@sebastiandieguez
Cognition, neuroscience, belief, fiction. Author: Total bullshit (2018), Le Complotisme: cognition, culture, société (2021), Croiver (2022), L’Expertise sans peine (2023), La Force de nos bugs (2023) https://sites.google.com/view/sebastian-dieguez/home
Nice overview of various approaches to conceptualizing how people decide whether a claim can be considered true and if so, how (e.g., correspondence, coherence, pragmatism). I'd be excited to see these researchers intersect with the epistemic cognition literature. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky
🎉 New publication 😍 The 4th wave of the #farright is marked by #mainstreaming & #normalisation - but how can we distinguish between them? In our new article, @gefjonoff.bsky.social and I map the existing literature, introduce a conceptual framework & outline research avenues. doi.org/10.1017/S147...
The early bird gets the worm, or in my case, finds a minute to update my reading guide on the role of theory in cognitive science: All the amazing suggestions that the Bluesky community have given me are now incorporated. Enjoy🪱🐤 docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Ha! The original Lancet article on the dangers of reading in bed is here: doi.org/10.1016/S014...
Cette réflexion nous ramène au concept de "croivance" élaboré par le chercheur @sebastiandieguez.bsky.social : certaines croyances ne s'ancrent pas dans le réel.
Elles servent à divertir, à renforcer un lien social ou une réputation.
New and free online: @msgjonhere.bsky.social
& my edited collection of essays on belief with Oxford University Press:
academic.oup.com/book/62410
Table of Contents in thread
Relación entre creencias paranormales en ideologías de ultraderecha 👇👇
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
When we see something that's moving, our memories about it end up projected forward in time: We remember it further along than it was. In a new paper in 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, out today and led by @dillonplunkett.bsky.social, we demonstrate that this happens even when there is 𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙤𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧.🧵
“Davidson…says that Bafta and the BBC ‘should have been aware of what to expect’ from TS, and that he had been told that any offensive words would be removed.”
Davidson has reached out to apologize to Michael Jordan, Delroy Lindo, and others and says he felt “a wave of shame” over the incidents.
A new preprint, co-authored with @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social:
The Deliberation Taboo
Cognitive science is, nominally, the science of thinking. We argue that the field has no theory of what thinking is and, even worse, that the topic has largely dropped out of focus. 1/
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Painting of the Port Royal Monastery
On today's new episode we tackle the Port-Royal Logic, the most influential philosophy textbook of early modern Europe, which combines ideas from Descartes with scholasticism:
www.historyofphilosophy.net/port-royal-l...
#logic #podcast #philsky #philosophy #podcast #earlymodern #hopwag
![Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v6qwaqo24zfrq5fj7ceibxqk/bafkreigaspshdrleahxzyp6b6rjodus6gk4zcoaw77smu7olklmbshdx74)
Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.
main fig from the paper showing the association between bouba/round and kiki/spiky in newborn chicks
the new paper on bouba/kiki in chicks is utterly compelling
canonical, elegant method from comparative cogsci & its partner in developmental science, ultra-simple design, ultra-clear effects, no need for fancy analyses, machine learning, or AI
it appeared in an appropriately badass venue (Science)
Screenshot of the title page of an article published in the journal "Developmental Psychology" titled: "“Let Me Show Why You Are Wrong”: The Origins of Scientific Argumentation, Its Development, and Cognitive Predictors."
Can very young children craft a strong scientific counterargument using evidence and causal language? Yes! Teachers can help develop this skill by asking students to explore and refute multiple alternative explanations. doi.org/10.1037/dev0... #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky
Book cover. A silhouette of a person's head filled with colorful geometric shapes—perhaps symbolizing cognitive resources or deployment thereof. The style is attractive and modern, if generic. text: The Rational Use of Cognitive Resources Falk Lieder, Frederick Callaway, Thomas L. Griffithts
I'm excited to announce that I had my first (co-authored) book published today! "The Rational Use of Cognitive Resources" with Falk Lieder and Tom Griffiths (@cocoscilab.bsky.social ). You can read it for free! (see thread)
Share-Pic Palantir English.png
Palantir Technologies is suing Republik Magazine over an investigation into Palantir’s activities in Switzerland, published in December 2025. The lawsuit demands a counterstatement and is currently being heard by the Zurich Commercial Court.
Link in comments. #palantir #freemedia
The Project 2025 author is using millions of dollars in USAID money for his own security detail.
It is estimated that 762,000 people have *already died* as a result of Elon Musk and Russell Vought’s obscene murder of USAID, including more than 500,000 children.
Vought is a mass murderer.
Finally out!
TLDR: People don't feel shit cause they believe wild conspiracy theories, they believe CTs cause they feel shit. CT beliefs are often confabulations explaining their existential predicament. I drew on LOTS empirical stuff to try & make this defeasible:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Goodwin responded: "Yeah, actually there are a couple of papers on that Jordan, I'm sure you've seen, I think Cory Clark. I've read a couple I think showing basically the feminisation of higher education over the last 50 years." • Matt Goodwin and Nigel Farage attend an election campaign event in Manchester earlier this month. Photograph: Adam Vaughan/EPA A Reform spokesperson said the two men "were discussing peer-reviewed academic studies showing clear psychological differences between men and women, which influence their views of cancel culture"
Oh yay, evolutionary psychology now being cited by the UK’s far right party to justify their Handmaid’s Tale vision of the future
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Palantir is suing the #Swiss magazine "Republik" following a two-part investigative report published in December 2025.
The Swiss journal's articles detailed how #Palantir was actively trying to influence Swiss politics, federal authorities and the Swiss army.
www.republik.ch/2025/12/08/w...
Imagine, tu écris un livre et le type qui te fait la préface plagie en fait quelqu’un d’autre…
Abstract of the paper
Figure 1 - experimental setup
Figure 2 - accuracy over time
Figure 3 - semantic similarity within/across games
I always thought preschoolers were too egocentric to do well on communication tasks where they had to talk about novel referents. Old papers reported they'd say stuff like "this one looks like my uncle's hat."
@vboyce.bsky.social shows that this is wrong!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
❗❗ PALANTIR IS SUING US❗❗ Because of our reporting on the #SwissPalantirFiles.
More specifically, #Palantir is suing #RepublikMagazine, with whom we (@adfichter.bsky.social, Lorenz Naegeli, Jennifer Steiner,Balz Oertli & me) published our major investigation in collab with #WAVRecherchekollektiv
On avait tenté un feuilleton de super-héros suisse dans Vigousse il y a quelque temps (les Admissibles contre les Mésavenants). J’étais assez fier d’avoir inventé la Créature du Trou de Tolochenaz…
« Avant d’agir, il négocie un compromis, formule un contre-projet puis demande l’avis de son peuple. »
Un super-héros neutre, c’était effectivement pas gagné.
Very happy to see "Pretending not to know reveals a capacity for model-based self-simulation", a collaboration with @chazfirestone.bsky.social and @ianbphillips.bsky.social, out in Psych. Science!
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177...
🧵
À quoi bon être milliardaire quand on a une écharpe aussi géniale?
free video for intro lectures on auditory perception
"The Self-Evidencing Agent" - my new book - is out now with @mitpress.bsky.social
Can be purchased, or just download the whole thing for free, via the 'Open Access' option.
I'm grateful to @anilseth.bsky.social and Karl Friston for the generous endorsements.
mitpress.mit.edu/978026255389...
Older adults do well at identifying misinformation, but they’re also likelier than younger adults to like & share it online.
Why? Older adults have stronger tendency to seek out & believe information that supports pre-existing views while avoiding conflicting data news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
