Jan Lorenz
Computational social scientist, agent-based models, opinion dynamics and collective decision. Sometimes english, manchmal deutsch
datasci.social/@janlo
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz🧵 New WP with @kaimiele.bsky.social. We document 2 unsettling patterns in mental health care: 1) despite universal coverage, few individuals with mental illness receive guideline-consistent treatment, and 2) the more severe the illness, the lower the treatment uptake & the longer the wait times. 1/n
- Reposted by Jan LorenzUntil we as a species can settle on which modifier key we should use to switch between "newline" and "submit" when hitting ↩ I see no future for us
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz🚨Job alert 🚨 I have an opening for a postdoc in my team at @ipz.bsky.social in the area of digital democracy starting Sep 1, 2026. If you are working on the impact of the digital transformation on politics, please apply by 🗓️ Mar 1, 2026. 📤 Please share widely! www.ipz.uzh.ch/de/ueber-uns...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzFinally!!
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz🎓 Doctoral Scholarship Opportunity in Cologne! Join the CGS at the University of Cologne for a 3-year PhD focusing on Demography & Social Inequality. Benefit from a tax-free stipend, an international network, and cutting-edge research. 📅 Deadline: March 15, 2026 🔗 Application: uni.koeln/JQGW2
- Reposted by Jan LorenzFor absolutely no reason, let me remind people of this banger of a paper by @caroartc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzWe are looking for a doctoral researcher to work with us on a supercool project in collaboration with linguists. The deadline is Feb 15th, contact me if you have any questions! stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/9...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzA colleague at MPI asked how to get better at math. My vote is Thompson and Gardner's classic *Calculus Made Easy* (originally published in 1910!) I've uploaded my own (almost complete) worked problem sets from this classic book. A few thoughts.../
- Reposted by Jan LorenzBut then what happens to those that have zero income? 😢
- Reposted by Jan LorenzLast term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:
- Reposted by Jan LorenzIf you tell an AI to convince someone of a true vs. false claim, does truth win? In our *new* working paper, we find... ‘LLMs can effectively convince people to believe conspiracies’ But telling the AI not to lie might help. Details in thread
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz"10 simple rules for good model sharing practices" journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz“The Problem with Mesearch” New For The Love of Science vlog on how to strike the right balance in science between a deep connection to one’s work and objectivity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-rS...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzI started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?). Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>
- Reposted by Jan LorenzMesh-Netze als Versuch, die Zensur zu umgehen:
- A little-known offline messaging app launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has emerged as a key lifeline for Ugandans cut off from the internet ahead of a contentious election that could extend President Yoweri Museveni's four-decade rule reut.rs/49UwO7M 1/6
- I have to correct a typo in a manuscript, but I love my creation so much! (ChatGPT's visual)
- Reposted by Jan LorenzI realised I follow several journals and now I learn about new publications and interesting papers often here first - so I made a Starter Pack with journal accounts in case you wanted to as well. Let me know if I missed an important journal and I'll add it. go.bsky.app/L57tAruat://did:plc:6ha5ytyfxznmtoch5tsenvsg/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3mc7hsc4a6p2q
- Reposted by Jan LorenzAfter 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz1. My new preprint has its own bluesky account. Why? The problems facing social media & scientific publishing are similar: both are dominated by powerful oligopolies. The @atproto.com tech underlying bluesky that aims to solve the social media prob might also help solve the scientific pub prob 🧪 🧵
- 1. Preprint: Menopause averted a midlife energetic crisis with help from older children and parents: A simulation study. zenodo.org/records/1814... Menopause is rare, known to occur only in humans and toothed whales: 🧵
- Reposted by Jan LorenzThe work of @moritzstefaner.bsky.social is just amazing, and it seems to get even better over time. One of the most talented people in the business. 📊 Here are a few of his recent projects in his latest update.
