Cat Hicks on nostr

We hear about competition all day long. Win goals, win games, win business, win against the other applicant, win against the other team. I've been in a lot of workplaces where the dominant messaging...

Cat Hicks @Cat Hicks 1781451193

And the specific thing competition does to your brain, once you know about it, is hard to unsee.

We literally *stop being able to fluently access empathy* when our cognition is pointed at grouping the world into opposing sides. The more we see people as not as the complex individuals they are but as a flattened part of a rival group, the stronger these effects. The more we interpret group conflict as the stage for individual actions, the more our minds inhibit empathy.

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1781451007

We hear about competition all day long. Win goals, win games, win business, win against the other applicant, win against the other team.

I've been in a lot of workplaces where the dominant messaging about how we should all act was that competition is what delivers the sharpest knowledge work, and I'd bet a lot of you have heard this too.

But the science of group problem-solving tells a different story

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Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1781367732

Imagine you walk into a lab because you've generously agreed to participate in a psychology experiment.

It's pleasant: first you're shown a series of paintings and you indicate your preference for a certain artist, and you're told the paintings you saw were from two artists, and you mostly prefer Kandinsky over Klee. How nice!

But there's a twist.

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1781290338

It's popular to post despairing things about how we should all give up on an evidence-based future, with cures and science and medicine, in the face of how brutal this time is. I will not give up on science and my reason is simple: I married a scientist who chose to become a science teacher

https://www.fightforthehuman.com/on-science-teaching-and-science-teachers/

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1780621461

My dad: I'm buying your book

Me on the phone: I will just bring you a copy

My dad: YOU NEED A GUARANTEED SALE. I'M BUYING YOUR BOOK AND SO IS YOUR UNCLE

My uncle from the other room: you will sell two books don't turn this down

My dad: no one even buys books anymore don't turn this down

I stg 🥲🥲🥲

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1780602813

We just won our appeal.

I am going to get the treatment I need.

Now I can rest.

Then we will push to document and change this policy for everyone else.

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1780342036

I knew this would happen. It has happened in many other countries. Still heartbreaking to see it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/05/social-sciences-nsf/687380/

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1780338334

This was built long before current "AI." I had Cigna insurance and looked into this specifically. I met software engineers who worked on it. It was a system that blocked my access to care while I was struggling to breathe so I dove really deep into it. If you want to criticize data and software you need to actually be real about what it is. Don't use AI as a distraction from considering what software systems do.

Col @Col · 3w

In the US, insurance company’s use AI to deny claims in just 1.2 seconds. No exaggeration. Cigna built an algorithm that reviewed and rejected 300,000 claims in 2 months. Each in an average of 1.2 seconds of “review.” That same system gets overturned on appeal 80% of the ti Show more

Luis Villa · 3w

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpq3gsffj5ku57hmy6hjc5rx45mkgwkg8fzferr58pzkm96n3kwxayq2hpa6j Love this idea of a knowledge trace. Especially if it convinced me to make my knowledg...

Cat Hicks @Cat Hicks 1780157379

@nprofile1q... I mean. That stuff is also fun

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1780156989

In my continuing journey to share more psychological scientists with all and also sort of model how I come across and try to amplify work, here is a knowledge trace from this morning

--> I read a great paper by Dorsa Amir ( https://www.mindandculturelab.com/ ) and started following her
--> she won this award (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/2026-feb-spence-awards.html) which made me go look at all these folks' websites
--> I noticed the Brady Mind & Technology lab looked really interesting

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Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1779805110

Reading There Is No Antimemetics Division as a psychologist who studies the structure of beliefs is incredible

❤️1

Cat Hicks

@Cat Hicks 1779744279

A scientist who wrote software used across computational biology, and his thriving lab's destruction.

"his work "had been determined to be of absolutely no value to the US taxpayer, and therefore it was being specifically terminated," he recalls."

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/21/nx-s1-5828768/science-funding-cuts-nih-trump-administration

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