I'm a cognitive scientist with an interest in epistemic vigilance, and this essay that's been going around gave me pause. I don't think it's straightforward to apply the concept of epistemic vigilance to interactions with LLMs, as this essay does. 🧵/ sbgeoaiphd.github.io/rotating_the...

🚨Recrutement au CREST @crestumr.bsky.social Ingénieur de recherche CDD 3 ans support computationnel aux sciences sociales Venez rejoindre notre cellule données appui au sciences sociales computationnelles ! Fiche de poste ▶️ nextcloud.lab.groupe-genes.fr/s/XMe4EGtRfb... Candidature < 15 avril

In poverty, do people take more or less risk? Some theories contend that they avoid risk out of caution. Others that they take risks (e.g. crime) out of desperation. In our new paper in BBS, we show that they are the two sides of the same coin: the desperation threshold. Peer commentary call soon!

I'm hiring a postdoc at @cmu.edu (w/ far.ai & @dgrand.bsky.social + @gordpennycook.bsky.social)! How do LLMs shape human beliefs — and what do we do about it? AI safety meets behavioral science. Open to technical and social science backgrounds.

In this new paper, @klopfenstein.bsky.social shows that how surprising an explanation is accounts for a good share of its appeal, suggesting that surprising explanations (the aliens built the pyramids!) can be popular even if people aren't really convinced they're great explanation

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
 You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do! I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

1. After I posted my critical review of @anthrofuentes.bsky.social Sex is a Spectrum, a colleague pointed out that his figure of adult heights by sex (bottom panel👇) can't be right: there aren't that many US adults shorter than 4' or taller than 7' Turns out Fuentes' data are made up 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵

CALL: a PhD grant (3 years) to do a PhD with me at @cognitionens.bsky.social on the evolution of graphic codes. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/410213

Votre article du dimanche soir: l'invention d'un prix Nobel ou le narcissisme académique dans toute sa splendeur. Incroyable enquête de l'Est Républicain www.estrepublicain.fr/faits-divers...

@evoroseman.bsky.social and Auerbach nail the fatal flaw in the ESS: organisms somehow adapt to completely novel situations without natural selection. It's basically Intelligent Design, imo, but with the organism as the intelligent designer instead of God 🧪 #BioAnth 1/2

New paper in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... Coupling surveys of ~8% of the adult Danish population & results of 123 million covid-tests, we show that psychological feelings of coping lowered infection risk. Feelings of fear did not. Authorities should empower people, not scare them.

📢 New Paper 🚨 Hadza food-sharing is egalitarian, yet offers in giving games have never matched the equitable redistribution seen in real life. In this study, we allowed people to give *or* take. Lifelike equitable distributions only appeared when people took from peers in surplus. bit.ly/4kvLOwA

🔴 Gallicagram v2, nous voici ! 🔴 Nouvelle interface en react vachement plus stable et rapide, nouveaux corpus (Mediapart, Libé, le Parisien, Le Figaro…), recherche contextuelle, comparaisons inter-corpus, filtre rubrique, bilingue, infinite scrolling... on vous explique tout ! 📌 www.gallicagram.com

[stares directly into the camera]

Open Position: Knight Postdoctoral Fellow at Wharton School: Expertise in the quantitative study of the information ecosystem, especially news, media, and advertising. infodem.upenn.edu/wharton-post...

What is it about some stories and situations that make them more effective at evoking fear? One way to answer this is to reverse engineer the emotion of fear 😱 ➡️ A short blogpost on the HBES website about our recent article with Coltan Scrivner. www.hbes.com/engineering-...

Henry Shevlin and I discuss "misinformation", propaganda, mass gullibility, advertising, social media, and deepfakes with the great Sacha Altay (@sachaltay.bsky.social). www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l5T...

Do YOU want updates on the latest research on #factchecking AI, social media, persuasion, reasoning and #psychology of decision making? Plus additional commentary to put it all in context? Then YOU need my newsletter, which appears to weekly at the moment Today: Grok, the "anti-woke" […]

Dear friends, We at the Center for European Studies @sciencespo-cee.bsky.social are opening a position of Assistant Professor in political science, with a focus on climate transition policies. Please apply if you're super good (and not afraid to work with me ;). www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etude...

Comme promis, un texte où je persiste et signe : le film "Le mage du Kremlin" est dangereux, car il se met au service du pouvoir russe en diffusant une vision du pays exactement conforme à ce que le Kremlin veut nous faire penser. colinlebedev.fr/2026/01/22/h...

