Several professors in the audience shared my concerns and asked tough but respectful questions that gave the student pause. The student’s advisor probably should have pushed them harder before the talk, but in the room itself, other professors did what academia is supposed to do: they productively challenged a student to think more carefully about their work. A normal day at a university. And I’m glad to see normal days again, because for a while there, they weren’t.

In recent years, a strange norm took hold. Critical feedback from someone with more power directed at someone with less became suspect, an example of punching down. Critiquing student work was a professor’s job, sure, but doing it publicly, especially online, became fraught.

Thankfully the worst of this has receded, and most of us seem willing again to evaluate ideas on their merits regardless of who’s offering them. But plenty of folks still treat punching down as immoral, and I want to defend the practice. Scratch that. I want to defend the practice of punching, full stop. Up, down, sideways.

I wrote about this last year as a paid post. Below is an edited version of that essay, now free for all. Punch back in the comments.

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The principle of “not punching down” has become sacrosanct in academic spaces, holding them together like a rug ties a room together (sorry, couldn't resist). The idea seems noble enough: those with more power shouldn't attack those with less. The privileged shouldn't criticize the marginalized, white people shouldn't challenge people of colour, the wealthy shouldn’t mock the poor. You get the picture; it's about protecting the vulnerable. But like many well-intentioned principles, this one deserves unpacking.

I recently learned that sports writers coined the term “punching down” in the mid-20th century to describe boxers fighting above or below their weight class. It wasn't until the early 2000s that the term morphed into what we know today, a metaphor about power dynamics and protecting marginalized groups from abuse by the powerful.

A few years ago, my friend, UofT colleague, and podcast co-host Yoel Inbar found himself in hot water for criticizing a psychology paper on Twitter and on our Two Psychologists Four Beers podcast. The paper claimed that attractive women don't feel cold outside of nightclubs on cold winter nights even when they're barely dressed. Some hot women, apparently, don't get cold. Yes, you read that right. And, yes, this was a real published article.

Yoel did what scientists are supposed to do: he scrutinized the methods and raised concerns about the analysis and conclusions. But instead of sparking a healthy scientific debate, something else happened instead. Because the paper's lead author was a graduate student and a woman, the response was a swift: "How dare you punch down!"

I saw very little engagement with what Yoel actually said. Instead, there was a rush of condemnation that Yoel’s criticism was inappropriate, even immoral. I even saw one histrionic post from someone who not only defended the paper but then accused the entire open science community of bad faith, questioning the motives of a group he previously identified with. He might as well have said: Shameless little bullies.

Here's another example from academic Twitter. A Latino postdoc published a qualitative study about Black and Latino people's experiences with policing and discovered that even without handcuffs or sirens, the police leaves behind trauma, paranoia, and the constant feeling of being watched. A white professor, doing what professors are supposed to do, pointed out something pretty basic: every single person interviewed for this study came from an organization dedicated to police abolition and political activism. In other words, maybe, just maybe, the findings tell us more about how police abolitionists experience the police than about how the average young person of colour does.

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Instead of engaging with this pretty reasonable point, though, the postdoc played the power dynamics card, complaining about a senior scholar publicly criticizing a junior scholar. Before long, the whole thing devolved into a mess of accusations about white tenured professors attacking scholars of colour. The actual scientific question—you know, the one about selection bias—got buried under an avalanche of takes about power, privilege, and who has the right to criticize whom. The Dude would not abide.

Here's one final example that really got under my skin. The flip side of "don't punch down" is what we might call "sycophancy down" the tendency to shower excessive praise on people with less power, say, from marginalized groups, regardless of merit.

I witnessed this firsthand a few years ago, and honestly, I'm still cringing about it. I attended a talk where a professor of colour gave what I'd call a perfectly fine talk—the kind that might land in a decent journal, nothing earth-shattering. But you wouldn't know that from the reaction. A bunch of white audience members practically fell over themselves praising it, treating pretty standard observations like they were tablets brought down from Mount Sinai. I kid you not, someone actually used the word genius. For a talk that was... fine. Just fine. The whole thing felt patronizing as hell, and I kept thinking about how uncomfortable this must have made the speaker feel.

So why do I have a problem with any of this? Am I just nutpicking, picking extreme examples to discredit an otherwise noble principle? Maybe. But I hope not.

My main objection is that the prohibition against punching down violates something fundamental about how science works. I'm talking about universalism, one of the core principles laid out by sociologist Robert Merton back in 1942 when he was trying to explain what makes science... well, science. Merton argued that scientific claims should be evaluated based on universal criteria, regardless of who makes them. Your race, gender, status, institutional affiliation—none of that should matter. A brilliant insight from a grad student should carry the same weight as one from a Nobel laureate. And crucially, this applies not just to doing science, but to critiquing it, too. The moment we start saying certain people can't question certain findings because of who they are (or aren't), we're not doing science anymore; we're doing something else.

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One reason the principle of universalism is so important is that it actually does a better job of protecting marginalized scholars than a “don’t punch down” maxim. If we say we shouldn't critically engage with work from students or junior scholars because they have less power, we're undermining their standing as serious scholars. Being taken seriously in science means having your work scrutinized, questioned, and yes, sometimes criticized. When we place someone's work beyond criticism because of their status, we're paradoxically saying their work isn't worth engaging with rigorously. In trying to protect less powerful scholars, we end up infantilizing them. We're saying, “Look, that Indigenous postdoc is doing science. Aw, how cute!” Instead, we should treat them like the serious scholars they are and want to be.

How exactly do we figure out who has power in these academic exchanges anyways? On paper, sure, a professor outranks a postdoc. But what happens when that postdoc has double the social media following and posts ten times as often? Or when they're aligned with powerful political movements that can mobilize support at the click of a hashtag? These are not just hypothetical questions. Remember that dustup between the Latino postdoc and white professor I mentioned? That's exactly what played out there. Power isn't a simple up-down thing anymore. A dean might control your tenure case, but an activist scholar can shape your reputation with a single viral thread. This makes the whole concept of “don’t punch down” not just problematic but incoherent. This is exactly why Merton's principle of universalism is so brilliant in its simplicity: evaluate the ideas, not the person's position in whatever power hierarchy we're obsessing about this week.

But even if we embrace universalism, even if we agree to evaluate ideas on their merits rather than their source, we still need to talk about how we receive criticism, because this is where things often go sideways. There's a tendency in academia to conflate scholarly critique with personal bullying. I get it: criticism hurts. But when we reflexively cry foul about power differentials instead of engaging with substance, we sacrifice growth for comfort. Good science requires us to separate criticism of our work from attacks on our person. It requires us to assume good faith, at least initially.

To be sure, there's a world of difference between criticism and humiliation. The Babylonian Talmud got this right: it considered public humiliation tantamount to shedding blood, understanding that when you humiliate someone in public, you wound their sense of self. The lesson here isn't that we should avoid criticizing; it's that we should deliver it with kindness and care. And I'll be the first to admit I haven't always gotten this balance right—there have been times when my eagerness for debate trumped my consideration for how and where to deliver criticism. The Talmudic scholars would probably have some choice words for me about that.

But even as I work to do better, I still believe in choosing sunlight over shadows. When it comes to personal matters, hashing things out privately makes sense. But intellectual disagreements? We all benefit from having those in the open. That said, if we’re going to air them publicly, we owe it to each other to be civil and kind. The goal isn't to protect people from criticism; it's to create spaces where ideas can be challenged thoughtfully while preserving everyone's dignity.

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Treating certain groups as too delicate for critique isn't protection; it's condescension. I get why "don't punch down" feels right—it comes from a desire to protect the vulnerable. But if we want real equity in academia, we need to hold everyone's ideas to the same rigorous standards: careful criticism delivered with respect, regardless of who's giving or receiving it. Maybe instead of worrying about which direction we're punching, we could focus on having better fights; maybe we can speak to each other, even when we’re criticizing, with more kindness.

Then again, I could be wrong about all this. Feel free to criticize this take, regardless of your status relative to mine.

Yes, a post by a mid-career psychology professor with a modest social media following was being widely circulated, discussed, liked…and loathed. This was a disorienting experience, but honestly kind of fun.

The post crossed 500,000 views within 24 hours. Every time I checked my socials, I kept on seeing lots and lots of engagement. I clicked on what was trending that day and my little post was there. I screenshotted it immediately because I assumed it would vanish.

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It didn’t vanish. And my post wasn’t ratioed either. But lots of people disagreed and they didn’t mind being loud and angry and sometimes unhinged in expressing their disagreement. I want to talk about it. But, because I’ll be dishing more than doing science, I’m putting this behind a paywall. Among the replies: someone who wanted me lined up at the guillotine, a eugenics comparison, and a surprisingly good philosophical argument. I want to talk about all three.

