🔪"just as the goal of witchcraft accusations is not to persuade the targets of such accusations, members of dominant coalitions are likely motivated to propagate system-justifying ideologies in order to maintain their reputation for pro-sociality and generosity *among each other*"

The Social Roots of Popular Delusions

Abstract. Chapter 4: The Social Roots of Popular Delusions begins developing our positive account of popular delusions. We introduce the concepts of “socia

academic.oup.com

@henryshevlin.bsky.social and I chat with Judith Dada, co-author of 'Europe 2031', about rapid AI progress, slow institutional adoption, Europe’s dependence on American models, compute sovereignty, data centres, energy and regulation, and the geopolitics of AI: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPdC...

Who Will Control Europe’s AI Future? (with Judith Dada)

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com

New conversation with @robertwrighter.bsky.social and @henryshevlin.bsky.social about Bob's fascinating new book on AI, 'The God Test'. We chat about AI progress, superintelligence, the US-China race, global coordination, evolution’s purpose, and consciousness. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfky...

Can Humanity Survive Superintelligence? (with Robert Wright)

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com

👏"purely intrapsychic benefits are irrelevant to fitness... our alternative social framework [...] avoids evolutionary implausibility by drawing a more transparent explanatory connection between pop delusions & the kinds of strategic, social goals we would expect human beings to have on evo grounds"

The Puzzle of Popular Delusions

Abstract. Chapter 3: The Puzzle of Popular Delusions introduces what we call the “functional delusions puzzle”: why healthy, otherwise rational communities

academic.oup.com

New conversation with @robertwrighter.bsky.social and @henryshevlin.bsky.social about Bob's fascinating new book on AI, 'The God Test'. We chat about AI progress, superintelligence, the US-China race, global coordination, evolution’s purpose, and consciousness. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfky...

Can Humanity Survive Superintelligence? (with Robert Wright)

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com

"Whereas when I think about the evolution of all life on earth, it doesn’t seem to be culminating in a really unified, bounded, coordinated system in the way you find with an individual organism, at least as of now."

Can Humanity Survive Superintelligence? (with Robert Wright)

Robert Wright on AI as humanity’s “God Test”: AI progress, superintelligence, the US-China race, global coordination, evolution’s purpose, and consciousness.

conspicuouscognition.com

🔪"For this reason, our book on delusions might have the strange consequence of convincing readers that there is much less delusion in the world than people think."

✨"if our accounts of why people embrace and hold onto popular and clinical delusions are correct, they demystify such beliefs and reveal that those who endorse them are much less irrational than they initially appear"

The Social Roots of Delusions

Abstract. The Social Roots of Delusions argues that human sociality—our nature as highly social animals—is crucial for understanding what delusions are and

academic.oup.com

Studying philosophy turned out to be consistently just so ridiculously useful for me

This was a really interesting read by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social , touching on many of the issues we've been grappling with in our research of late. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-tribes...

How Tribes Construct Rival Realities

Henry Nowak, George Floyd, and the hidden interpretive machinery that drives political conflict.

conspicuouscognition.com

New essay: I argue that political differences often reside not primarily in different factual beliefs, values, or high-level ideologies, but in the competing systems of interpretation and misinterpretation through which we select, ignore, frame, narrate, and explain political reality.

How Tribes Construct Rival Realities

Henry Nowak, George Floyd, and the hidden interpretive machinery that drives political conflict.

conspicuouscognition.com

And if you are interested in reading more about the enduring legacy of Brexit identities, see our book 📕Tribal Politics. How Brexit Divided Britain global.oup.com/academic/pro...

📣 On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote, listen to this excellent BBC R4 programme by James Tilley @politicsoxford.bsky.social on how Brexit created two new political tribes: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC Radio 4 - Currently, Ten Years After Brexit: Tribal

Ten years on from the Brexit referendum, how tribal thinking created two new identities.

bbc.co.uk

New conversation with Benjamin Todd and Henry Shevlin. We discuss whether transformative AI might arrive by 2030, feedback loops that could compress decades of progress into a few months, and how to navigate the explosive change that might unfold in the near future. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr8C...

