Simon van Baal
Lecturer in Decision Making at University of Leeds. Main interests: time preferences, impulsivity, self-control. Incl applications like gambling, consumption/saving, difficult decisions. Check out the behavioural science feed I made, and tag #BehSci.
- - Me: "write a small function that does one thing" - LLM: would you like me to add a calculation for the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything? - Me: [deletes, includes print("42")].
- Vibe code is legacy code (quoting Steve Krouse) doi.org/10.59350/d3b...
- Reposted by Simon van BaalSelf-control in daily life is more than willpower — but how well do commonly used trait scales capture this recent, broader view on self-control? New preprint with @kaihorstmann.bsky.social & @mhennecke.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps... Short summary below.
- So true. Good to avoid unnecessary suffering!
- Reposted by Simon van BaalI'm happy to share our latest manuscript "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience", coauthored with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman.
- Excited to see 1st of the Evoluionary Human Sciences special issue on scientific racism come out! @kevinlala.bsky.social @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman discuss impediments to countering racist pseudoscience & present 5 solutions www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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- Reposted by Simon van BaalSitting here bleary after another poor night's sleep, disinclined to engage in a day of cognitive effort, this chart from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com really strikes home on.ft.com/4eFZG4l
- Great PSA! To echo: please don't use the chat window (your research decisions are being made for you). Send me a message and I will happily provide you with code to prompt OpenAI's model endpoints and store the conversational context throughout.
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- Great article linked below. I was unaware journals could negotiate and inflate the metric by excluding article types. I suppose that is part of the reason why there are always a bunch of different article types. Yet another example of Goodhart's Law! journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...
- Reposted by Simon van BaalRegistration is open for the Summer School on Computational Decision Sciences, 8–12 Sept Join us in London for a week of cutting-edge research on decision-making, AI, cognitive science and more! (free, register by 11Aug) center-decision-sciences.com/cds-summer-s... #PsychSciSky 🧠 #neuroskyence🧪
- Reposted by Simon van BaalChatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
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- Reposted by Simon van BaalNew work by Sudeep Bhatia @sdpbht.bsky.social, Simon van Baal @svanbaal.bsky.social, Feiyi Wang, and @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social Lukasz Walasek -- now out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Pleased to announce that @sdpbht.bsky.social, @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social, Feiyi Wang and I published this work in @pnas.org last month. A particularly intricate project I'm thankful to have been part of! Going from unstructured text to an attribute repr. of decisions. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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- We're running a workshop - Webtext2Insight Intro workshop: Scraping, NLP, and GenAI for Business & Research. 📅 Dates: 9-12 June 📍 Location: Leeds University Business School, UK 👩🏫 Instructors: @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social , @xingjiewei.bsky.social, and I. 💻 Python (AI tools: Hugging Face, OpenAI API)
- Pleased to announce that @sdpbht.bsky.social, @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social, Feiyi Wang and I published this work in @pnas.org last month. A particularly intricate project I'm thankful to have been part of! Going from unstructured text to an attribute repr. of decisions. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- We wanted to see if we could create a rich understanding of the vast number of difficult decisions discussed in online fora. To do this, we used a combination of large language model content coding and natural language processing techniques to extract structure from advice-seeking posts.
- Reposted by Simon van Baal🧵New paper out in Cognition Why do people moralize harmless carnal sins (e.g. gluttony, masturbation)? @danielnettle.bsky.social & I find that these behaviors activate reciprocity-based moral judgment—no need for a distinct "purity" module. 50 days free link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1l18D2Hx2-...
- Thrilled to share @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social, Philip Newall, and I were selected for an AFSG exploratory grant! We'll study how gambling experiences relate to the main gambling harm measuring tool—the PGSI. Understanding the person behind PGSI scores will enable better harm detection/prevention.
- Delighted to announce the 2025 Exploratory Grant Award winners. Congratulations to @fieldmatt.bsky.social, @chris.themindlab.uk and @svanbaal.bsky.social. To find out more about their work, visit: afsg.org/2025/04/30/e...
- Interesting new work on fatigue and self-control! We must keep developing our understanding of when lapses of self-control are likely to occur. The replication failure of ego depletion still leaves a lot to explore.
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- Reposted by Simon van BaalParticipant Recruitment! Looking for workers within the healthcare sector to take part in a 15-minute survey about workers' health and engagement in workplace mental health support (Prize draw to win up to £150 worth of shopping vouchers). Survey link - warwick.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
- 🚨 Out in Decision: are you interested in research on impulsivity, self-control, or time preferences, but are not quite sure how they fit together - look no further! @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social @hohwy.bsky.social A. Verdejo-Garcia and I offer a conceptual analysis with empirical evidence. #behsci
- It bears similarities to G. Loewenstein's recent paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... Though the focus differs and the conclusions about the way forward vary. Naturally, whereas Loewenstein's focuses on self-control, ours also covers the intersection of impulsivity and the other concepts.
- @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social, Philip Newall and I wrote a blog about our recent paper on the lived experiences of gambling harm. The discussions on online gambling fora are striking. From gambling operators reopening accounts after closure to ruined marriages.
- Reading such stories is not fun, but awareness of what goes on behind the taboo and stigma of gambling is important. We all may benefit from having open conversations with and supporting people around us who gamble. Acknowledging how the industry targets them can establish understanding and trust.
- @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social, @hohwy.bsky.social, Antonio Verdejo-Garcia and I published an article in Decision on the relationships between time preferences, impulsivity, and self-control. We were invited by the APA to write a non-technical snippet about it here: www.growkudos.com/publications...
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- Does anybody know when the UK is supposed to be insulated from natural gas determining the marginal price of electricity? Coming off the back of the 6.4% cap increase by Ofgem, it seems consumers are worried about when we will start to see the benefits of all that cheap energy generation.
