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Dentro de nuestra colaboración con la Fundación COTEC al cargo de su Laboratorio de Economía del Comportamiento (LEC COTEC), este año llevamos a cabo un experimento sobre cambio climático durante su gala de presentación del informe anual sobre innovación. Los resultados del experimento se recogen en este informe que acaba de publicar COTEC, y muestran que queda mucho por hacer en cuanto a concienciación de la necesidad de abordar a nivel personal la emergencia climática. La idea del experimento era muy sencilla: cada participante recibía 100 papeletas virtuales para participar en un sorteo de un premio en metálico de 4000 euros. El premio es mucho mayor de lo que se acostumbra a utilizar en experimentos sobre comportamiento, pero el tipo de participante lo exigía: "La Gala" reúne a lo más granado del ecosistema de innovación español, desde representantes del gobierno central, gobiernos autonómicos y locales hasta CEOs de empresas y entidades financieras, por lo que el premio tiene que ser una cantidad significativa en este entorno. La clave del experimento es que para que se haga el sorteo el conjunto de los participantes tienen que donar el 70% de todas las papeletas, es decir, si redondeando había unos 600 participantes, en total se han distribuido 600*100=60 000 papeletas, y de ellas tienen que destinarse a mitigar la huella de carbono del evento el 70%, 42 000 papeletas. Obviamente, si cada persona dona 70 de sus papeletas se alcanza el objetivo, pero siempre está la tentación de quedarse con más papeletas para tener más opciones de ganar el premio. Y eso es lo que pasó: no se realizó el sorteo porque sólo se donaron el 61% de las papeletas, y no se pudo compensar la huella de carbono del evento. Esto son realmente malas noticias, porque de un público educado y de alto nivel adquisitivo uno esperaría más colaboración, pero la realidad es tozuda y la vida es como es. Por eso, claramente, es necesario seguir trabajando para entender como promover un comportamiento personal más acorde con la situación de emergencia climática que vivimos.
Además del informe que hemos elaborado con COTEC, podéis ver un resumen del experimento en este video, que es demoledor.

Last Friday I left twitter for good. I've been ruminating about it since Elon Musk took it over, but last week I realized that it was becoming increasingly boring and useless (from the scientific point of view, which I have valued a lot in the last few years). I noticed that more and more I was clicking on the trends because I did not find much worth reading in my timeline. And clicking on trending topics was leading me, invariably, to getting angrier and less focused on the things I like. So I said to myself, that does it; I'm not remaining here producing money for this jerk and putting my mental health in danger. And finally on Friday I deactivated my account and I'm never coming back. I'll miss many people from there, and I'll sure miss info on science I like and/or that overlaps with my own research, but I simply can't take it anymore. It was good while it lasted. Now it's time to move on.

If anyone is interested, I'm now in Mastodon: @anxosan@datasci.social. Will be using it only for research purposes.

I am updating some of the contents of the page and I have realized that my last news post is from May last year, so nine months ago. Frankly, I've been a little bit busy, and I'm afraid that not posting is a consequence of that. The busiest period was September through December, in which I had to teach Linear Algebra for undergrads in Biomedical Engineering, Foundations of Computational Social Science in the Master on Computational Social Science, and Foundations of Complex Systems for Sustainability and Governance in the Master on Sustainable Development and Global Governance. Teaching two new courses at the same time proved to be rather demanding (plus I had to conmute between campuses). So no wonder I didn't write anything. But reviewing these last months I did a few things more:

  • Got 14 papers published or accepted (last one I reported here was this one, I must write about all these new ones). You can check my publications page
  • Submitted another four papers, and worked on seven more to be submitted soon
  • Run an experiment in the COTEC annual gala showing, once again, that mitigating climate change is going to be very difficult (summary video here)
  • Also for COTEC, I collaborated on a study of teachers' biases in primary and secondary education
  • Presented the inaugural lecture at CCS2022 (aside from talking at one of the satellites and participating in a round table for young researchers)
  • Was an invited speaker at a conference on social norms in Stockholm
  • Finished supervising Juan Ozaita's Ph D thesis
  • Worked on a proposal for a new degree on Applied Mathematics at UC3M, which was approved in principle and which we are now defining in detail
  • Worked with Pilar Guerrero and Alberto Antonioni on a grant application for the Spanish Research Agency with them as PIs
  • Run three surveys in schools to get more data on social relationships
  • Worked on the design of three new behavioral experiments
  • Evaluated proposals for the European Commission and for the Galician Research Agency
  • Done an inordinate amount of bureaucracy for the most ridiculous things
  • Went to Naples, Bueu (Galicia) and Burgos on holidays in summer

After reviewing my activities, and I am afraid I can't claim the above list is exhaustive (we also had our apartment painted, meaning two weeks of chaos, for instance), I have to say I don't feel very guilty for not having posted in nine months. That being said, I do want to post more often, about my research mostly, so please stay tuned.