Notices by Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jilleduffy/116593522913243021

Setting aside whether one thinks AI is successfully automating, I disagree with this argument because automating "the mindless parts of work" has generally been really good for people. Look at studies of factory workers: those tasks are murder on your executive functioning, are very draining, and you have to be vigilant to do highly repetitive "mindless" work. It is really terrible for people and generally speaking we like complex knowledge work far more

I agree about taking breaks being good

Y'all, I've been paralyzed about something for a long time and I need to move past it. I really want to run a couple of very homegrown, self funded survey projects because I'm incredibly tired of seeing measures used in DevEx and not knowing any of the psychometric properties of those scales and how they compare to validated psychological inventories.

This is a passion project and I think it would be of service to you to see this kind of thing if you are in charge of internal DevEx surveys

This is very annoying and will absolutely distort estimates of what people believe/don't believe and what factors drive/don't drive their real-world choices

Just read a paper that included an "I trust companies..." measure in their "AI receptivity" outcome. It's becoming a textbook classic now to just bundle a BUNCH of evaluative, affect, and cognitive appraisals into something and decide it's about AI when the face validity of the items says otherwise

It's not an exaggeration to say I'm worried about ALL of our friends who do virology work, which is several because we are in a real hub for it. I know someone who has been directly attacked by vile rightwing campaigns just for working on a small piece of all the complex virology work that ultimately led to us having a covid vaccine. They become targets of years of conspiracy theories after working unbelievably hard (and with low academic pay) for all of us

https://www.science.org/content/article/virologist-accused-starting-covid-19-will-fight-u-s-ban-funding

Perhaps you have thought to yourself, *I'm* on board the Psychology of Software Teams train, but how can I subtly let others know? How can I identify fellow POST fans in the wild?? What if we need to organize around the radical notions of thriving, motivation, self-compassion and psychological safety??

Well if you find me at a 2026 conference or book reading you can get a TINY PROPAGANDA STICKER

"there is little evidence that the brain’s fundamental ability to concentrate has been impaired. This suggests that if we can shut down the distractions of our environment, it is possible to recover focus."

Inevitability and "ability decay" explanations essentially teach us learned helplessness about the things we experience, when really, we could change our environments. This is why I'm so against brain-based scare tactics.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01407-w

ugh why did I agree to do so many talks

There are two things that really bother me in tech commentary these days. First thing is the constant calling everyone else stupid, second is the saying because everyone else is stupid no positive change is possible

- joined new patient community
- immediately recruited to the Evidence War Against Insurance because I can read papers
- now providing lit reviews to fellow patients

I am grateful for the skills I have. However, it would be nice if I could spend some living and breathing moments not Doing Work. The world is so critically cut off from evidence that this is impossible for now.

My dad, who is a humanities educator whose passing awareness of tech basically stopped at "I can read email on my phone I guess but why would I even want to," valiantly asks about what I'm working on these days and I truly wish you could hear the conversations we have about software teams it's pretty delightful

I am saved from existential despair most of the time by my very silly sense of humor

I was just watching a video about the recreation of knitwear from historical patterns for the new Little House on the Prairie show and thinking about how the things that were being discussed as period clothing for that show (like calico) defined the rural American west but just a bit earlier...

I chuckled a little bit writing this story -- every single detail in it is true EXCEPT the interpretation (gene, brain) parts, these are real things I did and a way you could see me. But I never ever put those things together in that way. A different story about Cat that was more popular: Cat was always good with words, she checked out more books than any of her siblings from the library, she ceilinged out every verbal test, she's an empathy word person, she went into psychology...

Also the older you get the more you become someone that younger people ask for advice, which I find a bit scary; I try very hard to reflect that I have seen a lot of things work, and how I see a need for lots of kinds of work around me, rather than trying to pattern match on the things that *I* did

The older I get and the more psychology I do and the more I have both the privilege and pain of living through tough things (like health challenges), the more I see that my work is the complex output of so many factors, and the more I am grateful for the immense diversity of what I can bring to it

We tell a lot of stories about abstract ability, and we like to color over everything about ourselves in the shades of the traits that our roles value and that we're rewarded for. These are woven through with societally-influenced frames. Like, is the source of your skill "empathy"? or "intellect"?

An example of a story about me is: Cat was always good at logic; she's got a technical gene inside of her. As a child I used to take apart and test parts of the electric fence we had for our sheep. I didn't have access to any physics courses but that's clearly STEM-aligned. I took the LSAT for fun because I was interested in the puzzle of assessment. It completely makes sense that Cat went into statistics; it makes sense that she likes the puzzles of causal inference. Math brain is behind this

It's really easy to look back and attribute your success to things like "I got As in school and I passed that test." Those are salient memories and legible markers. But it can be more true that what actually got you here was the ability to persevere, to disengage from bad pathways, and to recover

This exact same type of story is happening across our community.

https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/brian-donovan-fighting-racism-with-genetics-education/