1/🧵 Out today in @frontiersin.bsky.social : “Consciousness science: where are we, where are we going, and what if we get there?” By @axc.bsky.social @liadmudrik.bsky.social, & me (a CIFAR & @erc.europa.eu production 🧠). www.frontiersin.org/journals/sci...

Beliefs about one's own beliefs in chimpanzees. Five experiments have demonstrated that chimpanzees evaluate their beliefs based on evidence and the source of that evidence (by epistemic defeat). Language is not needed for any of this. (paper) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Does biology play dice? by @elisecutts.bsky.social Some thoughts on nature, nurture, and chance in development www.reviewertoo.com/does-biology... Yes it sure does, is the answer! 🎲🎲👋

Ada Lovelace, first AI denigrator

Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

Excellent and insightful critique of the recent "Definition of AGI" paper, from @philipcball.bsky.social philipball86.substack.com/p/can-we-fin...

I said it before and I'll say it again: Cognition is rhythmic Contents of visual predictions oscillate at alpha frequencies www.jneurosci.org/content/earl... #neuroscience

Good news: carbon intensity has declined Bad news: carbon emissions increased, due to the rapid rise in world GDP Also bad news: the chance of staying below 2°C remained low, at 17% Better news: chance of going above 3°C has gone down substantially, from 26% to 9%

1/5 Birds around the world use the same alarm call to warn of the presence of brood parasites. They studied 21 species from nine families that were separated by 50 million years of evolution. Perhaps the most interesting finding: the alarm call is learned. (paper) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/4 Psilocybin has evolved twice in fungi The process by which it occurs in the genus Psilocybe is completely different from that in Inocybe. The most interesting thing is that both genera have very different ecological niches. (paper) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone? Our new preprint, led by @anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

Evidence that even when LLMs produce similar results to humans, they “rely on lexical associations and statistical priors rather than contextual reasoning or normative criteria. We term this divergence epistemia: the illusion of knowledge emerging when surface plausibility replaces verification”

📣 You can now check the #CRSy25 ⚪ programme! Explore the main themes: 🔎 Scaling up ➰ Cybernetic Loops 🤖Models and Robots 🎟️ symposium.fchampalimaud.science/registration-1 👉 symposium.fchampalimaud.science/programme 🗓️15-17 October 📍Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon @protocollabs.bsky.social

My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell

Can general artificial intelligence emerge by not following the evolution of complex brains? In this 2022 paper with @brigan.bsky.social we argued that embodiment, mind reading (mirror systems), mental time traveling... are necessary conditions www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24... @anilseth.bsky.social

Finally out: our recent work with Nick Betley is a view into how the brain reshapes its behavior in the face of competing survival needs- and also a potential angle on treatment targets for enduring pain. A brief rundown... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do AI reasoning models abstract and reason like humans? New paper on this from my group: arxiv.org/abs/2510.02125 🧵 1/10

Robot personhood/rights is conceptually bogus and legally puts more power/rights in the hands of those that develop and deploy robots/AI systems firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

This is an awe-inspiring and fascinating study that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. However, the overall framing in terms of "innate versus learned” is unnecessary. The innate versus acquired dichotomy is outdated and has been for a long time. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 Is consciousness tied to biological brains? Neuro&Philo Salon present+discussion with @anilseth.bsky.social of his BBS target paper! October 23, noon USA eastern #neuroskyence Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... doi.org/10.1017/S014...

It is often argued that the origin of life must be related to "phase transitions" This concept is often misused, or even abused. In a new paper with @ricardsole.bsky.social we discuss which types of transitions might be involved and some relevant models. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Delighted that our paper on 'Delegation to AI can increase dishonest behaviour' is featured today on the cover of @nature.com Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In honor of the 75th anniversary of the Turing test, I'm re-upping my short essay, "The Turing Test and our shifting conceptions of intelligence". www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This one looks intriguing. Arousal "embedding" whole-brain dynamics. 🤯 #neuroskyence #compneurosky doi.org/10.1038/s415...