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The Power of Us

We share science and the stories about social identity, group dynamics, and collective behavior in organizations and society. Hosted in collaboration with the Center for Conflict & Cooperation.

By Dominic Packer & Jay Van Bavel

I've known Dominic and Jay for over 20 years. We first met when they were both graduate students at the University of Toronto and I was a visiting speaker. I left that visit energized and, frankly, jealous. The intellectual culture in the psychology department was exactly what I'd been looking for—lively, rigorous, genuinely curious. I applied for a job at UofT a few weeks later and have been here ever since.

But as I reflect on my remarkable visit and the wonderful time I had, I realize that Jay and Dominic played an outsized role. A major reason I found the culture so stimulating is that I found Jay and Dominic so stimulating—they loved discussing ideas, were open to different perspectives, and liked lively debate. I was later amazed by how varacious a reader Dominic was and is and how charismatic and curious Jay was and is. I am now convinced the reason I was so impressed with UofT at the time was that Jay and Dominic are so impressive. I continue to love UofT but now realize that my initial feelings were a misattribution.

Dominic and Jay are widely known now, and deservedly so. Some Canadians are meant to be shared. Their Substack is a good window into how they think. This particular essay, on the Kitty Genovese case and the bystander effect, is a perfect place to start.

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The night of March 13, 1964, marked one of the darkest moments in the history of New York and the beginning of a myth that shaped how people saw the city—as well as human psychology—for decades.

For more than half an hour, 38 respectable citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a young woman named Kitty Genovese in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault; one witness called after the woman was dead.

Exactly where the total of thirty-eight witnesses came from is not clear. But the notion that so many citizens could callously observe the stabbing and murder of a fellow human being without intervening triggered widespread outrage. People decried the decay of civilization and the degradation of life in New York City.

The story also struck a nerve with social psychologists John Darley (a professor at NYU) and Bibb Latané (a professor across the city at Columbia) who were working in New York City at the time. Based on the tragic story of Kitty Genovese, they developed and tested a hypothesis that they called “the bystander effect.” Their hypothesis was that the more bystanders there are in an emergency situation, the less likely any given person is to help. In their view, this might explain why people did nothing to help Kitty.

They theorized that there were at least two reasons why the presence of other people in an emergency can cause an individual not to act. First, it is not always clear what is and is not an emergency, and people often look to others to try to diagnose the situation. When you see that others are not reacting, you might assume that it is because they know it is not an emergency. This is a big problem if they reach the same conclusion by gauging your own lack of reaction. This is known as pluralistic ignorance—when no one knows what is going on but assumes that everyone else does.

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Second, if people somehow overcome this mutual state of ignorance to recognize an emergency situation for what it is, they may still fail to act due to a diffusion of responsibility in which everyone assumes that someone else should or perhaps already has taken care of it.

Darley and Latané designed several clever laboratory experiments to test their idea. In one experiment, someone faked a seizure. In another, smoke began billowing under a door. They observed how participants responded to these crises when they were alone versus in the presence of other people who did nothing. Sure enough, people were less likely to help when there were others around than when they were alone. We highly recommend watching the video below to see the origin of the Bystander effect and vidid details about the studies.

Every time an event like this occurs (and they occur shockingly often), people—very rightly—ask why. How could people possibly just sit there, doing nothing to help while a fellow human being is in dire need of assistance? Although we note in our book that people do often, eventually, intervene, there are factors that seem to make this more or less likely.

But we now also know that neither the tale of Kitty Genovese nor the bystander effect is as straightforward as was long believed. They are simple stories that have been told and retold, often losing critical details in the retelling. They have become myths.

It turns out that some of the neighbors who heard Kitty Genovese’s cries for help the night of her death did intervene in one way or another. Although they were not sure what was happening, several shouted out of their windows and temporarily scared off the attacker. Some neighbors, including a boy who would later become a New York City police officer, reported calling the police during the attack. That the police never responded might have had something to do with the fact that there was no centralized 911 system in the United States until four years later. Before that there was no standardized system for receiving or responding to calls from the public.

An analysis of these events, however, suggests something far more nuanced:

“Psychology, unlike many of the other sciences, doesn’t have a canon of uncontested facts,” says Mark Levine, PhD, of the University of Exeter, who co-authored the American Psychologist article. “Because of this, psychology textbooks are not made up of facts students must learn. Instead, they are full of experiments and research techniques. Parables like the Kitty Genovese story serve to link the experiments to the real world. There is thus a strong incentive not to abandon the stories in the textbooks, even if the stories themselves are on shaky ground.”

Just as Kitty Genovese’s tragic story is not as straightforward as it long appeared, not is the bystander effect itself. In particular, scholars and laypeople alike underestimate the influence that identities, and specifically shared identities, can play in people’s decisions to help.

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In the early 2000s, Mark Levine and colleagues studied the dynamics of helping with English football fans. Some were asked to think about their identities as fans of a particular team - specifically, how much they loved Manchester United. Others were instead asked to think about their more general identity as fans of the game - as football fanatics.

Then, walking across the university campus to complete a second component of the study, they ran into an injured stranger. Like the Good Samaritan, did they stop to help? Or did they just walk on by?

Remarkably, whether they helped depended to a great extent on what type of shirt the distressed stranger was wearing. Sometimes he was in a Manchester United jersey, other times he sported the Liverpool colors (Manchester’s biggest rivals), and at other times he wore just an ordinary plain shirt.

Fans who had been asked to think about their love for Manchester United, the more parochial identity, were significantly more likely to help the stranger if he was wearing a Manchester United jersey compared to either of the other two shirts.

However, those fans who had thought about their love for football more generally behaved very differently. Having brought to mind this broader identity, they were just as as likely to help the stranger whether he was wearing a Liverpool or a Manchester United shirt. Notably, they remained quite unlikely to help a stranger in an unadorned shirt - someone with whom they still didn’t share an obvious allegiance.

Thus, as our identities shift, becoming more or less expansive, different people are included within the boundaries of our concern. These boundaries are not static, but depend on how we’re thinking about ourselves at particular moments.

In 2018, Ruud Hortensius and Beatrice de Gelder proposed a new model of the bystander effect focused on how the brain responds during emergencies. They proposed that when people observe another person in need of help, two separate brain systems are activated. One system creates feelings of personal distress and produces freezing or avoidance responses—reactions that are not conducive to helping. The other system, which they claim tends to operate more slowly, creates feelings of sympathy, which can drive people to intervene.

According to their model, our immediate, instinctive reaction in emergencies is to freeze in a state of indecision or to run away if we can. These quick and unthinking responses can, however, be overcome if feelings of sympathy and concern for the victim, increased perhaps by a shared identity, are stronger and override them.

From this perspective, a particularly disturbing aspect of some media-reported examples of bystander apathy is the possibility that some people may record attacks on their phones. Stalling in indecision or trying to escape what one fears is dangerous are understandable, though hardly admirable responses. But recording an attack can be understood neither as freezing nor avoidance—and suggests a genuinely callous lack of sympathy that our models of bystander behavior do not really account for.

The bystander effect might give the inaccurate impression that helping is very rare in emergency situations. Recenter research has, however, dunked that myth as well. People actually do intervene in many, perhaps most, emergencies. One study, for example, examined surveillance camera footage of aggressive incidents in urban areas in the Netherlands, South Africa, and Britain. The researchers found that out of 219 public conflicts between two or more people, at least one observer intervened in 199 of them—that is, 91% of the time.

As you might expect, the more people who are around, the greater likelihood there is that someone will step forward, just by virtue of sheer numbers. But this doesn’t mean the chance of you intervening increases. It is important to understand this difference: The more people who are around, the better the chance that someone in a crowd will eventually notice something amiss and take action. But the probability of any given person in that situation doing something may still be quite low unless something triggers that person to help.

Returning to the issue of identity, it seems likely that people intervening in these studies might have been neighbors or at least have some common connection. This may also explain why the intervention rates were much higher than the studies with complete strangers in the lab.

Understanding why people fail to help assault victims in no way exonerates them. Rather, these insights should be used to train people how to intervene in moments of crisis. A recent review of relevant research highlights the importance of increasing awareness and encouraging bystanders to step up when someone is the target of sexual violence:

“Sadly, there’s very little evidence-based research on strategies to prevent or address sexual harassment. The best related research examines sexual assault on college campuses and in the military. That research shows that training bystanders how to recognize, intervene, and show empathy to targets of assault not only increases awareness and improves attitudes, but also encourages bystanders to disrupt assaults before they happen, and help survivors report and seek support after the fact.”

