Robert Redbird and Cardi B

I have news! After 4 fabulous years at Northeastern, this July I will be moving to Duke—with tenure! It’s hard to convey how grateful I am to everyone who has made this possible: from old professors in Mexico and mentors in the US to students, colleagues, and, of course, my amazing wife and family.

״מאמר נקבר״ (לחן: איך שיר נולד)

Kids are #learning machines! But how do they do it? Cognitive scientist @ebonawitz.bsky.social is helping us understand how children learn to learn and what role #curiosity has to play in those processes. lynnborton.com/2026/02/05/c...

I wonder if Ixion suffers from burnout

My lab is looking to recruit 1-2 paid summer interns to do wet lab work on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus). You can apply here: forms.gle/b47WpSobjFjo...

💥New paper alert! Dyadic Decisions About Effort: How Caregivers Shape Young Children’s Persistence (with @reutshachnai.bsky.social) One of my favorites! If you’re curious about what we’ve been up to in @leonardlearnlab.bsky.social, take a look! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

it's time to Teach

(first day as a doctor) me: why are you hitting yourself? Huh? stop hitting yourself! patient: me: so yeah, it's Lupus

Who Snuggles the Snugglers

my daughter (9)'s class has been running a kid-economy for the last month, they 'earn' kid-dollars by doing tasks, and they need to pay a fee on their use of desk & school supplies, so now I get to hear her being worried about making rent at the end of the week.

What's going on in aphantasia? Balaban and I recently argued it might be 'broken rendering'; but then why do normies bother rendering anything? Monzel, Zeman & co wrote an interesting response: www.cell.com/trends/cogni... ...and this is our response response: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

I have a very firm understanding of the Illusion of Cognitive Depth

now accepted at ICLR! 🐺🥳🐺 arxiv.org/abs/2506.20666

my dog's favorite way to rest is plopping down on people's feet. it's cute but means the victim is trapped (unless they want to be the Bad Guy and wake up a poor puppy) this leads to other people being summoned to tag in as feet replacement

"suppose a spherical pigeon" "as like... an approximation of..?" "NO"

🤔

had a great time talking to the fine people at AHOI (AI+Human Objectives Initiative) at Austin, discussing loopholes and mindlessness and heading what they've been up to

I call this one, "Foreshadowing"

I wonder if in the history of editing someone intentionally made an error that accidentally got corrected that had to be pointed out, oh man that'd be sic [sick] [[sic]]

"we must imagine Sisyphus happy" - maybe you do. That's your business.

feels like this store is about to do me 2x12 hit points of damage

me, murdering sleep: "Haha zounds ay! Ay!" me, sleeping no more: "'Sblood. what devilry is this."

presenting this sequence from Poirot (1991) as a public service in case anyone needs it for something

my daughter is continuing to make these little guys, who I like Very Much

The 52nd annual meeting of the SPP will be at JHU, June 17-20 📣 Submit your work by January 16! 📣

once again being driven insane by ML conference submissions

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

academic service

(daughter and I are playing a game, she loses despite early bragging) me: oh, the hubris! D: what's hubris? me: it's like... being too proud of yourself, sort of. thinking you're better than the gods D: well... that's ok then, I don't care about the gods anyway me: bubi NO!!

a project I really like, now officially out! "Shape Guides Visual Pretense" by Qian and me paper link: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article... I'll walk through a quick version here To get a sense of it, first consider: Would it make more sense to pretend that this block is a car, or a strawberry?

staring at my son's geometry homework until I realized what it reminded me of

a project I really like, now officially out! "Shape Guides Visual Pretense" by Qian and me paper link: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article... I'll walk through a quick version here To get a sense of it, first consider: Would it make more sense to pretend that this block is a car, or a strawberry?

in 18th c England if someone stole from you it was up to you to pursue justice. The state tried to incentivize the private prosecution of thieves, offering rewards for successful conviction So, a man could make a living being a 'thief-catcher' You may or may not be surprised by what happened:

Caesar crossing the Rubicon (colorized):

הרצתי היום באוניברסיטת תל אביב, כולם מתנצלים על מזג האוויר החורפי במיוחד מזג האוויר החורפי במיוחד:

new British Museum favorite

Invited speaker lineup is out for SPP 2026! More information on the meeting here: www.socphilpsych.org/meetings.html Submissions accepted until Jan 16! Come hang in Baltimore; conference is at Johns Hopkins from June 17-20, 2026! @socphilpsych.bsky.social @joshrottman.bsky.social #SPP2026

יש מילה פשוטה לקונספט "איזה מישהו שאני עוקב אחריו"? זה מופיע יותר מדי בשיחה יומית בבית בשביל לא לקצר

screaming "NO!" as I do a U-turn

John Locke, Poster

Goal selection through the lens of subjective functions: arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948 I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.

is there a field in which it is common to cite papers in a nested way? As in, "(Cohen, 2011, as cited by Levi, 2017)"?? (I keep seeing students do this in their class papers and it is odd to me)

oOOOooooOOooooo

תודה, רבי א״י

i teach a seminar on the Imagination, that I split into 5 Acts, e.g. 'Act 1: Imagery, Scene 1: The Imagery Debate'. A nonsense challenge for myself is to find a somewhat-related quote from Shakespeare for the topic, from any play, but it has to be that Act/Scene combo