- Reposted by Jan LorenzThrilled to announce the Handbook of Computational Social Science is officially out! 956 pages, 118 authors, and truly global, interdisciplinary perspectives. Deep thanks to the contributors and anonymous reviewers who shaped this over 4 years. Buy your copy now! @elgarpublishing.bsky.social
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz🎄 Still looking for a gift for your favourite social scientist? How about a #preprint with 717 urban areas, 30 countries, and 16,164 models of #Immigrant #Segregation across Europe? Just published with @kasimirdederichs.bsky.social & David Kretschmer 🎅 🎁 Wrapped up here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.17037
- Reposted by Jan Lorenzhere’s a free version: neat_research_panel <- data.frame( id = 1:100, treatment = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 100, replace = TRUE), outcome = rnorm(100, mean = 50, sd = 5) )
- Reposted by Jan LorenzThe Max Planck Society has begun an exploratory round table for open science. We are drafting some recommendations to leadership. Still a long way to go! But here are my notes on the most recent draft, just so you all know how I am trying to steer things.
- Reposted by Jan LorenzIn line with the 'credibility revolution', we are thinking about research designs that allow us to get closer to causal effects. Those who use surveys have often turned to survey experiments. At the same time, survey response rates have dropped considerably. Below are the figures for the ESS.
- Reposted by Jan LorenzWe’re excited to announce the winners of the 2025 Pudding Cup! Our entry pool was the strongest ever with close to 100 submissions. Show our 3 winners some love 🫶 on this thread, and check out the full details and honorable mentions at the link: pudding.cool/pudding-cup/
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz2️⃣4️⃣🎁🎄 Doing something new for Advent this year: one great data journalism piece per day until Dec 24. I’m teaching a data journalism course @hertieschool.bsky.social next semester, so this is partly selfish homework. But maybe interesting for others too.
- Graz Winter School: Talk 2: docs.google.com/presentation...
- Graz Winter School. Talk 1: Quantifying polarization and different ways how it can emerge through opinion dynamics docs.google.com/presentation...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzFinally got around to switching my in-browser #rstats R Primers website to use the newer better-supported #QuartoPub Live extension, which will now let me eventually add nicer inline feedback someday - Free primers site: r-primers.andrewheiss.com - Extension: r-wasm.github.io/quarto-live/
- Reposted by Jan LorenzI believe eigen fly. I believe eigen touch the sky.
- Reposted by Jan LorenzMisinformation research has a causality problem: lab experiments are limited; observational studies confounded. We used causal inference on 9.9M tweets, quantifying effects in the wild while blocking backdoor paths. Does misinfo get higher engagement? Are following discussions more emotional? 🧵
- Das crazy. -> Das's' crazy.
- Reposted by Jan LorenzJob Alert! We are hiring two post-docs (full time, 4+ years) in our project SCEPTIC - Social, Computational and Ethical Premises of Trust and Informational Cohesion with @annanosthoff.bsky.social @guzoch.bsky.social and Prof. Andreas Peters (uol.de/informatik/s...)
- Reposted by Jan Lorenz📢 New Journal Article: AI & Deliberation 📢 What impact does #AI have on democratic deliberation? Together with @adrauc.bsky.social, I explore this question in a new article in Government Information Quarterly. Findings in the thread 🧵👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (1/7)
- Reposted by Jan LorenzHappy 3²/4²/5² day! (for the US only—it's the less cool 20(5²)-3²-4² in ISO-8601)
- If you are interested in doing a PhD on Agent-based models of Protests consider this call: 2 Doctoral Scholarships (48 months) ‘Contentious Politics in the Digital Age’ (CoPoDi), funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Visit: www.bigsss-bremen.de/academic-pro...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzTo cite this meme: Photoshop et al. (2025)
- Reposted by Jan LorenzMy fourth day at #CCS2025 starts in the physics of self-organization satellite, where @cgershen.bsky.social discussed a balance-based narrative to explain complex systems science to the general public. He gave us a historical overview on the topic and then a formalization of his ideas.
