"The organizers of the event [...] had invited to be on the panel at least 10 professors expected to take the opposite side... All of them declined, most with vague excuses but a few stating frankly that they found the event to be morally distasteful."

Almost feel like this style of dismissal deserves some kind of name, as it closely resembles the feel of how progressives have tried to discredit the HHS report (despite having two philosophers among authors with easy-to-ascertain track records of integrity).

New commentary with Nicolas Baumard in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, on Ko & Neuberg's target article: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... We argue for distinguishing two kinds of ecological input…

Beginning circa 45 mins, unimpressive attempt by guest to undermine credibility of Andy Masley as reliable info source...

🎯🔪"If the PIS-hypothesis is ontologically substantiated, we would be witnessing Freud’s revenge. For some, this is all the more reason to reject the hypothesis wholesale."

"There is much less agreement about the answers to general genetic causation questions and questions about the genetic causation of the behavioral traits Schizophrenia and (differences in) Educational Attainment"

🔪"I cannot agree with those, including a pediatrician at my university, who believe that there is such a thing as evidence-based parenting"

"Such losses and anxieties are not temporary features of the conversion period, though they may be worse during transition from a pre-pessimistic to a fully internalised pessimistic outlook."

Hello friends! Your favorite neighborhood AI professor is back with more hot takes: Pangram policing is bad for most uses. The detector can tell us something about provenance, but not whether AI use was wrong or the work is worth reading.

"At the proximate level, romantic relationships might appear more valuable to men. However, these patterns result from sex-differentiated mating strategies, risks of never reproducing, involvement in coalitionary activities, and the importance of survival for reproductive success."

"females are, on average, plausibly superior relationship partners to males, and the lesser benefits females derive from heterosexual relationships mean females are, beyond their superiority as partners, plausibly pickier than males"

"it does not matter how mainstream or fringe, or how liberal, conservative, authoritarian, or libertarian the politics or morality are; the problem is the inclusion of politics, ideology, or morality in ways that violate scientific norms and expectations"

"When we observe other people’s choices we conclude people are making them for our environment, with the knowledge we have, for the reasons we make decisions. From this perspective, other people’s choices — perfectly sensible for them — can look stupid."

"[O]ne should always be sceptical of stories that too quickly dismiss seemingly puzzling behaviour as irrational or mistaken. Instead, one should look for possible good reasons behind such behaviour."

Thanks to Claude I have a brand new website where you can scroll through my papers, talks, and podcasts, etc. Give it a look: sachaaltay.github.io :)

I use data from the World Values Survey to look at the connection between religiosity and sexual/reproductive morals both between and within countries. open.substack.com/pub/chartyar...

"Sometimes, myth matters more than fact, and as historians, we have to respect the power of a great story and see it for what it is."

"From the mismatch perspective, I come to the rather surprising conclusion that DSM is implicitly partly a vehicle of social justice, and this is the origin of some—although by no means the bulk—of its false-positive diagnoses of mental disorder."

🔪"Despite decades of scholarship on microaggressions, the main claims remain generally unsubstantiated... Although an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is also no evidence for the main claims of microaggression advocates"

"Unfortunately, microaggression [M] theory possesses a peculiar form of insulation. Scientific critiques of the theory are themselves deemed Ms & therefore interpretable as further evidence for the phenomenon. This unusual feature enables its proponents to convict its critics of 'advancing racism.'"

"Provides an up-to-date comprehensive review of the role of evolutionary theory in psychotherapy... novel treatment approaches... there is no modern textbook covering evolutionary perspectives in psychotherapy"

If only Cofnas' detractors critically engaged with his race stuff with this caliber of intellectual probity: nathancofnas.com/debate-with-...

"Is it plausible that our species has evolved to interpret plants as agentive?"

🔪"Feeling significant is not an end unto itself – it is not inherently good or bad – so creating that feeling is not functional, without further explanation of why we should understand feeling socially significant as the ultimate purpose."

😸"Steve’s Law: Boring findings and non-PC findings are more replicable than interesting or PC ones"

"I think feminists can learn a lot from hunter gatherer communities, and much of the evidence from hunter gatherer communities actually supports feminist views about the flexibility of gender roles."

Guest Post — Scholarly AI Search Shortcomings and the Need for Better Metadata scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2026/05/29/g...

🔪"A field that overweights upstream control and individual credulity, while underweighting the social and institutional conditions that make misleading claims persuasive, will design interventions that miss the deeper drivers of the problem."

Having lived a decade in one of most conservative religious parts of US before living now over a decade in one of the most solidly progressive (80 minutes north of where Huemer teaches), I tend to agree. "much more self-deceived than right-wing intellectuals (of whom there are far fewer)"

🔪"Despite decades of scholarship on microaggressions, the main claims remain generally unsubstantiated... Although an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is also no evidence for the main claims of microaggression advocates"

🎯"What often gives the illusion of manipulation is our inability to take seriously the motivations of those who do not share our goals -- particularly when they belong to less privileged groups."

The CO Symphony's performance last night of Mahler's "Resurrection" symphony was fabulous. (Is it possible that sound in Boettcher is best from way up in Ring 4?) Bruno Walter is my favorite conductor of my Mahler favorites: all of the 5th, all of the 2nd, and the 1st & 4th movements of the 9th.

🎯🔪"the same methodological rigor criticized as oppressive is often indispensable for demonstrating oppression itself... durable commitments to justice require methodologically rigorous science, that is, epistemically sound, scientifically productive, and ethically self-critical"

I link della settimana (#142) open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

"a comprehensive Critical Theory of ‘wokeness’ must present a description of the phenomenon that can convert into a normatively loaded understanding of it" degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

"These are beautiful, twinkling, tinkling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, the heroism of truthfulness,—there is something about them that makes you swell with pride." #Nietzsche

"One of my more provocative theories was called sexual economics... I got over my dislike of the un-romantic application of supply and demand pressures to sexuality, and we published the theory"

"[N]ature is not necessarily benign or progressive. Natural selection is based as much on competition as cooperation. That is why many social scientists dismiss (or do their best to ignore) evolutionary psychology."

🔪"People may already be better off simply relying on them, or even recursively outsourcing the critical evaluation... If the marginal return on judgment is low, a critic might argue, it’s wiser to spend your time on other activities"

😼🔪

Why did evolution give us menopause? And why is it only humans and a handful of whales that seem to experience it? A short piece on evolution, reproductive conflict, and the mystery of grandmothers. nicholaraihani.substack.com/p/why-did-ev...

I've updated this plot of data from @thefireorg.bsky.social on campus deplatformings and attacks on scholars (1) with complete data for 2025, (2) by changing the incidents plots to cumulative sums of incidents by year, and (3) adding the topics involved 🧪 #AcademicSky

"The therapist is not merely correcting isolated cognitive errors but engaging with a network of beliefs that includes normative assumptions about society and justice."