I’m still holding out hope that, one day, critics of Universal Grammar (and the minimalist program more broadly) actually bother to read the literature instead of blindly citing Everett ‘05 and moving on.

Exactly. Incentives matter and if we properly incentivised high level public service jobs we would have better minds vying for these positions, instead of the best graduates routinely flocking towards finance. Yeah, intrinsic value matters in a job, but less so if you're being paid 1/4 the salary

The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime. We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.

I think some people have overcorrected in their scepticism towards psychology. There is plenty of dodgy stuff out there, but I too often see people willing to burn down entire fields after reading a tweet about another non-replication. Seems obvious cognitive dissonance is a real phenom.

People are lazy--except when they're watching other people work hard. My student Emily Zohar just published her first first-authored paper, and it reveals something surprising about effort and social norms. /1 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Private Eye nailing it.

A reply to our letter (@minzlicht.bsky.social and I) questioning the need for metabolic costs to explain control induced cognitive fatigue. I worry we're talking past each other here. We're not denying that cognitive fatigue has a metabolic basis (I'm not a dualist) 1/N

Pritzker winning a million dollars at the blackjack tables is so pimp. That man has my vote for life.

Out of all the things Americans do that shock me, nothing compares to seeing people wear marathon medals more than 24 hours after the race. You would be (rightfully) excoriated for that back home.

#preprint 📢 Effort usually boosts performance - but not always. We discuss 4 domain-general factors that modulate effort-performance (de)coupling: osf.io/preprints/ps... TL;DR: A framework on when and why effort-performance links appear to change across domains, timescales & measures. 🧵

Forthcoming in JBEF: “Undefined benefit: Projections and anchors as guides to retirement decumulation” by B. R. Newell, H. Bateman, L. Dobrescu, J. Embrey, R. Nian, and S. Thorp. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Those that save adequate amounts for retirement often spend much less than they can afford once they actually retire. We investigate the effects different anchors and projections have on people's retirement spending behaviour in this new paper.

This kid is bound for Booth

300 paywall jumps for Robin's MainFT lunch with Jean-Philippe Bouchaud. Get one before someone else does. on.ft.com/3K7Or9T

i think it's probably right that a lot of the bluster from the state about cracking down on liberals and free expression belies a rather limited capacity to actually do so at scale, but 1. a lot of the chilling of free expression can be achieved just by the threat, making an example out of a

>"Free speech is being stifled by 'The Left' and we must ensure there is adequate debate on campus" > "We must simultaneously pursue the firing of professors, managers, and anyone else who dares exercise the freedoms provided them by the first amendment" www.ft.com/content/b1c5...

New paper! Different to my usual schtick concerning cognitive costs. We analysed differences in learning between depressed and healthy students and whether Pavlovian biases differed between them. We found mixed evidence... have a read! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The TiCS issue featuring our paper on "A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making" is now available online 😄 Honored to have been a part of this awesome interdisciplinary mega-collab led by Christin Schulze (UNSW Sydney) www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Online Now: Are metabolic costs needed to explain cognitive fatigue?

After scrolling Twitter, it will take you a while to get back into “work mode”. Why is this the case? Our new work (out now in Psych Review), led by Ivan Grahek and Xiamin Leng, explores the costs of adjusting cognitive control to meet different goals: psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... 🧵 A thread:

Out now, in case you prefer to read things (as I do) in journal format www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up https://theonion.com/guy-in-philosophy-class-needs-to-shut-the-fuck-up-1819568055/

It's true: This is the first project from our lab that has a "Merch" page! Get yours @ www.perceptionresearch.org/anagrams/mer...

I want everyone to close their eyes and imagine a world where AI is wildly successful in the next 5 years. Billions use it every day, governments build data centers as fast as they can, millions of lives are saved by its disease cures, and Sam Altman wins a Nobel. Imagine what OpenAI stock would do.

"the computational metaphor" in cognitive science is not a metaphor. computational processes are attributed to the mind/brain in the most dead-literal sense. one can disagree with it but (1) it's not as simple as discarding a metaphor and (2) boy is there a lot of data that has to be explained!

New letter by @minzlicht.bsky.social and I forthcoming in TiCS on whether neurometabolic costs are necessary to explain cognitive fatigue. While the origins of fatigue may turn out to be metabolic, we argue there isn’t yet sufficient evidence for such theories. osf.io/preprints/ps...

I spent the day with Curtis Yarvin and the "dissident right" at a garden party in Surrey and wrote quite a few words about it. My cover story for today’s FT Magazine on.ft.com/4ooXS4t [GIFT LINK! 🎁]

New preprint with @krefeldschwalb.bsky.social. We show that the smarter* people are, the greater the correlation between distinct estimates of their economic preferences.

OK, Ackman is obviously the world’s biggest bozo, but I fail to see how saying you inherited good genes is “eugenics”. Are these people saying that genes don’t impact behaviour, or that you don’t inherit genes from your parents?

Trader Joe's is sold out of cheese curds. Fair enough to call 911, right?

Overleaf is great. It only takes 2-3x as long as the same task in Word or docs, but you feel much smarter once you eventually debug it.

Information is a measure of uncertainty reduced. That's not an especially difficult or complex idea, but for the pros who cover him, it still seems to be too much. "He talked, but watch out because there is no information value in what he said" still eludes them. See below. Via @dceiver.bsky.social

@jakeembrey.bsky.social nice shoutout in the final keynote of Prof Ben Newell. Conference due to end, what a blast! @expsyanz.bsky.social

Happy Bloomsday Joyceans!

Big Five debunked

Wouldn’t mind seeing someone have a proper crack at the aphantasia literature too.

Such mixed feelings when the kids grow up and leave home 🥹 #TACO www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/b...

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

The EO has to be interpreted in light of the (decades long) Republican attack on science. This has nothing to do with improving science. They're using legitImate criticism from within science to (ironically) decrease the credibility of science. They then have no obligation to listen to scientists.

Online Now: A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making

New paper in TiCS out now. A big interdisciplinary effort on how cognitive costs arise and affect different stages of the decision-making process. I've reduced the entry-costs by sharing the paper in your feed!

🚨New paper alert! 🚨 I've been fascinated by this contradiction for years: we hate exerting effort, yet we value things more when they're difficult to achieve. Is the effort paradox real, illusory, or adaptive? Have a read! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Boston is such an academic city that Stroop tasks are part of the public transportation system

Labor landslide win inducing some serious homesickness

ok when he said "the best nation on earth" i did felt that www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...

i love to get up to speed on a new corner of psychology. i love to read verbatim the same opening paragraph 15 times in a row

It is increasingly the case that 'mental effort' and 'cognitive costs' are used as an explanatory aether. Without a solid theory of what constitutes these costs, saying X or Y behaviour exists due to effort is essentially meaningless

Colossal Biosciences also brought back the Thylacine!!! Omg, they are amazing!

My biggest fear in life is that I'll crash out of academia and end up in a corporate role that requires me to cringepost on LinkedIn