Excellent Mindscape episode with @neddo.bsky.social and @seanmcarroll.bsky.social - recommended! With a bonus reminder of this must-read scifi story by Terry Bisson "They're made of meat".
users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSN...
And then he [sic] would feel the need to take to social media to condemn others’ failings and flaunt his martyrdom.
If chimps had diswashers:
Fitzpatrick, S. (2020). Chimpanzee normativity: Evidence and objections. Biology & Philosophy, 35(4), 45. doi.org/10.1007/s105...
Horney (1950) discussed 'the tyranny of the shoulds'. Ellis (1977) talked about 'musturbatory thinking'. I am amazed that no one seems to have used the term 'petty ought-o-crats'!
Would love to hear expert views on this paper. It appears to show that the operationalization of brain activity the field has relied on for 3 decades—the BOLD response—is not actually a sensible measure of brain activity.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The online published version. Couldn’t find a link to supplementary materials
Good taste as well as good research! Also, old 😉
Looks great, congrats. How much of a fool am I in not being able to find a way to access the supplementary materials after about 10 minutes' trying?
"AI can ... mimick"
Oliveira et al (2025). Culturally-attuned AI: Implicit learning of altruistic cultural values through inverse reinforcement learning. PLoS One, 20(12), e0337914. doi.org/10.1371/jour...
Press release: www.washington.edu/news/2025/12...
A jar of pickle beetroot:
2/10 wobble dobble
4/10 jimmy jam
My inner cynic says this has about as much construct validity as the average psychological rating scale…
A surprising diversity of dog shapes and sizes evolved long before the Victorians began making modern breeds
"In 1923, Franz Kafka encountered a distraught little girl who had lost her doll and was inconsolable. Kafka told her the doll wasn't lost but traveling the world having grand adventures! To reassure her, Kafka began delivering letters from the doll ..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvNZ...
In a strange circularity, it seems that all the work I was doing in the early 1990s on concealment/distortion of statistics by USSR & DDR is becoming very relevant now
academic.oup.com/ije/article-...
Final part of the contents page from my PhD report, in which I complain about poor conceptual specification in a major social psychological theory.
As I move into the “Recycling the last hard copy of my PhD” stage of clearing my office, it gives me pause to see just how unrelenting my malcontent and snark have been. 🤪
The image is a black-and-white cartoon showing a bull sitting on a couch in a therapist’s office, speaking to a woman therapist who is taking notes. The bull appears frustrated, gesturing with one hand. The therapist is seated across from him with a notepad in her lap. A lamp sits between them. The caption underneath reads: “I mean, I know it’s coming and I think to myself ‘hold it together, man…’ But then he waves that red cape and I just lose it!”
Silly psy cartoon for the weekend!
I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better
Modern theories of emotion (especially “interoceptive inference”) often cite William James as a key inspiration. But what did James actually say about emotion, and is it supported by the data? Here’s a brief look at the core arguments and classic evidence. 🧵
Is it “brash” to be concerned if societies foster freedom of thought or insist on the “narrow, mean, intolerable and brainless prejudice of soulless … maniacs”?
What a wonderful book review!
GiveWell sought an independent check on the evidence supporting >$1 billion it has granted to its top charities. This fall, Alex Cohen asked whether we could obtain the datasets needed to reproduce the underlying RCTs. We said yes; charging only a modest fee to cover our time.
🧵 + 🐀 + blog post!
[Blog Archive]
Excerpt from the Introduction to
Until Darwin: Science & the Origins of Race (2010)
[UNCORRECTED PROOF]
"Introduction: Ecce Homo or Slavery and Human Variety"
#UntilDarwinBibliography #HistSTM #HistSci #CharlesDarwin
A drawing of a moustach as seen from the viewpoint of the artist looking down at it
Today I learned about the empiricist's moustache. Steinmetz, G. (2004). Odious comparisons: Incommensurability, the case study, and “small N's” in sociology. Sociological theory, 22(3), 371-400. doi.org/10.1111/j.07...
I like this framing a lot. Whether intelligence is a thing, various things, a combination of things, or different things to different people, what do we mean and what are we trying to say when we use the label?
On the difficulty of inferring motivation from behaviour and the risks of inferential biases, e.g., anthropomorphism.
Arakawa, H. (2025). Interpreting mouse’s intention from analysis of prosocial behavior. Lab Animal. doi.org/10.1038/s416...
People’s ‘moral circle’ sometimes shrinks, including standardly during some stages of development.
Marshall, J., Wilks, M., Caviola, L., & Nelder, K. (2025). When development constricts our moral circle. Nature Human Behavior. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
A one page quotation, including the skeeted text
"There is also a self-righteous aspect to whistle-blowing, so that some people - even whole university departments or academic sub-fields - seem to relish challenging the integrity of the procedures and conclusions of others."
Abelson (1995/2009, p103) on #p-hacking ("fishiness") and #metascience
Since 1954, "The Handbook of Social Psychology" has been the field’s most authoritative reference work, and today is the launch of the 6th edition. Best news? The HSP is now open-access—free to read, download, and share.
the-hsp.com