- Reposted by Jan Lorenzrealistic Star Trek
- Reposted by Jan LorenzMy daughter knew I would enjoy the evolutionary dynamics (an evolutionary stable state / Nash equilibrium) described in this 3 minute video from KQED’s excellent Deep Look team: These Lizards Have Been Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors for 15 Million Years #evolution #nature
- Reposted by Jan LorenzPsyArXiv is seeking new moderators to help combat an increase in AI submissions! If you've ever posted a preprint to PsyArXiv, please consider joining. Minimum commitment 1h/month, there's a training session this Monday @ 1pm ET. More info here: forms.gle/9LB1rEtxHAeZ... #PsychSciSky
- Reposted by Jan LorenzBy far the best alternative I have come across is Matilda: matilda.science?l=en
- Reposted by Jan LorenzWe built the simplest possible social media platform. No algorithms. No ads. Just LLM agents posting and following. It still became a polarization machine. Then we tried six interventions to fix social media. The results were… not what we expected. arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385
- Reposted by Jan LorenzInteresting paper that can extend to digital technologies generally and concludes: “Understanding the consequences of actual AI for actual democracy, and figuring out how to steer toward the better rather than the worse outcomes, will require new kinds of cooperation than the ones we have today.”
- New paper in our AI & Dem Freedoms series: @himself.bsky.social and @hahrie.bsky.social argue that the existing paradigm of democracy driving scholarship about its relationship to #AI highlights the wrong questions, and that we should focus on enduring democratic publics and collective behavior.
- Reposted by Jan LorenzSuper important blog post on large scale scientific fraud through „scientific publishing“ by paying for it in „paper mills“.
- Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community. reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...
- Reposted by Jan Lorenzonly a maniac would use a 2-sided test here
- Available in the SMBC store in "mom", "dad" and "parent" variants. Credit to Richard McElreath for the language and graph on the mug. MUG ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com/products/goo... COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/number... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
- Reposted by Jan LorenzMen dominate hollywood scripts. pudding.cool/2017/03/film...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzI think they’re here to stay, but it’s worth remembering (and this will become increasingly apparent in the years to come) that, despite some clear benefits, LLMs/large AI models are a net negative for society and it’s not even close.
- Seltener Fund eines Fun-Content in der deutschen Wikipedia: Das Beispiel zum ökonomischen Grenznutzen ist wirklich besser zu verstehen, wenn man vorher dem Link zum Bratwurst-Artikel und das Bild konsultiert! de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenznu...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzMy lab has a name and a website now 🥳 Please welcome the "Psychology of Social Complexity" lab: www.socolab.co.uk
- Reposted by Jan LorenzI've been working on a new tool, Refine, to make scholars more productive. If you're interested in being among the very first to try the beta, please read on. Refine leverages the best current AI models to draw your attention to potential errors and clarity issues in research paper drafts. 1/
- Reposted by Jan LorenzReview "Opinion dynamics: Statistical physics and beyond" arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521 Lab experiments, data, models, analytical/computational tools. 93 pages, >1k references. With Fabian Baumann, David Garcia, Gerardo Iñiguez, Márton Karsai, Jan Lorenz, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron. Led by Michele Starnini
- Reposted by Jan LorenzThe representative electoral statistics show how often each demographic group voted for different parties in the German federal election. This year, I’ve prepared the data as radar charts. What do you think: does this type of chart work well for this kind of data? www.spiegel.de/politik/deut...
- Reposted by Jan LorenzHaben nicht alle noch nach einem Namen für schwarz-rot gesucht? Wie wäre es mit "Drecksarbeit"-Koalition?
- Reposted by Jan LorenzThis was the jumpstart event for a major focus of my research going forward, together with many excellent collaborators (those in attendance and many others). I’m so grateful for the opportunity to put this together, and i hope for more events to come. #culturalevolution
- Traditional models of cultural evolution haven’t held up in the face of modern-day constructs like social media and easy global travel. Last month, @psmaldino.bsky.social and collaborators convened a working group to build new models for the 21st century. www.santafe.edu/news-center/...
