Grid Game: Follow-Up Questions and Debrief

Experiment participation - Will you do our 10-minute fun experiment? If you are over 18, can do the study in a computer (not phone) and want to help, we will be very grateful!!! tinyurl.com/4f9jk2yd

OSF

Unpublished 2011 results rescued from oblivion!⏳ osf.io/preprints/ps.... Effects of systematicity and frequency distribution (uniform, skewed) on artificial language learning. With Barbora Skarabela, @andrewdmsmith.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social

INTRODUCTION

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

thebullshitmachines.com

PNAS significance statement: From Imperial Rome to North Korea, religious persecution entwined with various degrees of totalitarian control has caused conflict and bloodshed for millennia. In this paper, we ask the following: Can religious persecution have repercussions long after it has ceased? Using data on the Spanish Inquisition, we show that in municipalities where the Spanish Inquisition persecuted more citizens, incomes are lower, trust is lower, and education is markedly lower than in other comparable towns and cities. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition to still matter today, but it does.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Nicely done.

Also, this is a cool paper (by @mdrelichman.bsky.social, @jvoth.bsky.social, and J Vidal-Robert). www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

Culture: Copying, Compression, and Conventionality Through cultural transmission, repeated learning by new individuals transforms cultural information, which tends to become increasingly compressible (Kirby, Cornish, & Smith, ; Smith, Tamariz, & Kirb...

I have run a version of the drawing experiment from my paper with Monica Tamariz in class before. Transmitting an abstract drawing that is covered up before drawing versus not covered up. The “from memory” version evolves to be more compressible! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Historical moment as @peetertinits.bsky.social defends his PhD, on "Cultural Evolution in Language and Art".
Opponents/discussants @garicgymro.bsky.social & Monica Tamariz turned the public defense into a very interesting discussion too!
Thesis: www.ester.ee/record=b5702...