More @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social conference talks! @babeheim.bsky.social on norm psychology, and in particular escalator standing norms in Japan

I just received my copy of the latest book by my @sfiscience.bsky.social colleague Douglas Erwin. A fascinating exploration of how innovation and novelty emerge in evolution. Looking forward to reading it. @multicellgenome.bsky.social @sfelena.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social @brigan.bsky.social

New #ecoevo paper @pnas.org: Evolution of species’ range and niche in changing environments. I show that feedback between evolutionary and population dynamics can create a tipping point where genetic variance erodes, and species’ ranges contract or fragment www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #popgen 🧬🧪 🌎

Out today in @science.org: with the amazing Haochuan Cui, Yiling Lin, & @lingfeiwu.bsky.social, we analyzed 3.6 million scientists publishing 1960–2020. The findings reshape a century-old debate about age and scientific creativity.

New paper 🚨 "Cultural evolution – of the arts". Together with @masonyoungblood.bsky.social we wrote a short paper – half essay, half bibliometric analysis – aiming to describe this emerging research area (1/3) doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Check out our (@sobchuk.bsky.social) special issue on the cultural evolution of the arts in Evolutionary Human Sciences, with papers from @mikekestemont.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social @svalver.bsky.social and more! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New paper 🚨 "Cultural evolution – of the arts". Together with @masonyoungblood.bsky.social we wrote a short paper – half essay, half bibliometric analysis – aiming to describe this emerging research area (1/3) doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

My group at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics now has a name: Cultural Evolution of the Arts! You can read a bit more about the idea behind the group at the group's web page: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/research/... And here's the obligatory door nameplate :)

A computational theory of Aha! moments! New paper explaining why Aha! moments occur & why they feel so good. TLDR: They are a form of meta-cognitive prediction errors i.e. they occur when we surprise ourselves about our own abilities! @rachitdubey.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New theme issue of #PhilTransB: The evolution of collective intelligence. Read #OA: buff.ly/f0gWUxH

Does anyone know a German labour law expert? I have a very specific question, and I'm struggling to get advice.

The call for the PhD programme in Sociology and Social Research at Trento is out, with deadline 14 May. Interested in a PhD in cultural evolution / social media / cultural analytics? Get in touch! www.unitn.it/en/phd/socio...

I would have preferred to have the "draw the rest of the owl" meme on the cover, but this will do. Seems like it is on schedule, and we'll leave some typos so you know we didn't write it with AI.

"One test, many tongues: Surveying language proficiency across the globe" out now in @pnasnexus.org A practical challenge in online experiments with global participants is testing language proficiency. We automated the generation of language tests across nearly 2,000 languages.

I've been thinking a lot about the foundations of cultural evolutionary theory. While there's been a lot of work on transmission mechanisms, there has been far less work on cultural *selection*. Here's a new working paper presenting a taxonomy of cultural selection processes. osf.io/preprints/so...

Easter EP As AI agents get smarter, are we entering a golden age of hypercreativity? Or are we entering an age of homogenised culture where we all just recycle the same AI-generated ideas? @adigitaltanay.bsky.social & Jay explore this and much more with @babeheim.bsky.social youtu.be/coQnyaEw50s

Our institute @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social starting a new Masters program with the University of Leipzig. If you are a bachelors student graduating soon, and would like to get involved with our research during you MSc, consider applying :) www.uni-leipzig.de/en/studying/...

Russians, again 🤬 Destroying everything beautiful

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Play was historically quite neglected in anthropology and archaeology. So much so that one of the most widespread games in human history has never received a systematic cross-cultural study. To amend that, we systematically compiled a dataset of 1391 spinning tops from 347 societies.

My book, MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN FICTION, comes out in six weeks!It shows how literary agents went from "cankers" to "mere peripheral necessities" to "the center of the literary establishment" to "the biggest fish in publishing." press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Monotheism has swept the world in just a few thousand years, making it one of the most important cultural innovations in human history. In this week's New Yorker, I offer an explanation for what makes it so powerful. (It's not about belief in one god.) www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Yay! This week I started working at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt as a group leader. Lots of work ahead, but super exciting kind of work 🔥

I'm intrigued by this new book. The claim that scientific discoveries are often preceded by major methodological innovations is not new. But looks like this book claims that this is *always* the case. Gotta read to find out, I guess... academic.oup.com/book/62274

