A few weeks ago a paper was promoted on bsky that was about measures of fitness in ABMs? Or evo models generally? Does anyone recall, and can provide a link?

This is an incredibly good statement from the University of Ghent philosophy and moral science department on the hiring of Nathan Cofnas. So good I'd shrivel up and die if my home department wrote something like this about me

I've got about 4 days in Dublin coming up. Any recommendations for things to see and do? I'm based around UCD, though don't plan on renting a car (tho if the right suggestion is made, I'd consider a day trip!).

GREG DAVIES: seems like a kind of a shit task. Everyone just seems like they're going home normally. ALEX HORNE: well before you say that let's have a look at how Odysseus did. cut to panel of AJAX, MENELAUS, AGAMEMNON, and DIOMEDES who are all staring at ODYSSEUS with his head in his hands

so, this is deeply, deeply horrifying thedreydossier.substack.com/p/i-found-a-...

Friday night. Partner and I getting take out. What to watch? Mazes and Monsters (1982) Tremors(1990) Street Fighter (1994) Pitch Black (2000) Gentlemen Broncos (2009)

Wow. I'd also bet a large sum this is almost exclusively LLM produced.

I'm not a serious gamer, but a new form of currency? Keep shooting and arresting! It'll double and double again!

Americans think British people are wimps for complaining about the heat. But what you don't realise is that most British houses were actually built in Britain, a cursed island that hates us.

Rise of The Machines

Can you imagine that this is what your career is worth. The small hill you've cultivated from an empty landscape, an intellectual kingdom, the thing that will be on your tombstone. The necessarily fearless study of *...checks notes...* legs being wide apart.

"Pratchett's politics are not easy to pin down" !!?? You what? Reg the zombie is your example of lefty excess?! Atlantic-brained stuff.

Geniune question: What is an ending (in this context)? What is it that folks like this actually want? What will it give that can't already be derived from the 1.7 million words already available? There's no ground truth in fiction. There are no consequences. What can be gain above-and-beyond!??!

huh, the phrase 'to hone in' is younger than the phrase 'to home in'. Would have put money on the opposite being true.

Five out of five were LLM submissions. Not even ambiguous "I used it to polish my text". Just straight-up copy and paste efforts.

Gets coffee. Sits down. Open Ultra/Blackboard. Opens marksheet. First script: the most painfully obvious LLM puffery possible. ...I see, it's going to be one of those days.

CEs Job Alert 🚨! 4-year teaching focused lecturership at Bristol in bio/evo anthropology with a quantitative focus. Bristol is a terrific city to live in, and many ECRS in the CES will hopefully fit the profile: www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

It's uncanny how they gave the robot the ability to experience profound embarassment and cognitive disassociation. Truly, we live in the future.

A big part of why people don't *want* this to be true is because we have a hard time holding two ideas in our head: 1. We're doing better now than previous generations 2. Things are unjust But, they are both true!

Hey, discourse around checking 'hallucinations' in references getting you down? Here's a shinyapp. Paste in an APA formatted list of references, and it checks CrossRef for errors. It's a work in progress, but it seems to do what's on the tin. drkap.shinyapps.io/APA_Cheat_Ca...

In our new paper, we aim to reconcile individual and group motivations for ritual performance and persistence through reinforcement learning. There are illustrations in the paper. I got to draw them! See Martin's post for deeper explanation and also for the link to free copies of the article!

Via a process of great intellectual friction, I came to an uncomfortable conclusion at a recent conference. LLMs *can* do really excellent work in the production of science. There are many nuances and caveats, and the LLMs need a tight leash... but there are use-cases. I find this gross, but true.

Why do rituals persist? They are often treated either as attempts to influence uncertain outcomes or as practices that regulate group life. But these functions are usually blended together. In our new paper, we argue that reinforcement learning helps explain this blending.

You can obfuscate an email address and other information on your websites spencermortensen.com/articles/ema...

"How do we apply a subscription model to our fuck-the-data-out-of-you service?"

I look forward to the fascinating sociological shift in the next 10 - 20 years in which only the dumbest 18 year olds you've ever met get business degrees and want to work in industry. The conscious lived experienced of anyone born after 2018 is "How do I fuck the data out of people?"

Hey, discourse around checking 'hallucinations' in references getting you down? Here's a shinyapp. Paste in an APA formatted list of references, and it checks CrossRef for errors. It's a work in progress, but it seems to do what's on the tin. drkap.shinyapps.io/APA_Cheat_Ca...

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

Students are the least pressing problem. 10 times that number of full-time staff will be out of work, and I'll bet entire regions that rely on their university will collapse. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My team, Minsu Park and I just launched 12points.science. It’s a citizen science platform and app where you can rate, rank, and comment on Eurovision entries with your friends. There is a deeper research goal behind the glitter 🎤🧪 #Eurovision #OpenData

Very useful new paper out on how preprint servers are exploited by race scientists to spread misinformation about race. Discusses some of the topics they frequently cover 👇 and the difficult problem of how to counter this misuse (NOT a criticism of preprint servers which are a boon to science!)

Our paper unpacking "fitness" is out doi.org/10.1093/gene.... How to define fitness depends on what question you ask. Selection acts on organismal vital rates, longer-term outcomes make sense for genetic lineages, models link them. "Invasion fitness" = speed, but sometimes probability matters more.

Great new work by @evangiangrande.bsky.social tracking how race scientists exploit preprint servers to legitimize and spread their work

There are more than 11,000 kinds of birds. I evaluated them all and made a definitive list of the 100 greatest names. I consider myself a bird name connoisseur but these blew me away. Over the next 10 days I'll add them to this thread. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Never forget:

Spotted on Tumblr…

A reminder that - no, actually, in the morning you won't remember that great idea you had in the twilight moments of consciousness. And today I'm pretty sure it was a good one, because I've been saturated with conference talks for three days. RIP great idea.

interesting new fellowship for people studying child development, available for early-career folk (10 years since PhD, US$300K over 3 years, worldwide eligibility)

This is a REALLY useful guide

Are you new or recent faculty, and are you attending CES/HBES. Some thoughts: gavinbuckingham.wordpress.com/2024/10/09/a...

This is cool. Not in a good way, but in an informative way

YOU - “Our lives are very different from each other.” JOYCE MESSIER - “No doubt -- but we share the same time and position on the planet's crust. That counts for more than you'd think.”

Hugely excited that my new book, 'Stonehenge: The Story of an Icon', has been published by English Heritage! This has been several years in the making, quite a bit written before I left EH. Very pleased with the end result: www.english-heritageshop.org.uk/stonehenge-s...

I guess in the UK we just have to hope the big cities can be competent and resist Starmer's death spiral, while Reform disgraces themselves in the regionals... And then we bounce back? Or we create a Greater Celt block and rejoin the EU?

Out of office set, see you all... open.spotify.com/album/61PTN1...

If an academic genie could grant me one wish to delete an entire body of literature, it would be Haidt's Moral Foundations.

This comes up online and in real life all the time, and it makes me feel like I'm the craziest person in the world. People talk about ADHD meds like they're not also a recreational drug. Depends on the exact prescription (not always amphetamine). But it's speed, y'all. You're taking speed.