This week, we are talking to Michael Graziano about the easy problem of consciousness. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-qenxi... youtu.be/O8LEZJvkodc

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

Our Department at Aalborg University is hiring an Associate Professor in Sociology with a focus on quantitative methods: www.stillinger.aau.dk/videnskabeli...

New longitudinal study finds no evidence that either #videogames nor #socialmedia use lead to later mental health issues in youth. I look forward to the extensive news media coverage this receives: academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/a...

“Our findings tell us that young people’s choices around social media and gaming may be shaped by how they’re feeling but not necessarily the other way around,” said Prof Neil Humphrey, a co-author [of a Manchester University study that followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years].

There’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it. We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics. What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.

Our new paper in Hunter-Gatherer Research! We explored women’s decision-making power within households in two subsistence communities with different gender norms (BaYaka foragers & Bandongo fisher-farmers) in the Congolese rainforest ✨ www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

How appealing an explanation is, is only in part down to how well it actually *explains*, research by klopfenstein.bsky.social & @hugoreasoning.bsky.social suggests. Usefulness and surprisingness matter too, the latter especially explaining why poor explanations become popular: buff.ly/NaSAlaJ

Fast and slow insight. New paper with @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social showing that good convergent thinking is driven by sound intuitions. Modelling work links this to a denser semantic memory structure among good intuitors.

Interesting megastudy on the (in)effectiveness of climate messaging: tiny effects on attitudes, no effects on donation www.nature.com/articles/s41... "Persuasiveness varied little across party lines", another win for Persuasion in Parallel @aecoppock.bsky.social

The Kinsley gaffe to end all Kinsley gaffes

This week, we talk to Léo Fetuchi about the moralization of self-control and the lack thereof. youtu.be/duLUU9e0i0k podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-99f5i...

🚨Excited to share our new paper published in PNAS (joint with @yamilrvelez.bsky.social and Don Green)! AI can enhance political knowledge and provide balanced information about politics with proper guardrails and vetted sources (e.g., party platforms). www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

"misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization, and [...] is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology" royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Why do humans have linguistic intuition? And why should you care? A short thread about my new paper in @cadlin.bsky.social This work has the most original insight I've ever had, a genuinely new idea about the nature of language cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca... 1/20

Woah. Argentina's 1990s preschool expansion program appears to have been a smashing success. The program increased high school completion by a whole 11.9 percentage points. The authors estimate that for every $1 spent, the preschool expansion generated about $11 in benefits.

Excellent job opportunity: Full professorship in Digital Society and Democracy @ddc-sdu.bsky.social and @d-ias.bsky.social. Top conditions, environment & colleagues. Candidates welcome across places and disciplines. 🗓️ DL: March 15, 2026 fa-eosd-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

🌟 JOB ALERT! 🌟 I’m hiring 1 postdoc for my ERC project ECONENGAGE (@ Gothenburg 🇸🇪)! Starting ca. Aug '26! Congenial colleagues + int'l & supportive environment. 💸 for conferences + workshops! Lots of professional networking opportunities with scholars! Deadline Jan 7th. Apply! (see more below 🧵)

The "smartphones/social media" discourse suffers from some amazing historical amnesia. There was no 2008 financial crisis and no global pandemic starting in 2020, it's all SCREENS SCREENS SCREENS. Major world events? Just the backdrop against which SCREENS happened.

New paper out in @science.org! We unveil the online manipulation market with the Cambridge Online Trust & Safety Index (COTSI). We show in real time the cost of purchasing fake accounts across every social platform around the world - so they can be held accountable www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New! We worked with the Public Interest Research Group to test a bunch of LLM-driven toys ahead of the Christmas. That sexual talking teddy bear wasn't a one-off; it turns out disturbing behavior is deeply built into these toys across the board.

It's out!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Big thank you to my coauthors @small-schulz.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, and to all participants who discussed 20 political issues over 4 weeks in 6 subreddit, 3 experimental conditions and let us observe.

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow to work with an interdisciplinary team (me, @bstewart.bsky.social, and @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social). Link: puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app... Please apply by THIS SUNDAY, Dec. 14!

This week, we talk to @hugoreasoning.bsky.social about all things "epistemic". Are we gullible and prone to misinformation? Are we vigilant in favor of our interests? Enjoy the wide-ranging conversation! www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wphps... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... youtu.be/nf42LNg6y-A

🚨 3-Year Postdoc in Political Science at Aarhus University 🚨 I’m seeking to recruit a postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu research project 𝑬𝑸𝑼𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑩𝑹𝑰𝑼𝑴 on state-citizen interactions. Link and more information in second post. Position Start: Fall 2026 Application Deadline: ‼️ February 5, 2026, 23:59 CET ‼️

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