davidmcraney.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Hey everyone wondering if you can ever get through to people stuck in cult-like thinking and change their minds (spoiler - you can). How Minds Change is, right now, a Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon. You can grab the ebook for $1.99 Limited time, ends at midnight, here's a link: a.co/d/gMmjgU0

submitted 21 days ago • 5 comments

Saved a turtle. Found him in the garage, took him to a pond. Put down 1,000 words in the manuscript for my next book (about the cognitive linguistic beauty of difficult to define words). Edited tomorrow’s podcast about psychology of parts work. Now learning Money for Nothing on guitar. Good day.

submitted 28 days ago • 2 comments

New episode: The science behind how our propensity for magical thinking can lead us to deceive each other by first deceiving ourselves – youarenotsosmart.com/2025/03/03/y...

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

On the 10th anniversary of The Dress, I checked in on Pascal Wallisch, one of the NYU psychologists whose research revealed why we see it differently. He told me he considers it “the ultimate temporal touchstone” of the before COVID times. He was also wearing the dress (will post to YANSS Patreon):

submitted 58 days ago • 2 comments

Thrilled to talk #misinformation and what we can do about it with @davidmcraney.bsky.social on his wildly popular ‘You Are Not So Smart’ podcast. I was joined by co-authors @katiejoseff.bsky.social and Samuel Woolley—check out the episode here!” youarenotsosmart.com/2025/02/20/y...

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

New episode: Why you are more likely to doubt true news that you would rather not believe than you are to believe fake news you wish was true (no matter your ideology): youarenotsosmart.com/2025/02/20/y...

submitted 66 days ago • 1 comment

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

submitted 91 days ago • 32 comments

Super excited to host @davidmcraney.bsky.social this month. Connect with us at www.linktree.com/cflfreethought

submitted 98 days ago • 0 comments

Thoughtless Apple tech decisions are imperiling your favorite podcasts. If you want to help, check your feeds and download a bunch of episodes! It’s free! www.semafor.com/article/01/1...

submitted 104 days ago • 8 comments

If an article makes your side look bad, then "resistance to true news [is] stronger than susceptibility to fake news" no matter your ideology. And the more objective you believe you are, the stronger the effect: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

submitted 107 days ago • 0 comments

Chances are, someone you know is or soon will be talking about a podcast called The Telepathy Tapes. Read this first: www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-telepa...

submitted 112 days ago • 1 comment

What we can learn about perception, priors, and truth itself from the party dress that sparked a global debate over the nature of reality — youarenotsosmart.com/2024/12/23/y...

submitted 124 days ago • 2 comments

Question sandwiches, WAIT questions, The Five Whys and more: How asking the right kinds of questions can lead to innovations, discoveries, and breakthroughs: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3...

submitted 129 days ago • 2 comments

Your brain is trapped inside a dark box filtering a few gazillion electrical zaps from various pieces of sensory meat and trying to construct it all into a meaningful experience of reality. Really just doing the best that it can with an impossible task, so cut it some slack

submitted 142 days ago • 2 comments

You can’t easily stream the original Cosmos, so I did something mad, outlandish even, and ordered the 7-DVD boxed set and am about to binge:

submitted 144 days ago • 2 comments

For everyone about to avoid talking about politics for a day or two, here’s a book I wrote about how minds (do and do not) change and how (and how not) to change them through conversation, dialogue, arguing, debate and so on — (link to book and free stuff in the next post - 1/2)

submitted 151 days ago • 5 comments

New episode with @sarahsteinlubrano.bsky.social - How our drive to resolve cognitive dissonance can lead us to change our minds, accept our fates, and become more wrong, not less: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/y...

submitted 152 days ago • 3 comments

Huge thanks to @hankgreen.bsky.social for the bibliographic shout out in his latest video: youtu.be/d8PndpFPL8g?...

submitted 155 days ago • 2 comments

Every American is bilingual. EVERY American. Just Evil Enough is a book about subverting systems. When we wrote it, we came across a system we're all part of, and never notice. It sort of blew my mind because it's so obvious, and yet completely unnoticed. Time for a thread.

submitted 156 days ago • 2 comments

While writing a book about why it’s so hard to change minds, I changed my own mind about How Minds Change. Persuasion, debunking, disagreement – learning new things or rejecting them – what I learned about what does and does not work and the science behind why: www.davidmcraney.com/howmindschan...

submitted 156 days ago • 0 comments

An interview with the scientists who created Debunkbot, an AI that reliably reduces belief in conspiracy theories via back-and-forth chat, no matter how far down the rabbit hole a person may be: youarenotsosmart.com/2024/10/29/y...

submitted 157 days ago • 0 comments

Why cults often grow stronger after their beliefs, predictions, assumptions, and leaders all turn out to be wrong: youarenotsosmart.com/2024/11/12/y...

submitted 162 days ago • 0 comments

Some of you may know my good friend Joe Hanson and I are such big fans of James Burke we worked with him to bring a new Connections series to a streaming service near you (coming soon)! In that spirit, here’s Joe’s latest Connections-ish video: https://youtu.be/thtKslF8zE4

submitted 614 days ago • 1 comment

Why those who are most likely to suggest you “do your own research” are also the least likely to do their own research: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2023/08/19/yanss-267-why-people-who-are-most-likely-to-suggest-that-others-do-their-own-research-are-also-the-least-likely-to-do-their-own-research/

submitted 615 days ago • 0 comments

Do your own research: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1G6FUwR7q3DBWI5Wtz6RxE?si=NRFaYao3QW-JgO8OhEfKqA&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A3tZoJ9YXvUAy7CrYQK9d7b

submitted 616 days ago • 0 comments

For a lot of us, losing Twitter isn’t really about losing ties to the company itself. It’s losing 10+ years of real, asynchronous communities, professional development, the ability to get gigs and clients, the ability to promo/share your art on an extremely broad scale. The loss of that has impact.

submitted 643 days ago • 214 comments

Great interview about the writing process and the dangers of both perfectionism and turning work into identity: https://www.iamdriven.com/podcasts/i-am-driven-podcast/episodes/2147974475

submitted 652 days ago • 0 comments

New episode with Simons and Chabris, authors of The Invisible Gorilla, back with a new book offering tools to inoculate ourselves against scams, cons, and misinformation: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2023/07/11/yanss-264-how-to-psychologically-inoculate-yourself-against-scams-cons-and-chicanery