Opens profile photo
Follow
Click to Follow cailinmeister
Cailin O'Connor
@cailinmeister
Philosopher and applied mathematician at UCI. Author of 'The Misinformation Age' and 'The Origins of Unfairness'. My Erdos-Bacon number is 7. she/her
Irvine, CAcailinoconnor.comJoined September 2017

Cailin O'Connor’s Tweets

Should add that David’s committee was myself, , Simon Huttegger, and that giant in the field Brian Skyrms
Quote Tweet
Congratulations David Freeborn of passing your defense!! I am so proud of what turned out to be a fantastic project. David will head to Northeastern’s London campus for a TT position. And also this picture is killing me.
Show this thread
Image
1
4
Congratulations David Freeborn of passing your defense!! I am so proud of what turned out to be a fantastic project. David will head to Northeastern’s London campus for a TT position. And also this picture is killing me.
Image
3
50
Show this thread
It’s official!! Kenny Easwaran will be joining us in the fall!! This hire took forever bc of spousal hiring complications, and I’m so relieved it has gone through! Kenny is going to be such a great addition to the dept.
5
117
Using these models he shows how common fully rational belief polarization is, how groups can naturally form factions while rationally updating, what the conditions are for rational polarization, and how we can characterize various types of polarization. 4
1
9
Show this thread
I think his dissertation is great. He models individual beliefs using Bayesian networks to track their probabilistic relationships (i.e., if I think it's going to rain, I also think the grass will be wet). He embeds these in social networks where agents share information. 3
1
6
Show this thread
The good news keeps coming this year! So delighted for my advisee David Freeborn who will start as an Assistant Professor at Northeastern's London campus. David's dissertation studies polarization and factionalization using Bayesian models. (More below!)
Image
1
52
Show this thread
Genuinely lovely time at the Science, Values, and Policy workshop organized by Dan Hicks. Now off to Yosemite with this bunch of philosophers.
Image
37
Thanks for the kind words folks. I’m not particularly harmed by this. I had posted thinking it was a bit funny but now realize of course that death and sexual harassment together don’t make for a funny tweet.
6
52
Show this thread
Just heard that Peter Machamer passed away. Like so many in the field, I was sexually harassed by Peter. And at the time I thought, “this doesn’t seem worth doing anything about because he’s going to die soon.”
7
134
Show this thread
Apparently I've given *91* talks/public lectures since my last career action in fall 2020!!!! I knew I was doing a lot of speaking, but I really did not think it would add up to that.
2
45
Congrats to Jingyi Wu for getting the 2023 Outstanding Scholarship Award from UCI Social Science! It recognizes the nominee with the most impressive research record.
Image
1
38
It was lots of fun talking to a pub audience about normal errors vs crisis in science, and how sciences can regain credibility after a crisis. Got to show this result from et al., and there was an audible gasp when I revealed the bar on the right 😂 #PintAU23
Image
Quote Tweet
Image
Stepping in at the last minute for a Pint of Science talk at the pub tonight. Talking about how science gets it wrong a lot but can still be trustworthy when scientists are transparent & have a culture of checking each other (organized distrust 🎉). #PintAU23
3
111
Marco Meyer and I have bet on whether in one year there will be an AI that takes natural language prompts, builds a good social model (i.e. ABM, network model, game theoretic model), and writes a good paper of the results. I am con. Side bets encouraged.
5
17
At the Intellectual Humility conference organized by Mark Alfano and Philip Parnamets
Quote Tweet
A moderate amount of #confirmationbias can (surprisingly) improve group decision making. It prevents people from prematurely locking into a suboptimal theory and they explore options longer. Does this threaten your priors? (via @cailinmeister) cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/upl
Show this thread
Image
9