In fact, learning about the bystander effect has changed how we have reacted to sexual assault in the real world. As a graduate student, Jay once intervened during rush hour in a Toronto subway station when a man began assaulting a young woman. If you want to learn the whole story you can read our book and watch the short video we made on the bystander effect for our YouTube channel:

If you enjoyed this column, it is our first in a series debunking the biggest myths in the history of social psychology, which we will publish over the next couple of months. Subscribe to follow along as we set the record straight and bust some popular but erroneous myths about human behavior!

I wrote the piece below about 18 months ago. A few weeks ago, my friends Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel republished it in their newsletter, The Power of Us, under the title “The Downfall of Stereotype Threat.” That republication landed in the inbox of roughly 10,000 people, which is fine. What happened next is more interesting.

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Mary Murphy, a prominent stereotype threat researcher, wrote a lengthy public rebuttal on her own Substack, taking issue with my conclusions and the timing of the republication. She makes some arguments I want to engage with seriously, and maybe I will in a future post. This isn’t the place for that. But I will say this: Mary's rebuttal left me wondering when stereotype threat stopped being about the Black-White or male-female testing gaps and started being about how people feel in uncomfortable rooms. Vibes, basically. Important vibes, yes, but vibes nonetheless. If that’s where we’ve landed, that’s worth talking about.

For now, I'm putting the original piece behind the paywall, with a few small additions. If you're a free subscriber and want access, now is a good time to upgrade. You'll get the essay, the drama, and eventually my response to Mary. Consider this your warning that things might get a little spicy.

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There was a well-attended session asking whether SPSP is a healthy scientific organization, a presenter who had enough chutzpah to deliver his talk using 100% AI-generated slides, and a heartfelt memorial for a dearly departed psychologist. I’m going to get personal and name some names, so I’m putting this behind a paywall to give me the freedom I want and you, the gossip you expect.

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But for others, conferences are a source of anxiety and despair. They invite all kinds of upwards social comparisons—there is always someone better than you doing more interesting research no matter how well established or how cool your research is—that leave one deflated. And then there are all those people to talk to!

Because conference season is here, I thought I’d reprint (with light edits) my essay on what conferences are really for (hint: it it not to learn about the latest research) and how to do it well even if small talk is not really your thing.

Conference season is here, and I can feel the electric buzz of anticipation in academia's virtual hallways.

I’m heading to Chicago for the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), where I won’t be presenting anything but there to soak in the atmosphere of the world’s largest gathering of social and personality psychologists. If you’re there, come say hi!

Whether it’s SPSP, APS, CNS, SAS, or any other acronym-filled gathering, conferences can be overwhelming. For junior researchers, especially, the experience of seeing your academic heroes stroll by—knowing you should strike up a conversation but feeling too anxious to—is all too familiar. You wonder: Why would she even want to talk to me?

That anxious knot in your stomach? It’s likely tricking you into overestimating how awkward those interactions will be. Research by Nick Epley and Juliana Schroeder shows we chronically underestimate how much others enjoy talking to us; and how much we’ll enjoy those conversations, too. Small talk may have a bad reputation, but it’s usually a lot less painful (and a lot more enjoyable) than we expect, even if you don’t think you’re a pro at it.

Yet, despite this, we cling to our phones like they’re shields, pretending to check emails while secretly praying that the person who just made eye contact doesn’t actually come over. We convince ourselves that everyone is too busy, too important, or too uninterested to talk to us. But, you’re also silently hoping someone else will break the ice so you can stop pretending to be absorbed in the same email you’ve skimmed three times already.

And here’s the twist: those small, seemingly inconsequential interactions? They’re the main reason you’re at the conference. So, let’s clear up a major misconception: the goal of a conference isn’t to attend every talk and absorb every bit of information. It’s about connecting with ideas, with potential collaborators, and yes, with those strangers you’re too nervous to approach.

If you want pure information, read the papers or let an AI summarize them for you. Conferences are about people—meeting them, talking to them, and, most importantly, forming connections that go beyond academic citations. This is why online conferences, for all their accessibility, were a bust. They missed the whole point: building relationships.

If your idea of a conference is to fly in, give your talk, and fly out, you're doing it wrong. You’re like a child wondering into the middle of a movie.

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Let me tell you a story about why these connections matter. A few years ago, I hired a postdoc named Blair Saunders, now a professor at the University of Dundee. Blair’s application stood out not just because of his brilliance but because I had already met him. Months earlier, at a pub event after a conference talk in New Orleans, Blair saw me wrestling with a neon-colored Hurricane (a truly deadly concoction) and mustered the courage to chat. We discovered shared research interests, and when his CV crossed my desk later, I already knew he was thoughtful and engaging. That conversation over a drink made him more than just another name in a stack of applications.

Here's something they don't tell you enough of in grad school: the most successful academics aren't just brilliant researchers; they're also skilled networkers. I know, I know: the word "networking" probably makes you cringe. It sounds calculated, maybe even a bit sleazy. But these personal connections matter more than you think. They lead to collaborations, job opportunities, chapter invitations, and symposium spots. But more importantly, they make this whole academic endeavor more enjoyable.

OK, so how does one network?

First, ditch your university crew. I know it feels safe traveling in packs, but those gaggles of grad students from the same labs or departments? No one's approaching that fortress of familiarity. Instead, work in pairs at most. One conference buddy is ideal; you've got backup but you're still approachable.

Next, be ready for the inevitable “What do you study?” question. Have a concise three-sentence version for casual chats and a longer version for when someone is genuinely interested. And don’t forget to ask real questions yourself; not setups to pivot back to your own work, but genuine, thoughtful inquiries. If you’re nervous about sounding dumb, don’t be. Most speakers love questions, even simple ones. If you are anxious still, have a go-to question you can ask multiple people (mine used to be about individual differences that they believed could moderate their effect of interest).

Be strategic. Skim the program ahead of time and prioritize talks and posters that genuinely interest you. Then, make a point to chat with presenters afterward, especially grad students, who are often thrilled to have someone engage with their work.

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Another way to be strategic is to email people in advance. Maybe you noticed that a few professors you admire are going to attend. Why not send them a brief email expressing how much you admire them and their work and then ask if they could meet for 15 minutes over coffee. Several students have reached out to me in the past, and I usually say yes to a brief meeting because I’m human and while I want to help them, I really like it when people like me and my work! Yes, flattery works.

Here's something else: hang out with your advisor strategically. It’s a long story, but I did not have a social psychology advisor during grad school (my advisor was a cognitive psychologist). So, when I went to conferences, I had no one to open social doors for me. But advisors can and should do this. So, ask your advisors to introduce you to people they know—that's literally part of their job. And when they do, don't just stand there nodding. Join the conversation. And follow up with these people later.

And don’t skip the social events. Yes, the poster sessions and talks matter, but the real networking happens over drinks and food. This is where job leads, collaborations, and friendships are born.

Here’s a hack most people overlook: volunteer for everything. Seriously, everything. Hand out name badges. Join student committees. Help review poster submissions. These seemingly mundane tasks are networking gold mines. You’ll get face time with other academics, and the connections you make can pay off years later.

One last bit of advice: Try acting extroverted. Yes, I know that sounds terrifying, but research shows it can make you happier and more likable. When you engage enthusiastically with others, when you smile and act assertively, they tend to mirror that energy back, creating a positive feedback loop that makes everyone feel good. It's like a social chain reaction that benefits both sides.

So, if you see me at your next conference, come say hi. I’m the short, bearded, bald guy wearing a Big Lebowski t-shirt under a blazer. And who knows? That awkward small talk might just be the start of something big.

I hoped—prayed, even—I would never have to write about research on ego depletion again. But then a new paper comes along that forces me to take notice. And now I feel obliged to say something.

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I won’t go through the whole sordid story; not only is it a long one, but I’ve recounted it a few times already in different venues, including right here in this Substack. So, here is the Cliff’s Notes version.

Ego depletion was social psychology’s golden child for nearly two decades. People went gaga over the idea that self-control runs on a limited resource that depletes with use. Resist that cookie now, fail at the gym later. Simple and intuitive, but ultimately unsupported by strong evidence. The cracks in the resource model of self-control, as it came to be known, appeared in the early 2010s. First came theoretical problems (what exactly was this so-called resource?), then came replication failures. The death blow arrived with not one but tw…

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But I’m no longer convinced that was the responsible choice. Like Paul Bloom, I am starting to wonder if not using AI in such cases is the right thing to do.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: I have little confidence in the quality of my comparative judgments, even in my grading of a pile of student papers. I know my evaluations are skewed by whether a candidate came first or last in the pile, whether I am in a good mood or nursing a headache. I usually get a feeling about a paper or candidate and then just go on vibes. I’ve been doing this for decades, and every time I finish, I’m left with the nagging feeling that I’ve made tons of mistakes or that I have been unfair. Yet we trust humans like me to do this kind of work. And some of us would be horrified if we learned that a colleague outsourced some of this work to AI

Yet, if I had a well-written rubric with specific criteria, I’m pretty sure AI would do a better job than I would. It would be more consistent, less biased by irrelevant factors, and certainly not influenced by whether the Eagles are playing on the radio while it’s grading.

