Nicholas A. Christakis
@nachristakis
Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. Sociologist. Network Scientist. Physician. Author of Apollo's Arrow; Blueprint; Connected; and Death Foretold. Director of the Human Nature Lab:
This PhD Comics humorously captures an aspect: What does my lab director do anyway?
AI agents are sensitive to nudges. Indeed, LLM's can be behaviorally brittle under subtle changes in choice architecture, even in the absence of adversarial settings. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Apparently, there is a cafe in Shenzen’s biotech hub that gives you free coffee for a month if you publish in @nature.com or @science.org. ;-)
"The only acceptable religion is my religion" is an especially common belief in Islamic countries. www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/54-countri...
GLP1s for weight loss impact lives beyond health: single women’s marriage/cohabitation rates rise 29pp, employment among nonemployed women rises 27 percentage points after 1.5+ years.
Yale’s governing body, the Yale Corporation, counted zero registered Republicans among its membership. There was a similar divergence in political donations at Yale, with $5.8 million given to Democrats and just over $102,000 to Republicans, a 50 to 1 ratio. buckleyinstitute.com/content/uplo...
Hadza hunter-gatherers have high levels of nonambulatory time, similar to industrialized populations. But this time often occurs in postures like squatting. “Active rest” postures require higher levels of lower limb muscle activity than sitting. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... | @woodbrian.bsky.social
Even in Denmark, with its excellent provisions for children, parenthood marks a sharp divergence in academic careers (from employment to tenure to publications) for men and women -- for a variety of reasons reflecting both structure and agency. opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/f...
Recent PNAS paper develops a mathematical model of administrative bloat. The data motivating the model came from MIT: www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.....
Happily handing out diplomas at Harvard graduation 13 years ago, at Pfoho. :-)
Apparently, this is the case. Here is the relevant passage from the successful 2018 proposal by the editors of APSR, in “Proposal to Edit the American Political Science Review,” October 2018, submitted in response to this call: politicalsciencenow.com/call-for-pro...
Could this possibly be true of APSR, the flagship political science journal, that, from 2020-2024, it based whether to send articles for peer review based on author race and sex? www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-repor...
A suppressed 2022 report at Yale found significant growth in many units (though the reasons were difficult to be certain of, absent cooperation from the administration). campuspress.yale.edu/facultyforya...
In a testament to the importance (and threat) of LLMs, Google is for the first time (I believe) filling the white space on its homepage.
That scene in Toy Story 3 where Bonnie writes her name on Woody? That is me, putting a bookmark for an LLM above Wikipedia and Google Scholar on my bookmark bar.
Thirteen years ago today, at a dinner when I was moving to Yale, with my Harvard colleagues and friends Gary King, Dan Gilbert, and Doug Melton.
Of 99 honorary degree recipients Yale since 2016, 86 had discernible registration or donation records. Of these, 88.4% were Democrats or donated predominantly or exclusively to Democrats; 10.5% were unaffiliated; and 1.2% were Republican. This makes no sense intellectually or politically.
Every Democrat since Carter has decreased the federal deficit. Every Republican since Eisenhower has increased the federal deficit. The borrow and spend policies of the Republican Party are bankrupting the USA.
My friend @markpachucki.bsky.social gave me this 15 years ago as a birthday present and it still makes me smile. :-)
Last lecture of Sociology 190, Health of the Public, in Science Center B at Harvard on this date in 2013. Very emotional for me.
HARKEN TO THE MISERIES THAT BESET MANKIND. THEY WERE WITLESS ERST AND I MADE THEM TO HAVE SENSE AND BE ENDOWED WITH REASON. THOVGH THEY HAD EYES TO SEE THEY SAW IN VAIN. THEY HAD EARS BVT HEARD NOT.... THROVGHOVT THEIR LENGTH OF DAYS WITHOVT PVRPOSE THEY WROVGHT ALL THINGS IN CONFVSION….
On Monday, April 27, I will be speaking on "Social Network Biology" at @upenn.edu mindcore.sas.upenn.edu/calendar_eve...
My last lecture at Yale for a while. It was a joy to have such engaged students.
Frank Lloyd Wright's proposed Arizona State Capitol. I wish we had built more such things, or would build more of them today.