Out in Evolutionary Human Sciences! With @mikekestemont.bsky.social, @jbcamps.bsky.social, @remcosleiderink.bsky.social & Anne Chao New work on unseen species models for cult heritage to the question: how many stories were _shared_ between medieval French and Dutch literature? lnkd.in/exyAWtir

Happy to see our second study testing the "drunk hypothesis" published in PNAS 🎉 After analyzing the role of alcohol in the rise of sociopolitical complexity on a global scale www.nature.com/articles/s41... we have now focused on the role of kava in Oceania www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Written English has barely changed in 300 years. If you can read Harry Potter, you can read Robinson Crusoe (1719).

On the eve of the 4th anniversary of Russia’s full-scale war, we raise the Ukrainian flag at our headquarters. So it can fly proudly at the heart of our Union, where it belongs. One day Ukraine will be safe. Ukraine will be free. Ukraine will be part of our European family.

Four years have passed since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia was supposed to win in three days. Instead, Ukraine reinvented modern warfare, built a drone industry, and can destroy a thousand Russian soldiers in a day. Ukraine can win.

“Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords kiki & bouba with spiky & round shapes, respectively...We tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby chickens. Similar to humans, they spontaneously chose a spiky shape when hearing a kiki sound & a round shape when hearing a bouba.”😲🧪

A cool opportunity to do PhD with Olivier Morin in Paris! I was supervised by Olivier in the past, and it was extremely interesting and productive. Don't miss!

Doing *robust* LLM-based annotation may be challenging. So we need more papers like this one, developing reproducible pipelines for various kinds of data royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

OK, it finally happened! My new article, "Gradience as a cognitive principle for evaluating numerical notations", is now out today in @pnas.org. By focusing on numerals' use for communication instead of arithmetic, we have a new tool to assess their efficiency. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📣 NEW! I’ve just released the BIGGEST and perhaps most creative project I’ve ever worked on! “Searching for Birds” searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com 🐤 A project, an article, an exploration that dives into the data that connects humans with birds, by looking at how we search for birds.

I will start using this comic to remind the skeptics that birds are dinosaurs

Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Demographic shifts, inter-group contact and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification. #linguistics

A colleague at MPI asked how to get better at math. My vote is Thompson and Gardner's classic *Calculus Made Easy* (originally published in 1910!) I've uploaded my own (almost complete) worked problem sets from this classic book. A few thoughts.../

A neat paper I worked on, begun over 2 years ago when our concerns were more myopic, was just published today. It came out an excellent set of workshops at the Santa Fe Institute, led by the indefatigable Joshua Garland. The gist: sometimes inefficiency is good for you www.nature.com/articles/s44...

📆 Mark your calendars: the 7th edition of CHR will take place 5–8 January 2027 in Manchester, UK, organized by the Center for Digital Humanities, Culture and Media at The University of Manchester. We hope it’s the perfect way to beat the post-Christmas and New Year blues. See you at #CHR2027!

Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗‍♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM

⚡ 16th European Summer University in Digital Humanities will happen in Besançon, from July 6 – July 18, 2026! ⚡ Save the dates; dm me for any questions; if you'd want to teach at ESU, we will open call for workshops very soon as well! previous year: esudh.github.io/esubesancon/

New paper in AI & Society w/ @hoytlong.bsky.social + @teddyroland.bsky.social! We simulated 101 "AI authors" to see how LLMs imagine creativity & cultural distinction + compared them to real historical authors. What do AI authors want & how do they pursue success? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

father: how do you spell 'elegy' me: e-l-e-g-y, but .. are you sure that's the word you're after? him: of course I'm sure. You sure that's how it's spelled? Looks wrong me: it was the major focus of my PhD, I am 💯 sure. him: OK. Well I have SMS'd the restaurant about my friend's seafood elegy. me: 🤦

Wow! My author copies arrived early for my new book from @bloomsburyling.bsky.social, Speaking in Pictures, about language, cognition, comics, and visual communication. It looks beautiful, and after working on it for 7 years I’m so glad it’s out in the world soon! www.visuallanguagelab.com/sip

🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

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

A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

I was kindly invited to talk about my research at @cudanlab.bsky.social, and here's a video of that talk. And no, it's not about Steve Jobs 😄, but about evolution of the arts – 🎸📚🎨