This bothers me. A lot. It made me think back to a piece I wrote last year about predictive AI, and why I think the anti-AI crowd has it wrong. So here is that essay again, with just a few edits.

It’s fashionable these days to be anti-AI. If you don’t believe me, check out this social media mob that tore into my University of Toronto colleague for having the audacity to promote an AI-powered educational tool.

Critics are right to call out the serious problems with AI, like biases in U.S. healthcare decisions, discriminatory fraud detection in the Netherlands, or even error-prone search results. These issues are real and demand attention.

But bias, discrimination, and errors aren’t unique to AI; they’re deeply embedded in human decision-making, too. If you think humans are the gold standard, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Our judgments are inconsistent, riddled with bias, and nearly impossible to fix. The real question isn’t whether predictive AI is perfect, but whether it’s better than the messy systems we’re already using. Spoiler: it usually is.

That question—whether AI is an improvement over the status quo—was on my mind when I picked up AI Snake Oil, a book by Princeton computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor. The title alone promised a scathing critique of the technology, and I wanted to see if their arguments would challenge my perspective. Was I just an unapologetic AI stan after all? Determined to keep an open mind, I dove in, ready to hear from experts. The authors didn’t disappoint in their skepticism. They didn’t just criticize AI; they came out swinging.

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The book covers a lot of ground, and I found the chapter on the history of AI especially enlightening. I learned a ton. But when they turned to evaluating the technology itself, the gloves came off. To their credit, they acknowledge AI’s strengths in areas like autocomplete, chatbots, and even some uses of generative AI for coding and images. But when it comes to predictive AI, their critique takes a sharp turn. They don’t just find flaws. They call for the outright abandonment of predictive AI—if not of prediction altogether.

This is where I part ways with them. Prediction itself, even if flawed, is essential. Decisions need to be made. Who gets admitted to an ICU when there aren’t enough beds? Who is likely to reoffend and should not be released on parole? Who gets hired for a job when there are hundreds of applicants? Prediction is how we allocate scarce resources, prioritize care, and maintain justice and fairness.

But what do we mean by prediction here? Prediction is about using data to anticipate outcomes and guide decisions in structured ways. For instance, it could mean predicting which ICU patient is likeliest to recover, which parolee poses the least risk, or which refugee might face persecution if returned to their home country. Prediction isn’t about certainty—it’s about estimating probabilities to make decisions that matter.

These decisions are high-stakes, and without prediction, they’d often become arbitrary, relying on gut feelings or flawed human judgment. AI enhances this process by handling complexity, processing massive datasets, and reducing bias. It doesn’t eliminate the challenges of prediction, but it allows us to make better, more consistent decisions than humans alone. This is why prediction isn’t just essential—it’s unavoidable.

When it comes to making better decisions, research makes it clear that algorithms are the way to go. The term algorithm gets thrown around like it’s synonymous with computers and AI, but it originally had nothing to do with machines. An algorithm is simply a set of steps or rules used to make a decision. We could create and implement one with nothing more than a pencil and paper.

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Take graduate admissions. Instead of relying on unstructured interviews where we decide based on whether we like someone or deem them a good fit, we could create a decision rule. Assign each applicant a score out of 10 on criteria like undergraduate grades, research experience, writing ability, math skills, ability to work with others, even likability. Then, give each criterion a weight, say, 25% for grades, 15% for likability and so on. A little algebra later, and you’ve combined the scores to compare candidates and select the highest-scoring ones. Congratulations! You’ve just created and implemented an algorithm. It’s not perfect, but it’s far more objective and less biased than gut feelings or intuition.

I know this from personal experience. When I evaluate students or job candidates—which I do regularly—I can feel my judgments shifting based on completely irrelevant factors. The same application looks different if I read it first thing or its the last application in my pile. A candidate who reminds me of a former successful student gets an unfair boost. Someone whose writing style annoys me gets dinged for reasons that have nothing to do with their actual qualifications. An algorithm doesn't have these problems.

And this isn’t like just my opinion, man. Decades of research shows these kinds of algorithms consistently outperform so-called holistic human decision-making. Yet we resist them. Maybe it’s because we trust our intuition or clinical judgment too much, or maybe it’s because we balk at the idea of reducing people to a number. However, intuition simply isn’t good enough when the stakes are high. We tell ourselves we’re seeing the so-called whole person when we rely on holistic judgment, but in reality, we’re influenced by irrelevant factors that cloud our thinking. Was the candidate too dressed up? Not dressed up enough? Did they hesitate too long before answering? Did they answer too quickly? Were they sweating and nervous? Or maybe too blasé? And, of course, there’s the baggage of stereotypes—conscious or unconscious—that shapes how we perceive people, no matter how hard we try to suppress them. Algorithms aren’t flawless, but they don’t care about any of this nonsense, which is why they consistently outperform human judgment.

For instance, in hiring, unstructured interviews are less predictive of job performance than algorithmic assessments based on structured data. And it's not just hiring—it's any evaluation task where we're comparing people against defined criteria: student admissions, fellowship awards, job applications, promotion decisions. In all these domains, human evaluators show alarming inconsistency. We're influenced by attractiveness, by whether someone's name is easy to pronounce, by whether we're tired or hungry or distracted. We tell ourselves we're good at this, that our years of experience have honed our judgment, but the data says otherwise.

Algorithms, in contast, don’t suffer from these biases. For example, in parole decisions, machine learning models have shown they can reduce errors where parole boards unnecessarily incarcerate low-risk individuals while releasing higher-risk individuals. These examples highlight how algorithms can improve fairness and accuracy by mitigating the biases and inconsistencies of human judgment.

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AI builds on these algorithms, making them faster, scalable, and, when designed well, less biased. And scalability matters because there are more decisions and predictions to make than humans can handle, even if they used algorithms themselves. Take refugee claims in Canada. In 2023, over 260,000 people sought asylum—six to seven times as many as just a few years earlier. Every claim needs to be processed and assessed, yet the system is so overwhelmed it takes the government about four years to make a decision. In the meantime, these claimants live precariously, unsure if they’ll be accepted or deported. Automated algorithms—yes, I’m talking about AI here—could process this data more efficiently and accurately, even if it makes mistakes. Unlike humans, AI doesn’t burn out, get distracted, or let a bad morning cloud its judgment.

Yet AI Snake Oil relentlessly attacks AI for not being perfect, pointing out its mistakes as if they invalidate the entire enterprise. But this critique misses the point: AI shouldn’t be judged against some platonic ideal—it should be judged against what we’re doing now, which is far worse. Humans are inconsistent, irrational, and riddled with biases we don’t even realize we have. The bums always lose when they rely on gut feelings and flawed intuition. We also make mistakes, and more of them.

At one point, the authors discuss how AI can be gamed. For example, candidates in automated video job interviews might use fancy words they’d never normally use, like “conglomerate” (is that really a fancy word or have I just been in the Ivory Tower for too many years?) or strategically place books and paintings in the background to score higher. Sure, this is unfair. Pretending to have a strong vocabulary or curating your background says little about your actual ability to do a job. But this kind of gaming happens all the time in real life too. I once had a friend with perfect vision who wore fake prescription glasses to a job interview because she thought it made her look smarter and older, and thus more hirable. Defendants in court wear suits to seem respectable and trustworthy. Anytime you construct a decision rule, people will find ways to exploit its weaknesses. That’s not unique to AI.

Consider an important study by Ziad Obermeyer and colleagues, published in Science. They found racial bias in a healthcare algorithm that underestimated the health needs of Black patients compared to White patients. The bias stemmed from the algorithm’s reliance on healthcare costs as a proxy for need, which systematically disadvantaged Black patients because they, on average, incurred lower healthcare expenses—not because they were healthier, but because they faced systemic barriers to accessing care. But here’s the crucial part: the bias wasn’t hidden. Researchers identified the problem, reformulated the algorithm, and effectively eliminated the bias. Good luck doing that with human decision-making. This is what happens, Larry. When humans make biased decisions, we rarely know why—let alone how to fix it.

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To be fair, AI Snake Oil raises important concerns about how AI is implemented. Algorithms need high-quality training data—garbage in, garbage out. AI decision rules should be made transparent and understandable to stakeholders. Systems must be rigorously tested to ensure they are an actual improvement over current practice. And algorithms need to be adaptable, tailored to the populations and environments they’re used in. These are real challenges, and AI companies and the organizations that use their products need to do better.