What If Artificial Intelligence Progress Explodes? (with Benjamin Todd)

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com

As @danwphilosophy.bsky.social said www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

In a new guest post at Conspicuous Cognition, Tibor Rutar reviews what the evidence actually says about the relationship between immigration and crime - and explains why it doesn't support simplistic culture war narratives. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/in-europe-...

British politics is resembling the rest of Europe: • Multi-party competition has replaced two-party dominance • Challengers are on the rise, esp. the populist right • Political realignment centres on identity politics (incl Brexit) But FPTP is poorly suited to this fragmentation

🚨🚨NEW🚨🚨 This week’s elections raise questions about the long-term development of Welsh politics. After years of limited press coverage and voter interest, is Welsh politics finally maturing? www.thepathnottaken.net/p/welsh-poli...

Welsh politics may be finally maturing

On Thursday, elections for the Welsh parliament (Senedd) will take place.

thepathnottaken.net

New post on data centers and land use, where I go into my manifesto for why we should trust farmers less open.substack.com/pub/andymasl...

Data center land use issues are fake

We have plenty of land, data centers provide more revenue per unit area than any other building, and we should have way less farmland

open.substack.com

New conversation with the brilliant David Kipping focusing on the search for aliens, the Fermi paradox, the simulation argument, anthropic reasoning, the role of AI in science, whether "AGI" or “superintelligence” are imminent, and much more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUQ4...

Aliens, Superintelligence, and the Future of Science (with David Kipping)

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com

I don't get why a bunch of people on BlueSky instantly concluded this assassination attempt was fake? I mean, like, I guess it could be, wouldn't be the strangest thing to have happened ever. But probably not, surely? What would even be the point of that? Just - why the weird conspiracy brain stuff?

🔪"And if you have been reading this smugly thinking that this is just true of those foolish people on the other side, then think again, because almost all the consequences of tribalism that we reveal in the book are symmetrical"

Dan Williams@danwphilosophy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New guest post at 'Conspicuous Cognition' by the excellent Oxford Professor James Tilley. Very interesting findings here. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-brexit...

New guest post at 'Conspicuous Cognition' by the excellent Oxford Professor James Tilley. Very interesting findings here. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-brexit...

How Brexit Created Britain’s New Political Tribes

This is a guest post by James Tilley, a Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, about his excellent new book with Sara Hobolt, Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain.

conspicuouscognition.com

Every system that was regulated, either explicitly or implicitly, by the fact that they were effortful for humans (letters of recommendation, government filings, essays, or, as this paper finds, lawsuits) will break under a wave of AI.

Much discussion about AI risks focuses on the dangers increasingly advanced AI systems pose to us. But what about the dangers we might pose to them? Many people think discussing "AI welfare" is absurd. I disagree! Discussion with Henry Shevlin and Rob Long here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEMf...

Should We Care About AI Welfare? (with Robert Long)

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com

Join us in #Brighton in May for a Long Table experimental public forum on AI and the arts at #BrightonFestival! Artists, academics, and the public digest what AI means for the arts today. brightonfestival.org/whats-on/Xhn...

AI and the Arts: What Does this Mean For Our Creative Future? - Brighton Festival

A Long Table for debate where artists, academics and the public can digest what it means to create with Generative AI (GenAI) in the arts today. On the menu, you will discover the University’s interna...

brightonfestival.org

Our paper just hit 50 citations 🎯: "Political conspiracy theories as tools for mobilization and signaling", Current Opinion in Psychology, 2022, with @m-b-petersen.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Interesting piece here, citing among other folk the excellent @danwphilosophy.bsky.social

Alexander Kustov@akoustov.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Sorry, Bluesky, but I have to say it: AI can already do social science research better than most professors with PhDs. And, for the first time in my life, I really have no idea what happens in five years. Things are changing already, we just need to wake up.

With Henry Shevlin, we discuss: - How we became interested in philosophy and AI - Recent advances in agentic AI - AI, politics (e.g., Anthropic vs Trump administration), and public hostility to AI www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEJG...

Time To Start Panicking About AI?

YouTube video by Conspicuous Cognition

youtube.com