Just out - "Art Beyond Cognition: Reframing Neanderthal art through social connectivity and cultural transmission" by Straffon & Tennie

Too bad — and in it makes sense, in hindsight, given the weaknesses of cognitive dissonance reduction as a theory. Still, on literary merits alone, When prophecy fails remains a gem of a book.

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

It is time to abandon student evaluations of teaching Comment by Gordon Hodson (@gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social) Web: go.nature.com/4jfAzXo PDF: rdcu.be/ef9y5

In this commentary, I argue that student-based teaching evaluations are problematic bc ✳️ systematic biases (e.g., racism, sexism) ✳️ poor construct validity ✳️ undermine standards and learning We should evaluate teaching as seriously as we do research. Or don't do teaching evaluations.

Your chilly sneer Of cold command Your trunkless legs Upon the sand Once awed the Persian, Turk, And Damascene A pedastal Beside your smirk Proclaims “Look up, You lazy jerk! Behold the mighty work Of great Jolene.”

Excited to see our research highlighted in @psychscience.bsky.social Observer! With @oliviermorin.bsky.social , @hugoreasoning.bsky.social , and Thomas Dheilly, we explored how people infer others’ knowledge: even from a single answer, they can estimate how much someone knows about a topic!

I feel like I've lost about 150 friends simply by complaining about Dumbar's number. It is wrong theoretically, statistically, and also emprically.

My favourite book by Mokyr is A Culture of Growth: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb.... Here, Mokyr draws on cultural evolutionary theory to develop some his key ideas about the evolution of science, technology and the origins of modern economic growth. Really accessible and packed with ideas!

Huge congratulations to @alexeykoshevoy.bsky.social l who defended his PhD thesis today!! with his co-supervisor @sblldtrch.bsky.social and jury members @simonkirby.bsky.social @gboleda.bsky.social Paula Rubio Fernandez & Benjamin Spector.

also with @kakapitan.bsky.social @sobchuk.bsky.social @artjomshl.bsky.social @hugoreasoning.bsky.social & many others

We're officially launching the new PSL CultureLab in 10 days ! If you're interested in the research of a collective bridging Computational Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Evolution, you can check our programme (and come to our event, if you're in Paris 22 September): psl.eu/agenda/collo...

Amazing Oleg!

Perfect.

🚨🚨 New preprint 📜 with Mathieu Charbonneau (@matcharbonneau.bsky.social‬): Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution (arxiv.org/abs/2508.04828). Feedback welcomed! #Evolution #Technology #Culture #OpenEnded #TechnologicalEvolution #CulturalEvolution 🧵: 1/29

I'd join the class action if I were US-based.

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

Adding AI watermark to latest paper...

We just played Hitster at a family gathering and it was a perfect example of what they found. Teams compete to guess when hit songs came out. Even though this was my extended family and we don't meet often, teams needed only two rounds before deciding whose hunches commanded respect.

one of my favorite science stories got debunked...

We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has died.

PUBLICATION I 🐻 Les ours en peluche ont-ils évolué culturellement pour devenir plus mignons ? Un projet étudiant @psl-univ.bsky.social @normalesup.bsky.social explore l'impact de la perception de la mignonnerie sur l'évolution des artefacts culturels et débouche sur une publication 👉 bit.ly/3YUZnw5

My therapist: Don’t worry, Merovingian cursive is not real, it can’t hurt you Merovingian cursive:

How are humans able to make sense of time? Not with special biology but with “time tools”—ideas, practices, and artifacts that render time more concrete. My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more. (link 👇)

$500 million is… less than 1.25% of the NIH’s 2024 budget. When I say there is no capacity to absorb the shock, I mean it.

"Literary Fiction Indicates Early Modernization in China Prior to Western Influence" sociologicalscience.com/download/vol...

A harrowing tale

"What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at midday, and three feet in the evening?" This riddle is thousands of years old, but why does it stick with us? In our new paper, we argue that the feeling of insight might explain the lasting success of some cultural products: tinyurl.com/4j756h9a

Sick of being taken advantage of by OTHER PACKAGES?! Use python package {tariff} to show those packages WHO IS BOSS. Make Reinventing The Wheel Great Again! pypi.org/project/tari...

15 positions in AI at Paris Sciences et Lettres, computational social science and ethics very much included. I believe these are four-year "fellow" positions requiring some teaching during that term. #MLSky recrutement.psl.eu/en/pnp8wd2rbs

🚨New in @science.org🚨 With Simon Townsend (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social) and Martin Surbeck, we have investigated whether wild bonobos can combine calls in complex combinations, similar to how humans combine words into sentences 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #ScienceResearch #AnimalCommunication

On the subject of, you know, all *this* I came across a poem about the end of the world crammed into the flyleaf of a 10th century manuscript. Wanna hear it? Of course you do. Buckle up. Listen, earth. Listen, edge of the great sea.

La 24ᵉédition du Forum des Sciences Cognitives aura lieu le 29 mars 2025 à l'@normalesup.bsky.social @psl-univ.bsky.social ! Le thème 👉 Cognition, Art et Créativité. Le forum sera suivi d'une soirée festive ! Programme et inscription sur fsc2025.heysummit.com. Venez découvrir les #SciencesCog !

Great PhD opportunity in the team I recently joined here in Marseille: exciting ERC-funded project on thought without language (🐝 & 🐒), amazing people, and the Mediterranean weather isn’t bad either! 😉☀️

Canada joins Horizon Europe programme

Very proud of this new paper w/ Cliodhna Hughes & Jenny Culbertson. We show people generalise silent gesture orders from the verb phrase to the prepositional phrase harmonically. This was Cliodhna’s undergraduate disseration (!) An extraordinary achievement. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The CultureLab at PSL, Paris, is recruiting a research engineer in #dh, computational social sciences and cultural evolution. We're looking for skills in data science, machine learning and programming. 4 years position. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/323661

Let's talk about this Nature piece in more detail. I've rarely read something so anti-scientific anywhere short of the National Review. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Here the Chordonomicon, a dataset of 666,000 songs with chord progressions, release date, genre, Spotify ID. I wonder if the number of songs is by chance. huggingface.co/datasets/ail...

I wrote this for my US friends and colleagues, but also for all of us. Lessons from the past. open.substack.com/pub/verakemp...

Bit of a belated post, but hopefully still new exciting news for some! We are delighted to announce that the next Cultural Evolution Society Conference will be in Rabat, Morocco, provisionally 11-13 May 2026, at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

My favourite piece of pop science in a while www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFko...

New cultural evolution modelling paper with @bdecourson.bsky.social on @pnas.org! "Weak individual preferences stabilize culture" A quick 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 New paper! 🚨 by Yoolim Kim, @helenamiton.bsky.social, Marc Allassonnière Tang, & myself, in Journal of Memory and Language. We tried to do for letter shapes what phonologists did for speech sounds. doi.org/10.1016/j.jm... A 🧵 (1/14)

Are you interested in cultural transmission, medieval manuscripts or digital humanities, and want to pursue a PhD in a city bustling with intellectual and cultural life ? Come work with us !

Join us in Durham Anthropology - we’re hiring an Assistant Prof in Anthropology of Data Science. durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Conveniently published for Valentine's Day, here's a cute study about the evolution of teddy bears we did with @hsamani.bsky.social, @edgardubourg.bsky.social, @oliviermorin.bsky.social & many others 🐻 brill.com/view/journal...

Call for 5-years research fellowships at PSL university! @psl-univ.bsky.social Join the CultureLab team to research computational social science. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o5mkp...