Still, the authors take their skepticism of predictive AI too far for my taste. They suggest replacing prediction (AI and human alike) with lotteries.

Imagine that. Instead of a parole board—whether relying on human or AI judgment—deciding whether a prisoner should be granted parole, we’d toss their name into a hat and let fate decide [1].

The reality is that prediction is essential. Lotteries can sometimes make sense, say when equity is the primary goal, or when there’s little-to-no predictive ability. Some argue, for example, that academia’s grant system is so poor at predicting high quality research that distributing research funding by lottery might actually be an improvement.

But when decisions have real consequences—like who gets parole, who gets hired, or who needs extra care—randomness isn’t enough. Prediction allows us to systematically analyze and use data to account for meaningful differences between people, such as their likelihood of rehabilitation, job performance, or recovery. This ensures decisions are informed by relevant factors rather than arbitrary guesswork or biases. Refusing to predict doesn’t make decisions fairer; it just makes them arbitrary. When lives, resources, or justice are on the line, we need to make the best decisions we can. AI isn’t perfect, but it helps us get closer.

AI isn’t snake oil; it’s a tool. It’s a flawed tool, sure, but one with incredible potential. It forces us to confront the inefficiencies and biases in our current systems, exposing problems we’ve ignored for too long and offering solutions we didn’t think were possible. Perfect? No. An improvement over the status quo? Yes.

[1] To be fair, the authors suggest lotteries after some initial selection process. By allowing for even some selection, however, the authors reveal that we and AI might have some predictive ability after all.

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Nearly every Jew I know—no matter their political beliefs or ideological commitments—has had to reckon with how their ethnic/religious/cultural group is now perceived. For many like me, this is a new thing.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I grew up in a golden age of Jew tolerance, where Jew hatred was something I learned about from dusty textbooks or my father’s and uncle’s stories of Living While Jewish in Europe. Sure, I witnessed some acts of hate—in 1987, my synagogue in suburban Montreal was graffitied with swastikas and the phrase “Burn Jews”—but this was the exception. I never thought my Judaism made a lick of difference in how I was treated.

That carefree sense of psychological (and even physical) safety is no longer. The god damned plane has crashed into the mountain. I got a taste for this on October 8^th, 2023, when demonstrators on the streets and campuses of North America’s finest cities were telling Jews …

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Today I am reposting my love letter to my favourite movie of all time. I might just make this an annual tradition. Enjoy your time off, taking it easy for us all sinners. And if you’re in Toronto for New Year’s Eve and want to usher in the new year abiding, might I recommend you catch a screening of TBL at the Hot Docs Cinema. Thanks to my student Emily Zohar who let me in on this annual tradition.

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Merry Christmas everyone. Yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to greet you with a generic Happy Holidays, but today is Christmas day, so merry Christmas it is.

I’ve always loved Christmas, which is a strange thing for a Jew to say. But what’s not to like? I love the office parties where we get to see our bosses or co-workers in sometimes compromising positions (informational hostages?). I love all the food—panettone anyone? I love the ugly sweaters. And I even love the music—my fave Xmas song has got to be Wham!’s Last Christmas. And, as a Jew, I celebrate the birth of Jesus as it should be celebrated—with other Jews stuffing our faces with Chinese food. In this spirit of giving, I decided to write a lighthearted post about my favourite movie of all time, The Big Lebowski. Think of it as a little Christmas gift for all the Little Urban Achievers out there.

I was one of those rare people who saw The Big Lebowski in a movie theatre when it was first released in 1998. While the movie became a cult classic years later, it bombed with critics and movie goers alike upon its initial release. I was in the first year of my PhD at Brown University and watched the movie with my good friend Terry McGee at the cineplex near the Lincoln Center in New York City.

I liked the movie, but it didn’t leave much of an impression and I found the plot confusing in spots. But some scenes did stay with me because they were so absurd, and when I found myself in a different state of mind (lol), they made me chuckle. Like the scene with the Black cab driver who kicks the Dude out of his cab because the Dude bad-mouthed The Eagles. I too hated (and still hate) The Eagles, so I felt like the filmmakers were speaking to me personally, showing me that my hatred was not so uncommon. Or the scene of Walter smashing a brand-new Corvette while repeatedly invoking the phrase, “You see what happens Larry? This is what happens Larry when you… find a stranger in the Alps!” These were funny scenes, but nothing more.

Then a few months later I heard my friend Kamran Diba—now a professor of neuroscience at the University of Michigan—quoting a scene, and I was amazed he had seen, let alone liked the movie. Clearly, I had missed something. The movie was out of theatres after a short run but was released on DVD (or was it VHS?) soon thereafter, and Kamran had a copy.

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I watched it with him and my other grad school buddies again. And again. And again. After each viewing, the movie got funnier and deeper and more meaningful. I was in love, smitten with the Dude, Walter, and Donny, but also Maude, Jesus, Bunny, and even Knox Herrington. I started getting into the Coen brothers’ other films. What was more, I learned that other people, mostly other men, also loved the movie and watched it and quoted from it endlessly. I have since bonded with other Lebowski fans the world over and have deepened friendships based on our shared passion.

So why do I and so many other middle-aged Gen X men love this movie so much? I’ll try to explain, though it might be unexplainable—maybe it’s some kind of eastern thing.

Let’s start by crossing one reason off the list: it’s not the plot. The plot is kind of confusing. It took me a few watches to untangle it, and when I finally got it, I realized my thinking about it had been far too uptight. The truth is the plot doesn’t really matter. Even Joel Coen, one half of the Coen brothers, admitted it’s a “hopelessly complex plot that’s ultimately unimportant.” But for those whose minds are not sufficiently limber, here’s a summary to help you abide.

Spoiler Alert (Brief Plot Summary)

Loosely inspired by the detective novels of Raymond Chandler, The Big Lebowski centers on Jeffrey Lebowski, better known as The Dude, who is mistaken for a wealthy philanthropist by the same name. This other Jeffrey Lebowski, the millionaire, is the big Lebowski. After thugs invade the Dude’s home and ruin his cherished rug, The Dude confronts the big Lebowski, only to be drawn into a bizarre scheme when the man claims his wife, Bunny, has been kidnapped. The Dude reluctantly agrees to deliver a $1 million ransom, roping in his volatile bowling buddy Walter Sobchak, who is rarely wrong but always an asshole, and the soft-spoken Donny, who is always out of his element. It’s eventually revealed that Bunny wasn’t kidnapped at all. She staged the disappearance herself, working with a group of nihilists to pocket the ransom. To make matters worse, the big Lebowski was never actually rich, living off a strict allowance from his late wife’s family, and had no intention of paying the ransom in the first place. What unfolds is a chaotic, absurd series of events where no one truly wins, but The Dude, ever unbothered, simply abides.

Again, the plot is not the issue. Forget about the plot.

So why do I love thee? Let me count the ways

1. I love the characters

First, there’s The Dude, played with effortless charm by Jeff Bridges, who somehow manages to make laziness seem heroic. The Dude gets all the love because he is easy going, carefree, tender-hearted, and quick to light a joint pretty much anywhere. He loves the band Creedence Clearwater Revival, bowling, and appears to have been unemployed for quite some time. In short, he’s a lovable 60s hippy burnout, who wears jelly shoes and Cowichan sweaters. (My awesome student Greg Depow, now postdoc at UCSD, once gifted me with a Cowichan sweater, and it is one of my prized possessions to this day). Jeff Bridges apparently strongly identifies with the Dude, too. In interviews, he’s mentioned that he sees a lot of himself in the character and has admitted to enjoying the occasional White Russian and being a bit of a hippie at heart. Bridges has also embraced the cultural phenomenon that The Dude has become.

Everyone loves the Dude. But the soul of the movie belongs to his best friend Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman. Walter is a Vietnam vet who takes everything far too seriously, from bowling league rules to his ex-wife’s dog to being shomer Shabbos. His unhinged intensity is the perfect foil to The Dude’s laid-back apathy. His outbursts—whether he’s shouting, “You’re out of your element, Donny!” or “Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?!”—are the stuff of legend.

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Then there’s hapless Donny, played with understated brilliance by Steve Buscemi. Donny spends most of the movie like a deer in the headlights, perpetually confused and constantly interrupted by Walter. Nothing captures Donny’s clueless charm better than his classic line, “phone’s ringing, Dude,” spoken with genuine earnestness to a visibly exasperated Dude, who has been very aware of his “mobile” phone ringing for the past 15 minutes.

Who can forget Maude Lebowski, played with eccentric brilliance by Julianne Moore? A feminist avant-garde artist with a flair for commanding every scene she’s in; Maude is equal parts hilarious and intimidating. Whether she’s coolly explaining that her art is strongly vaginal, which makes some men uncomfortable, or laughing maniacally while discussing the Biennale with Sandro, she’s a force of nature—bizarre, self-assured, and utterly unforgettable.

