New Annual Review with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social: “Planning in the Brain: It's Not What You Think It Is.” We argue that the brain's 'planning' machinery is mostly used for learning from simulated experience, and that thinking prospectively at decision time is just one special case of this process.
Agreed, very well deserved! Congrats!
Phil Trans Roy Soc B theme issue ‘The evolution of collective intelligence’ is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
New preprint with Rafael Leite, Sandro Reia and Paulo Campos
Cumulative Cultural Evolution in Structured Populations
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
In which we take an old model of cumulative cultural evolution of mine and see what happens if you add social networks
Skinner’s central idea is that teaching should be treated as a domain in which we can deliberately design better learning environments. He develops the notions of a behavioral technology of education and of teaching machines as tools for organizing feedback, pacing, and practice more effectively.
📄 New preprint: The blessing and curse of Value-Shaping imitation
(by @isabellehoxha.bsky.social)
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Imitation is central to human learning: but not all imitation processes are equally adaptive. We study their computational properties using reinforcement learning models.
There is a hidden curriculum for early career scientists. In a new vlog, we bring it to light:
How to Have New Ideas (and "Oblique Strategies")
How to Network as a Scientist
How to ask for a Letter of Recommendation
The Finish Line Moves
The Long Reach of Things You Learn
How to Write an Email
Many of us are worried about AI. Many are also interested in what it can tell us about the human mind. Can we separate out our concerns and our scientific curiosity?
A topic discussed in our latest episode, w/ @glupyan.bsky.social & @mcxfrank.bsky.social!
Listen: disi.org/what-can-ai-...
On mechanisms of SLS; did you have the chance to read our paper on how reinforcement learning "selects" SLS? The model has a very broad explanatory scope (e.g., age and similarity biased SL "falls out") www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Title page for working paper: "The Varieties of Cultural Selection"
I've been thinking a lot about the foundations of cultural evolutionary theory. While there's been a lot of work on transmission mechanisms, there has been far less work on cultural *selection*. Here's a new working paper presenting a taxonomy of cultural selection processes.
osf.io/preprints/so...
🧵 I gave Claude two things: a short paper (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...) and a raw behavioural dataset with 3 lines of variable descriptions.
Then I asked it to fit three computational RL models described only by equations in the manuscript. No code, no toolbox, no guidance on the fitting procedure. 1/3
Culture was assumed to be unique to humans, but recent scientific discoveries have revealed that it's in fact widespread in the animal kingdom. This #PhilTransB issue is the first to present a comprehensive picture of the science & implications of this: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
New For the Love of Science vlog on creativity in science: How to Have New Ideas
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezVD...
Integrating behavioural experimental findings into dynamical models to inform social change interventions
How does the excitement of doing science shift as you do it more and more?
The Finish Line Moves
New For the Love of Science vlog
youtu.be/je_vgNlr0q4
New blog post: The Phylogenetics of Artifacts — inferring the evolution of cultural objects, artificial life forms, and language models.
From cat genetics to ancient myths to LLMs. 🧬 1/n
How does uncertainty transmit from one head to another? Our new paper out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social reveals how public communication alters private confidence.
w/ Einar Andreassen & @cdfrith.bsky.social
@birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social
@leverhulme.ac.uk
🧠📈
Congrats to @georgiaturner.bsky.social and you!
Recently, van der Stigchel and colleagues posted a provocative commentary suggesting that we should be wary of bots in online behavioral data collection (🧵by @cstrauch.bsky.social here: bsky.app/profile/cstr...). But should we? Here is my response letter osf.io/preprints/ps.... 1/5
How does social influence shape collective outcomes? When does it lead to lock-in on inferior options?
In our 🚨 new preprint 📝 osf.io/preprints/so... we make three contributions
w/ @alexgelas.bsky.social Alex Jochim @leostnbrk.bsky.social Peter Steiglechner & @pantelispa.bsky.social
🧵1/4
Come work with us! And get in touch with any questions you might have about the position, our labs or living/working in Germany #PostdocWanted
New preprint available about combinatorial invention!
Reconstructing Combinatorial Inventions Through Design Problem Analysis osf.io/preprints/ps...
**Postdoc position in human category learning**
@thecharleywu.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and I are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to lead a joint project on human category learning at the Centre for Cognitive Science @tuda.bsky.social.
www.career.tu-darmstadt.de/tu-darmstadt...
New preprint!!
Culture sets us apart: Cultural evolution as a solution to the challenges of social relationships osf.io/preprints/so...
Where I discuss how chatbots, washing machines, festivals and other cultural innovations offset costs, reduce friction and substitute social relationships.
We are recruiting! Postdoctoral research fellow at www.sdn-lab.org, studying the computational & neural basis of social decision-making. Birmingham is a fantastic & affordable place to live, with one of the youngest populations in Europe & over 600 parks. Please share!
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO275/p...
Why does a worse candidate win? Or an inferior song dominate?
New article with @alexgelas.bsky.social, @pantelispa.bsky.social & Gaël Le Mens.
We show that often once A becomes even slightly more popular than B, people choose A much more often.
www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Can feed algorithms shape what people think about politics? Our paper "The Political Effects of X's Feed Algorithm" is out today in Nature and answers "Yes."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In today's modeling class I had a lot of fun trying to reconduce a bunch of different models to the update rule from rescorla wagner :-)
it turns out that - at least for RL, bayesian update, kalman filters and hierarchically gaussian filters - it's "all" in the learning rate definition.