@pessoabrain.bsky.social talks to @wiringthebrain.bsky.social, @aliyarumana.bsky.social and Peter Ulric Tse about the need for neuroscience’s traditional mechanistic framework to give way to a richer understanding of how brains generate behavior. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Iberian harvester ants are the only known organism that propagates two species by itself, according to new research. Learn more: https://scim.ag/47sVFyS

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

Reposting to hopefully get this in the feeds of fellow science journalists 🧪 Hats off to the responsible people down in the trenches doing the hard work of debunking all the nonsense about autism that's been pouring out of the gate to hell that RFK Jr. opened up in his office.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

has a little cry about this — solidarity with Ireland-based comrades 🥰

Why do societies reliably develop strikingly similar traditions like dance songs, hero stories, shamanism & justice institutions? In a new BBS target article, I propose a theory for such "super-attractors" + cultural evolution more broadly. Now open for commentary: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Consciousness needs a subject osf.io/preprints/ps... - new preprint with Carolyn Dicey Jennings @cdj.bsky.social (commentary on Anil Seth's BBS piece)

It was an exciting journey led by Sergi! 😃 Here a thread you can find out how the diversification process in arcade games follows the principles of macroevolution and metabolic allometry: including "hat-like pattern" of diversity change and persistence of the 'living fossils'👇 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

Statements like "X% of trait Y of an individual can be attributed to their genetic makeup" promote fundamental misconceptions about the nature of genetic effects. Here's one of my prior short threads explaining the issue:

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝘁, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? What are the most developed frameworks of the brain basis of motivation? Older ideas, new ideas, etc. #neuroskyence

🤔 How can we study #consciousness between people, at the social level? 🧠✨ New #preprint co-led by Anne Monnier & Lena Adel: “Now is the Time: Operationalizing Generative Neurophenomenology through Interpersonal Methods” 🧵(1/3)

Is it possible to go from spikes to rates without averaging? We show how to exactly map recurrent spiking networks into recurrent rate networks, with the same number of neurons. No temporal or spatial averaging needed! Presented at Gatsby Neural Dynamics Workshop, London.

🚨 New, short article by myself, Clark Barrett and @kevinlala.bsky.social on the legacy of Wilson's 'Sociobiology: The New Synthesis', which was published 50 years ago. @science.org #ehbea #histbiol #evobio #psyscisky Revisiting the human sociobiology debate |Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨Out in PNAS🚨 with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire. Our computational cognitive model explains why! Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7 News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu 🧵

Big cities are vibrant hubs of culture, but why exactly is that? Now out in @natcomms.nature.com, we analysed music listening patterns of over 2.5 million people and demographics to examine mechanisms driving cultural diversity. With @researchdeezer.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social Highlights ⬇

Human embryo editing against disease is unsafe and unproven - despite rosy predictions pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39779987/ - with @hankgreely.bsky.social and @shaicarmi.bsky.social

The Myth of the Designer Baby A genomics firm saying they can help parents with “genetic optimization” of their embryos is tone-deaf Silicon Valley marketing trampling over legitimate science. Parents should be wary. www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-... (h/t @justincaouette.bsky.social)

This is intetresting, paper argues that dopamine also encodes "action prediction errors", i.e. differences between actions you predict you will make and actions you do, regardless of reward. Could be used to reinforce habits for repetitive voluntary behaviours: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈 🧪

A few years ago, with @tyrellturing.bsky.social @patrickmineault.bsky.social and others, we showed one single objective (prediction) was sufficient for explaining specialized pathways of mouse visual cortex: tinyurl.com/2vsjbve7 Super cool to see the same observation now for human visual cortex.

🧠 NEW PREPRINT Many-Two-One: Diverse Representations Across Visual Pathways Emerge from A Single Objective www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My paper on the history of biological organization was accepted at HOPOS! The paper looks at organicist efforts in the first half of the 20th century to elevate organization in biology as a central practical and theoretical notion. #hpbio #philbio #histbio www.researchgate.net/publication/...

It's just a “swarm of fish" following a duck.

Boiling here at home in Cyprus but I put the finishing touches a couple of days ago on this preprint: What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean? doi.org/10.48550/arX... Wherein I analyse HCAI & demonstrate through 3 triplets my new tripartite definition of AI (Table 1) that properly centres the human. 1/n

This is very impressive work, but I find it weird that there's no mention of the ecology of these primates in your paper. My gut prediction from your premise aligns with your findings, but I suspect that ecological niche would be an even stronger predictor than either phylogeny or brain morphology.