And then there are the minor characters. Jesus Quintana, played to sleazy perfection by John Turturro, struts onto the screen in just two unforgettable scenes, stealing the show with his purple jumpsuit, unsettling trash talk, and the iconic line “Nobody fucks with the Jesus.” Brandt, the big Lebowski’s sycophantic assistant, is brought to life by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose awkward attempts to impress the Dude are cringeworthy yet endearing. Even the nihilists, with their laughable incompetence and bizarre threats of cutting off the Dude’s “Johnson,” leave a lasting impression.

2. I love the eminently quotable lines

I quote The Big Lebowski in nearly every post, and anyone who’s in the know will understand: It’s not just a personal quirk; it’s what we diehard fans do. Put two or more of us in a room together, and within minutes, we’ll be volleying lines back and forth like a game of verbal ping-pong. I mean look at this incredible exchange between eight random people on Reddit each riffing off each other, and it making perfect sense… kind of. This was in response to an image of the big Lebowski, played by the late David Huddleston.

The more obscure the quote, the better. I once went to a party where I only knew a handful of people, but by the end of the night, I had new friends and a deep respect for the guy who casually dropped a line I’d never heard used before: “What are you, a park ranger now?” Instant legend.

Then there are the Talmudic debates over what any one line actually means. Take the Stranger, played to perfection by a mustachioed Sam Elliott. What does he mean when he says he takes comfort in “The Dude takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners”? Is it a profound statement about modern morality—or just a cowboy rambling? And what about this cryptic observation: “Sometimes there’s a man… I won’t say a hero, cuz what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man.” Is it a poetic meditation on The Dude’s unique place in the universe? Or does it mean absolutely nothing? What?!

And just when you think you’ve absorbed everything there is to know about The Big Lebowski, the movie surprises you with something new. A few years ago, on a camping trip, my good friend Roy Baskind (host of what has to be the best neurology podcast in the world), his friend Rodney, and I found ourselves in a heated debate over one of Walter’s many memorable lines: “Life does not stop and start at your convenience, you miserable piece of shit.” To me, it’s obvious: Walter is berating Donny for his usual, well-meaning cluelessness. But Rodney passionately argued that Walter is addressing the big Lebowski, whose gift of a beeper had clearly gotten under Walter’s skin. It turns out we hadn’t stumbled upon some hidden gem of Lebowski lore; this quote has been debated by fans for years. Like everything else in this movie, even a single line opens new layers of absurdity and discussion.

3. I love all the cuss words

My father-in-law—hello, Fred!—who also happens to be this Substack’s biggest fan, once expressed concern about all the swearing in my posts. He might as well have quoted the Stranger himself: “Do you have to use so many cuss words?” But Fred, fine man though he is, is not a fellow Little Urban Achiever. He doesn’t realize that whenever I let a swear fly in this Substack, I’m quoting The Big Lebowski. Every single time.

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And let’s be clear: this movie swears. A lot. The word fuck is used 292 times in The Big Lebowski. That averages out to about 2.4 uses per minute, making it quite possibly the sweariest film produced in Los Angeles County, which would place it in the running for sweariest worldwide. It’s not just the frequency but the sheer variety of ways the word fuck is delivered—angry, confused, dismissive, philosophical—that adds to the movie’s charm. Few films have ever used swearing so charmingly.

If you want proof (and a good laugh), here’s a mashup of every single f-bomb in the movie

And that’s why, when I quote from The Big Lebowski, the cuss words are non-negotiable. Without the profanity, the quotes wouldn’t just lose their charm, they’d be unrecognizable. “Who are you, man?” just wouldn’t have the same impact without that f-bomb. The swearing is essential.

4. I love its absurdity

You already know the plot doesn’t matter, but that barely scratches the surface of how bizarre and delightfully absurd The Big Lebowski truly is. Take The Stranger, for instance: who is he? Why is he a cowboy narrating a story about bowling in Los Angeles? And why is he sipping sarsaparilla like it’s 1885? Then there’s The Dude’s landlord, Marty. What on earth was his interpretive dance performance, his “cycle,” his… “what-have-you”? Did they actually put Donny’s ashes in a Folgers coffee can? The movie is a fever dream that never bothers to explain itself, and that’s exactly why it’s brilliant.

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And the musical numbers—what even are those? Valkyries in bowling alleys, Saddam Hussein handing out rental shoes, all set to retro tunes that somehow make it all work. These dreamlike interludes are as ridiculous as they are mesmerizing.

And then there’s the fan culture, which is almost as absurd as the movie itself. There was Lebowski Fest, which started in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2002—a glorious celebration of all things Dude—but sadly, it’s no longer running. Other gatherings, however, have popped up to fill the void. And the merch. Oh, the merch. There used to be a shop in New York City, right around the corner from where I worked at NYU, that sold nothing but Lebowski-themed stuff. My friends know how much I love the movie, so every year I get at least one Lebowski-related gift. Over the years, I’ve received t-shirts, bobblehead dolls, Creedence tapes (yes, actual tapes), talking bowling pins, Lebowski art, sweaters, bowling shirts, and even books. You name it, I’ve probably unwrapped it. There’s even an art project called the Little Lebowski Project, where fans photograph miniature figurines of The Dude and Walter in iconic or bizarre locations around the world.

The absurdity of The Big Lebowski spills over into every aspect of its fandom, making it a phenomenon as strange and endearing as the movie itself. Some fans have even transformed the world of The Big Lebowski into an actual religion: Dudeism. A few years ago, I embraced the absurdity and became an ordained Dudeist priest. Let me know if you need someone to officiate your wedding—I’ll bring my own bathrobe.

So, this Christmas, I hope you’ll accept this love letter as my small token of appreciation for a movie that has brought me endless joy. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to pour yourself a White Russian, settle in, and let The Dude guide you through the chaos. If you don’t love it, watch it three more times. And if you have seen it, well, pour yourself a drink anyway, because the world could always use more people who abide.

To all the Little Urban Achievers out there, I hope this holiday season brings you peace, absurdity, and maybe even a rug that really ties the room together. And to all my Substack readers and subscribers, I appreciate you.

Merry Christmas, man.

To celebrate this Christmas Day ode to The Dude, I’m holding a new Lebowski contest. I’ll comp two lucky winners with a 3-month paid subscription to this Substack—but here’s the catch: the winners will be the ones who come up with the most obscure Lebowski lines or quotes in the first 24 hours. I’m talking about the quotes that I haven’t thought about in years, the deep cuts buried beneath the iconic ones. So think hard, dig deep, and drop your best obscure line in the comments. Bonus points if you do it in your Christmas-day pajamas, White Russian in hand. Let the quoting commence!

This is a sensitive topic for me because of my uncle Shlomo, his personal story, and the tremendous impact he had on my life. He passed away a few years ago, but I remain grateful for all that he taught me over the years. I miss him dearly.

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Every Mother’s Day, I send out two cards: one to my mother in Montreal and one to my second mother in New York City.

My second mother is in reality my aunt, my mother’s eldest sister, Rachella. Because my aunt was born in Yemen, where they did not keep such records, she does not know how old she is or the date of her birth. My family guesses that she might now be 86, and she marks her birthday as the day she immigrated to the US in her early 30s. Rachella has always treated me as a son. Growing up in my chaotic and sometimes unsafe childhood home, Rachella was a beacon of love, a guardian, and the most generous person I know. I love her completely.

Rachella married Shlomo when I was in grade 7, but I had loved him long before. Shlomo instilled in me a love of science; he always lifted me up and encouraged me. He was my role model.

When Shlomo told me he had grown up in Będzin, Poland, in the 1930s, I couldn’t grasp what he meant. When Shlomo spoke of a sister I knew only through faded sepia photographs, I couldn’t grasp what he had lost. And when Shlomo refused to explain the strange numbers etched into his arm, I couldn’t grasp what he had endured. It wasn’t until I was older—until I learned of Auschwitz and its horrors—that I began to understand. At the same age I was playing road hockey with friends, Shlomo was fighting to survive in a world trying to erase him.

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His story didn’t end in tragedy, but it didn’t end easily either. He escaped Europe after spending time in a displaced persons camp with his surviving brother. They both gained passage to the US, where they built new and remarkable lives for themselves. Yet, the scars of his early life never fully healed. He had nightmares until the day he died a few years ago, his sleep haunted by what he endured. He struggled in his relationships, sometimes letting others take advantage of his kindness. Despite his many achievements, he never seemed comfortable in his own skin, as if constantly needing to prove his worth. His survival was a triumph, but it came at a cost he carried for the rest of his life.

So, when I think of Poland, I think of my uncle Shlomo and the tattoo on his arm that he refused to have removed. When I think of Poland, I think of a land that had once been hospitable to Jews.

