Thrilled to share that our new paper is now out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social: "Who knows what? Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information Search," with @oliviermorin.bsky.social , @hugoreasoning.bsky.social & @tadegquillien.bsky.social! Link: tinyurl.com/ykyhxcc6

#jobklaxon PhD Fellowships available at @psl-univ.bsky.social! Come & work w/us in CultureLab (w/ @jbcamps.bsky.social @oliviermorin.bsky.social et al not bsky). Deadline 31/05 Starting 01/10 Duration 3 yrs (fixed-term employment with benefits) Salary: sad. www.culturelab.psl.eu/en/news-cult...

PhD fellowship with Diana Mazzarella, Université de Neuchâtel, on communication & cognition. Topics: misinformation, epistemic vigilance, implicit communication, deception, figurative language. Up to 4 years. Deadline: April 13, 2026. Apply: [email protected]

A new Department of Cognitive Science is being created at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. Here is the call for a cluster hire (for around 10 faculty) in all areas of cognitive science, at both junior and senior levels: www.unibocconi.it/en/faculty-a... Deadline: May 4th, 2026

Here is a PhD fellowship in one of the best places in the world to study cognition and culture. 1. Cultural phenomenon: writing 2. Cognitive capacity: to detect what is unpredictable 3. Mission: Show how (2) drives the evolution of (1) 😲 4. Methods: you’ll eventually master some powerful ones

Join us today @cudanlab.bsky.social for a lecture & discussion with @oliviermorin.bsky.social on "The evolution of writing & well-designed languages" 16:00-18:00 Tallinn time UTC+2 🇪🇪🇪🇺🌍 (5 hours from this post). Details & zoom: cudan.tlu.ee/events/2026-...

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

Come work with us! Tallinn Uni is hiring a second lecturer in DH&AI. Estonian proficiency not required, foreign applicants welcome, required phd can be in progress (expected to be completed), competitive salary+benefits, nice working environment close to the sea candidate.recrur.com/public/jobad...

'Why monsters are dangerous', by @oliviermorin.bsky.social and @sobchuk.bsky.social

📢 CfP now open for the Computational Cultural Science Workshop (Paris, 18-19 May 2026) until 16 February. Topics of interest: *️⃣AI and cultural datasets *️⃣Theory-driven humanities research *️⃣Document-based modelling of historical and social processes *️⃣Cultural analytics 👉 c2s.sciencesconf.org

New paper with @inbalarnon.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social! Learnability pressures drive the emergence of core statistical properties of language–e.g. Zipf's laws–in an iterated sequence learning experiment, with learners’ RTs indicating sensitivity to the emerging sequence information.

Looking for a funded Ph.D. in #CogSci in an interdisciplinary, research-first program? Apply to CEU! cognitivescience.ceu.edu/admission Deadline February 4, 2026. Please share with any interested students! #PsychSciSky #DevPsych #CogPsych

One research direction of my group will be the evolution of European literature, relying on my ERC starting grant. Another direction will be the cultural evolution of films, music & other diverse artforms. I'll be hiring postdocs & PhD students starting in March 2026, so there will be job posts! 3/3

I got wonderful news: I was granted a position of Max Planck independent group leader at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics ⬇️ (@ae.mpg.de) in Frankfurt, which I'll join in early 2026. It's a huge honor: being trusted with academic freedom offered by MPG. My group will study the evolution of arts. 1/3

US song lyrics have become more negative in the last 50 years, but societal shocks (like 9/11 and COVID) corresponds to *attenuation* of this trend. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn. Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...

Today, we published a paper on the strength of language universals (if language has X, it also has Y) given spatial & phylogenetic autocorrelation in @nathumbehav.nature.com ! It is a cool research project, led by the brilliant Annemarie Verkerk at @uni-saarland.de www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉 New preprint: Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information search If someone knows that Venus is the only planet in the Solar System that rotates clockwise, will they also know what Earth’s only natural satellite is? What about which planets have no moons at all?

Interesting! Curious to know what @docteur-drey.bsky.social thinks.

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...