The Upon Reflection Podcast, Ep. 0 – Introduction

Welcome to the first, introductory episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about the philosophy of cognitive science and the cognitive science of philosophy.

The artwork for the Upon Reflection Podcast: a functional magnetic resonance image of the thinker.

In this podcast I’ll be sharing my own and others’ research with you. For instance, I’ll talk about the differences between intuition and reflection and how intuitive reasoning predicts different philosophical beliefs than reflective reasoning. I’ll also discuss topics like implicit bias and how—contrary to what you may have heard—implicit bias may not be entirely unconscious and involuntary. Of course, cognitive science is an interdisciplinary research community. So there will be much more to talk about.

If this sounds like the kind of research that you want to hear more about, you can subscribe to Upon Reflection wherever you find podcasts. You can also find out more about me and my research at @byrd_nick on Twitter, or @byrdnick on Facebook. If you end up enjoying the Upon Reflection podcast, then feel free to tell people about it, online, in person, or in your ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22 — 2.6MB)