Yeah, this is going to be another post about Jew hate. I won’t make a habit of it, but I recently visited Poland, where I was giving a university talk, and could not shake my feelings of discomfort while there. I never have the same feelings when I visit Germany, however. I want to use this post to wrestle with why.

Poland once hosted a Jewish population of 3.5 million, often called the “Paradise of the Jews” for its tolerance. By the war’s end, 93% had been exterminated, leaving only 10,000–20,000 Jews today.

The German occupying force was brutal and efficient. The scale of the Germans’ murderous scheming is unparalleled and remains today the epitome of evil. Many Jews today cannot and will not step foot on German soil. My wife, who loves traveling, refuses to visit Germany. Some Jews avoid buying German products. I recall as a high-schooler how my mother’s friend Sophia—a Lebanese Jewish woman all the boys had crushes on—admonishing me for my German-made Faber-Castell eraser. I can still hear her raspy, accented voice explaining how even hearing German being spoken gave her shivers of fear.

Yet, I hold no animus toward Germans today. These are the authors of my father’s grandparents’ murder, but I have forgiven, moved on. Why? Germans did the unthinkable but have since wrestled with and taken responsibility for it. They faced their history with honesty, creating monuments, laws against hate speech, and offering reparations.

I am a forgiving person. I can forgive even the unforgivable. But you need to ask for it, truly and deeply. Germany has done this. And as such, I have no ambivalence when I visit Berlin, Cologne, or Tubingen. I feel comfortable there and truly admire German culture and people.

But Poland…

Let me just say that I feel like an ingrate for writing about these feelings, particularly given the kindness of my Polish hosts. Despite the generosity I received, I couldn’t shake my sense of unease there. Certainly, my uncle Shlomo’s experience and the near-complete annihilation of Polish Jewry explains some of my discomfort. But Poles were also victimized by the Germans. The Nazis occupied Poland and terrorized Poles, who were deported to Germany and sent to forced labour and concentration camps too. The Nazis murdered many, many non-Jewish Polish civilians during the war.

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So why would I feel more comfortable in the land of the oppressors than in the land of the oppressed? Because some Poles were also oppressors. Yes, sometimes victims are also victimizers. Certain factions within Polish society victimized their Jewish neighbours, actively collaborating with the Germans, sometimes enthusiastically.

It is now well-documented that some Poles chose to kill Jews. They actively participated in rounding up their Jewish neighbours, sometimes volunteering their efforts but more often accepting payment to betray their fellow Poles. And after the war, when Europe was liberated, some Poles continued to kill Jews, particularly those who tried to return to their homes, which were often occupied by strangers. In the first year after liberation, more than 1,000 Polish Jews were killed, not by Germans but by the local Polish population. There were still pogroms in Poland after the war, most notably in the city of Kielce.

I could go on. But I won’t. If I were in the same situation as a poor Polish peasant, maybe I too would give up my neighbour to feed my children, even knowing what would happen to them. The fact that some Polish people participated in atrocities does not make them unique. Evil, after all, can be banal.

Like I said, I am a forgiving sort. I want to forgive. But has Poland asked for forgiveness? Have the guilty admitted to their active participation in the mass murder of their Jewish neighbours?

In 2000, a full 55 years after the war, the Polish-American historian Jan Gross published the book Neighbors about the destruction of a Polish Jewish community in 1941. Refuting the common Polish story that the occupying Germans were the sole perpetrators of this mass murder, the book states that some of the perpetrators were also ordinary Polish civilians. There was an outcry in Poland when the book was published, with many denying Polish involvement. Later forensic studies confirmed the book’s central claim of Polish complicity, though the exact number of victims remains debated.

But this fact had been well known among Jews for decades. I remember learning about it in my Jewish high school in Montreal in the late 80s, based on many survivor witness accounts. So, why did it take over half a century for Poland to admit their own wrongdoing and complicity? Why did the publication of this book cause so much controversy in Poland? Some of it was no doubt due to Poland being behind the Iron Curtain for so many years with strict limits on free speech and the sort of self-criticism that free speech allows.

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Poland is now trying to make amends, but there are consequences when a nation denies its own evil for too long. This evil can rise again and more quickly. On Good Friday of 2019, for example, some people in the town of Pruchnik dragged an effigy of a Jew through the streets before hanging it and setting it on fire. The last populist government of Poland, no longer in power, passed a law making it illegal to discuss Polish complicity in the war. Although the populist government backed down from the worst aspect of this law—it is no longer a jailable criminal offense, but a finable civil offense—it has still made life difficult for some. Professor Michał Bilewicz, for example, is a Jewish social psychologist who studies genocide and antisemitism, and he is widely praised for the quality of his scholarship. However, the Polish President has refused to sign off on granting him full professorship because of Bilewicz’s insistence that some Poles collaborated and were not exclusively victims. Bilewicz is still waiting for his well-deserved promotion to this day.

To be sure, Poland’s story doesn’t end there. Over the decades, there have been real efforts within Poland to confront this past. Initiatives like the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw or Kraków’s Galicia Jewish Museum have spearheaded public conversations about Polish-Jewish relations. Liberal newspapers like Gazeta Wyborcza actively promote reconciliation. Yet, these efforts coexist with deeply ingrained stereotypes and resistance to historical accountability among certain groups. And some of these stereotypes are promulgated by the Polish state: Polish textbooks given to school children, for example, continue to peddle in antisemitic tropes. Clearly, a lot more work is needed for real reconciliation to occur.

When I visited Krakow, I did not see any overt denial of history or any hostility. Everyone I met was charming and welcoming and kind. But some things felt off. While wandering Krakow’s old city, I noticed paintings of stereotypical Jews—usually men, often bearded and black-hatted, and always handling coins. When I asked an artist about the images, she said they were believed to bring good luck and financial fortune. I later learned this is a common Polish superstition, with sales of stereotypical Jewish figurines handling money a common feature in parts of Poland.

That evening, I dined at a Jewish restaurant in Krakow’s former Jewish quarter. The food was classic Ashkenazi and delicious, but the setting was not quite right; paintings of stereotypical Jews adorned the walls for example. Worse, I later realized that it was Yom Kippur eve—the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar when observant Jews fast for over 24 hours—so no authentic Jewish establishment, let alone restaurant would be open, making the experience feel like a performance of Jewishness.

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I had many interesting conversations in Poland and returned home with good memories. I’d like to return one day. Hopefully, this piece will not foreclose that possibility.

But forgiveness is only possible when people take responsibility, a lesson my Uncle Shlomo knew all too well. He kept that tattoo as a testament to his survival, a mark of what couldn’t be erased. Forgiveness requires honesty, a willingness to confront dark truths, even if they can’t be undone. While some liberal corners of Poland are making strides toward this reckoning, denial and defensiveness persist in other parts of the country. Perhaps one day, these efforts will coalesce, and I’ll find myself ready, at last, to forgive.

Coda

Reflecting on this piece—which I wrote a few months ago—I’m reminded of the criticism Ta-Nehisi Coates received for The Message, his anti-Israel book accused of presenting a one-sided narrative without engaging dissenting views. Did I, like Coates, focus on what aligns with my discomfort while overlooking signs of progress or the nuances of modern Polish society? Was I too quick to see stereotypes while neglecting efforts at reconciliation and the diversity of Polish thought?

Perhaps my discomfort stems less from Poland itself and more from the lens I’ve brought with me. Had I sought out more contemporary voices or ventured beyond the tourist sites, maybe my impressions would have been different. I can’t help but wonder if I’m holding Poland to a higher standard because its relationship to my history feels more personal.

This post is me wrestling with all of this, and I now realize just how easy it is to tell a story that feels true enough but isn’t the whole truth.

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I attended a departmental colloquium earlier this month by the very impressive Dr. Daisy Singla, a clinical psychologist and senior research scientist at Toronto’s Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH). I loved Dr. Singla’s talk and walked away having learned something important. Though perhaps not what she intended.

New information has come to light, man.

Her talk, “Scaling up access to patient-centered psychotherapies,” focused on large-scale trials she’s run around the globe showing that non-specialists and video-conference delivery of mental health support are effective and scalable. While she talked about a few papers with samples from Uganda and Bangladesh, I want to focus on one published in Nature Medicine a few months ago.

The paper itself is impressive. It reports the results of the “Scaling up maternal mental healthcare by increasing access to treatment” (SUMMIT) trial. SUMMIT is a large, multisite randomized trial conducted across hospital networks in Canada and the United States, pulling in 1,230 pregnant or postpartum women between 2020 and 2023 who were suffering from depression.

