@ThinkLab

Better public discourse. Thinklab creates incentives for truth through a unique model of funding public discourse.

Joined May 2014
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If democracy is a conversation, then what happened when the conversation moved onto social media platforms designed to maximize "engagement"? Increased polarization, which is a major threat to liberal democracies.
Jay Van Bavel, PhD
@jayvanbavel14 Dec 2025
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008. Both profoundly changed the way humans communicate and this rise of connectivity may have fueled polarization. Adding a small number of individuals with extreme opinions (influencers) also drives continuous increases in polarization. Once polarization occurs as a consequence of increasing connectivity, it can not simply be undone by reversing to previous connectivity levels. This may be why social media removal studies have very modest effects on polarization. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.25…
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New ThinkLab website. Focused on creating incentives for better public discourse: thinklab.com/
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Replying to @WendyDent @LMDalsgaard
Hi Wendy, apologies, it's an automated system that attempts to identify the Twitter users associated with articles. There is much room for improvement.
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Replying to @ThinkLab @IDoubtIt @Metamagician
The algo cannot tell the difference between following someone out of respect.. or following someone because they are the president
Replying to @IDoubtIt @Metamagician
Thanks, we have to manually remove bots and non-person accounts.
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Appreciate civil, rational, intellectually honest conversation? @Thinklab invites you to The New Political Center: thinklab.com/c/the-new-polit…
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Replying to @jspaulding @schneiderleonid @CameronNeylon
Open Science is just one of our communities/channels. Thinklab intends to amplify expertise. So.. not just a list of people in open science.
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The top 50 thought leaders in cancer research: thinklab.com/c/cancer-resear… (Follow this account for retweets of aggregated top stories)
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Project Rephetio predicts the efficacy of 209,168 compound–disease pairs (thinklab.com/d/203 & docs.zoho.com/sheet/publishe…) #FeedbackWanted
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Replying to @allen_ai
@allenai_org Great work with Semantic Scholar! @thinklab would love to help you with open collaborative research thinklab.com
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Should scientists be paid to openly share ideas on the Internet? (Thinklab just paid out $2,557!) thinklab.com/blog/should-sci…
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Replying to @parkerorg
@parkerorg Thinklab would love to work with you to encourage real-time open collaborative science: thinklab.com
#OpenSciencePrize proposal with @jetbrains_mps now on @thinklab thinklab.com/p/LWT_FOR_OPEN_…
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Replying to @FabienCampagne
@FabienCampagne Thank you!
Replying to @FabienCampagne
@FabienCampagne And thanks for reporting this. We will work to correct the problem.
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Replying to @FabienCampagne
@FabienCampagne Our sincere apologies. If you'd like please email your proposal to [email protected] and we will take care of it for you
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Replying to @AndruisOnchain
@Protohedgehog Thanks Jon! Glad to have you :)
Stub of a (late) idea for the #openscienceprize accessible on @thinklab thinklab.com/p/EdgeProject/i… would appreciate any feedback.
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Has our scientific system been optimized by an evolutionary process? thinklab.com/discussion/has-… #openscienceprize
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