Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

Every year, many people receive antibiotics they don’t need or they take them for longer than necessary.

Be honest.

In late 2025, artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI automated the process of determining which model is best for a task.

Anyone else hate reading or grading loooong, generic, or unconvincing essays?

You may have heard me drone on and on about this thing called “reflective thinking”.

You may have heard that atheists tend to score better on reflection tests than theists?

Suppose you glance at a clock that, unbeknownst to you, is broken, showing the same time all day.

In 2002, a chapter from Kahneman and Frederick mentioned “the bat and ball problem”.

J.

I have a question for you: “If a bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total and the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

Sometimes philosophers complain that scientists do philosophy badly and that philosophers may thereby be underrated.

In this episode, I read my short paper with Morgan Thompson in WIRES Cognitive Science titled, “Testing for Implicit Bias: Values, Psychometrics, and Science Communication“.

This time I read my 2022 paper in Review of Philosophy and Psychology titled, “Great Minds Do Not Think Alike: Philosophers’ Views Predicted by Reflection, Education, Personality, and Other Demographic Differences“.

In this episode, I read one of my 2022 articles in Metaphilosophy titled, “Bounded Reflectivism & Epistemic Identity“.

On this episode, I read one of my articles from 2021 titled, “Reflective Reasoning and Philosophy” in Philosophy Compass.

Every semester I begin courses by asking students to close their eyes and imagine a philosopher doing philosophy.

Some colleagues and readers have asked about my experience with grant applications.

In 2020, I deferred a tenure track job one year to start a postdoc.

I have been considering changes to my Philosophy of Mind syllabus.

On this episode of Upon Reflection, I read my 2021 paper in Logoi titled, “On Second Thought, Libet-style Unreflective Intentions May Be Compatible With Free Will“.

Welcome to the latest episode of Upon Reflection.

I defended my doctoral dissertation in 2020—yes, remotely.

Like many academics, I’ve given dozens of academic presentations and dozens more audio and video interviews in the past few years.

The data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) has suffered for years now (Byrd, 2023; Chandler & Paolacci, 2017; Moss & Litman, 2018; Chmielewski & Kucker, 2019; Ahler et al., 2020; Kennedy et al., 2020; MacInnis et al., 2020).

Philosophers and cognitive scientists tend to think that reflective reasoning will improve our judgments and decisions.

Organizing a conference or workshop is time-consuming yet important work.

What is the source of morality?

I was on the job market in the Fall of 2019 and the Spring of 2020.

Welcome to Upon Reflection.

Why did otherwise life affirming people flout public health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Who is more likely to be killed by police officer in the US: A white person or a black person?

I’m lucky to share updates about new jobs, new projects, and what’s happening next on the blog, the podcast, and the YouTube channel.

My colleagues and I are deeply saddened about the unexpected passing of Anders Ericsson on June 17.

In this episode of Upon Reflection, I explain how academics should conference better.

In my last post, I considered whether reflective reasoning is a virtue.

A timely guest post by Katlyn Proctor Recording a conference presentation is helpful for many reasons, from wanting to share the presentation with others to having it simply to look back on and refer to.

Some philosophers think of rationality in terms of virtue.

In the wake of virus outbreaks in multiple countries, many scholars are reconsidering conference plans.

In this podcast, I read my chapter, "Causal Network Accounts of Ill-being: Depression & Digital Well-being".

I have had some side gigs in graduate school that involved creating invoices for hourly work—web development, copyediting, research assistance, etc.

Philosophers are stereotyped as studying things like, "What is a good life?"

I’m rereading James Lang’s Small Teaching (2016).

I’ll be presenting new data from a pre-registered replication at some conferences in the next few months.

A 2019 paper in the Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science found that most psychology textbooks, instructors, and students misinterpret 'statistical significance' and p values.

In this podcast episode , I’ll be reading Paul Conway’s and my recent paper about moral dilemmas entitled, “Not all who ponder count costs: Arithmetic reflection predicts utilitarian tendencies, but logical reflection predicts both deontological and utili…

Welcome to the first episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about what we think as well as how and why we think it.

Welcome to the first, introductory episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about the philosophy of cognitive science and the cognitive science of philosophy.

Below are the syllabus and materials for my Introduction to Philosophy course.

I recently attended a working retreat.

I share a 5-year-old MacBook Air with my partner.