Everyone in the trial received the same behavioral activation therapy, a brief, structured, evidence-based treatment for depression. What varied was who delivered the therapy and how. Patients were randomized to see either a specialist (licensed clinicians) or a nonspecialist (doulas, community health workers, peer supporters, or nonclinical hospital staff). These are not randos off the street, but hospital staff who have some perinatal experience but no formal mental-health training or licensure. Therapy was delivered in-person or via videoconferencing with technology like Zoom.

The nonspecialists weren’t thrown in cold. They received structured training in behavioral activation following a standardized manual that included learning basics, observation, role-play, games, and homework. After this initial workshop, they entered an eight-week supervised internship, where they delivered behavioral activation to one or two real patients from start to finish while being monitored for competence. During the trial itself, they continued to receive weekly to biweekly supervision.

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Take my goal of losing a few pounds. I’ve had the same goal for about a year now, and while I did manage to lose a few pounds before my trip to Japan last spring, I’m now back to the same weight I was pre-diet. But, if I’m honest, my plan for this goal was less of a plan and more of a vague hope. I told myself I wanted to maintain a certain weight, but after reaching it, I didn’t follow through.

Also, there’s this carrot cake from Hot Oven Bakery in my neighbourhood in Toronto that keeps calling to me at night…

(If you’ve never had their carrot cake—moist, cream cheese frosting, worth every one of its expensive dollars—don’t start now. It’s irresistible. A month ago, I spent an entire evening craving it and didn’t have a single slice. Victory!)

Contrast that with my writing. As you know, last year I set a goal to write one Substack post every week. Week in and week out, I did it. Not because I had to force my…

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Sure. All of that and a pair of spectacles.

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I don’t usually write grateful, mushy pieces. For better and worse, I’m more comfortable critiquing than celebrating. But I’m in a happy place today and I want to acknowledge and celebrate some of the people who shaped me over the years.

I’ll start at the beginning.

Avi Ben-Zeev was my PhD advisor at Brown University. Actually, he was my second advisor—my first was denied tenure. Scrambling to find someone new after realizing my first advisor’s termination would derail my entire career was no fun. But once I started working with Avi, I understood what an advisor could be. An Israeli from a working-class background, Avi got me. He gave me the freedom I n…

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As much as I love you all, I need to actually work at my real job now. This means less time for Speak Now Regret Later, which is why this newsletter is now biweekly. It’s also why, at least till the new year, I’ll be republishing older essays.

For today, I’m republishing last year’s most controversial piece: my essay on drinking culture in academia. Some of my colleagues were mad about it. But at least one person liked it—the editor at Theory and Society who invited me to submit and accepted the article. Alas, I now wonder if the editor regrets the decision, as the response online has been… mixed. Responses ranged from, “Wow this is wrong on so many levels” to “This is a fascinating article,” from “it’s shit like this that’s gonna drive me right over the edge” to “A sentiment I agree with.” One unhinged poster even demanded a retraction.

When I posted last year, it was behind a paywall, so very few of you read it. I’ve removed the paywall this time and curi…

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You are now reading the 53rd installment of this Substack, which means we just passed the one-year mark of this little corner of the internet. Happy anniversary to all those who celebrate. If you’ve been with me since the beginning, my condolences. There are over 3,000 of you now.

When I decided to start the Substack, I didn’t really know what to expect. I mean, I knew a few things: I had opinions that I wanted to share and I generally enjoy writing. But, to write a new post every week for an entire year? That seemed—and in fact was—a lot. But I had a yearlong sabbatical ahead of me and made next to no plans about what to do. So, writing a weekly Substack was my major sabbatical goal. My other goal was to start playing pickleball, and that too was gratifying, though in ways that were truly unexpected. But really, my sabbatical was mostly about writing.

My sabbatical is now done, which means that a lot more of my time will be taken up by teaching.…

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I ask because psychologists will regularly ignore data when it goes against their own intuitions and personal experiences. This is perhaps clearest when we look at the various casualties of the replication crisis—and people’s responses to these failures.

Let’s start with the topic of one of my Substack posts, stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is the idea that people from negatively stereotyped groups choke under pressure when those stereotypes become salient. So, when high-performing Black students are reminded they're Black, they feel unnerved by negative academic-ability stereotypes and supposedly underperform on academic tests. Similarly, women become anxious when faced with the stereotype that “girls aren’t good at math” and are more likely to bomb math exams. It was psychology's darling theory for explaining and remedying achievement gaps that left progressives feeling good about themselves.

When I started voicing tentative doubts about stereotype threat in a blogpost that went viral, some of the responses pushed back. I’ll never forget how a prominent African American psychology professor struggled to make sense of my doubts because she had experienced stereotype threat personally. She didn’t expand, but it’s not hard to imagine how negative stereotypes might make her feel any time she entered a room. For her, it was clear as day that stereotype threat was real no matter what the data suggested.

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A similar thing has occurred to my favourite replication crisis victim, ego depletion. You’re probably sick of me talking about it but let me quickly explain for the newbs. Ego depletion is the idea that self-control works like a fuel tank: If you use self-control in one domain, you'll have less available for another. So if you spend your morning biting your tongue while your boss acts like he’s the Malibu Police Chief, you might find yourself stress-eating butter tarts by lunch or binge-watching Love Island USA that night. For two decades, psychology got drunk on this theory and got busy spawning hundreds of studies, but then the buzz-kill data police turned the music off and told all the drunk revellers to go home.

While most revellers eventually agreed that the replication police were right, many weren't willing to say ego depletion isn't real. Even if the data aren't there, the concept is still solid. This is especially true if you water down ego depletion to mental fatigue. Everyone knows that after a full day of work, you feel tired, and certain tasks seem harder. The data say one thing, but common sense says something else.

Finally, I recently wrote about the death of implicit bias when describing a new paper on the utter and complete failure of measures of implicit bias to deliver on their vast promise. Implicit bias is the idea that many of us harbour prejudices that we are unaware of, that we cannot control, and that automatically influence our behaviour. Scholars have been trying to revive the concept of implicit bias, but this time the scholars doing the reviving are the same ones burying the corpse.

In a series of excellent papers, my buddy Bertram Gawronski makes the point that measures of implicit bias are not the same as the concept of implicit bias. Actual implicit bias occurs when people genuinely don't know their behaviour is influenced by race or gender and this is distinct from how people perform on computer tasks like the implicit association test. The data say that implicit bias is not so implicit after all, and we respond by saying our concepts were always right, it’s just that our tools are broken.

To recap, here are three hotly contested areas that have each been found wanting, empirically. Our response each and every time is that the concepts are still valid—we get tired, dummy; stereotypes influence how I feel, how dare you say otherwise; and of course we're all secretly racist, our computers are just too dumb to catch us in the act.

Can we just keep these beloved theories around without supporting data? I mean, this is not ’Nam. There are rules. So, again I ask: Does data matter in psychology?

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Here's what happened: I like to work outside on my balcony, soaking up sun before our dreaded Northern winter arrives. Occasionally this means holding Zoom calls outdoors. My neighbour, who enjoys sitting on her front porch, didn't appreciate overhearing my side of a work meeting and complained that I was being too loud. She believes her desire for quiet should trump my desire to work outdoors. One of us needs to go inside, and she thinks that should be me.

My wife agrees with her and thinks it's rude of me to have meetings outside. My wife is far wiser than I, so she's probably right. Also, I am used to being told that I am being too loud and tend to defer to my accusers. But something happened recently that made me question my assumption that I am always in the wrong when people say I am being loud. And I need your help, dear readers, to tell me if I'm the asshole here.

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Maybe you were on your couch at home watching one of the 2016 US Presidential Debates when Hilary Clinton discussed implicit bias in her debate with Donald Trump. For many psychologists like me, we’d been hearing about implicit bias—and were sick of hearing about implicit bias—for nearly two decades by then.

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I can remember precisely where I was when I learned about the measurement of these supposedly hidden prejudices. I was a PhD student at Brown University in 1998 (back when Hilary’s husband was President) sitting in my advisor’s office when she had me complete an implicit association test (IAT) on the computer. The test consisted of pictures of Black and white faces and positive and negative words, and my job was to sort out the faces by race and the words by emotional valence. What became quickly apparent to me was that I had a much tougher time pairing Black faces with positive words than Black faces with negative words. An…

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Good thing, because as a professor, I make my living giving talks. Yet anyone who's set foot in a university auditorium knows that many of us are dreadful at it. So are students. It's baffling: every university has writing centers and pedagogy workshops, but I've never seen a public speaking center. We just throw people on stage and hope for the best.

That's a shame, because this skill matters. Consider this a correction for that omission.

Fear of public speaking ranks higher than fear of death for most people, which explains why so many academics would rather hide in their labs than present their work. I know tenured professors who still break into sweats before giving talks. If you’re afraid of public sp…

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