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James Winters

@replicatedtypo.bsky.social

Simulating sci-fi novels and calling it cultural evolution Centre for Culture and Evolution | Brunel University London | https://j-winters.github.io

80 Posts1350 Follower764 Folgt
Haneul Jang@haneuljang.bsky.social · yesterday

A new paper led by amazing @maximederex.bsky.social @aseyq.bsky.social @manvir.bsky.social! Why do costly, ineffective practices emerge & persist over generations? A transmission-chain experiment shows how 'cognitive appeal' alone can sustain ineffective solutions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cognitive appeal promotes the persistence of inefficient solutions and hinders cumulative cultural evolution - Nature Communications

Societies develop both effective practices and costly ineffective ones. Here, the authors show that opportunities for intuitive solutions can prevent cumulative refinement and promote the persistence ...

nature.com

Matt Henderson@matthen.com · 2w ago

Which Pokémon does a compression algorithm think are most similar? bzip pairs Gengar with Haunter, Magikarp with Gyarados and Pikachu with Jolteon. 13 different Pokémon get paired with Marowak- it's a very average sprite..

Roope Kaaronen@roopekaaronen.net · 2w ago

Academia increasingly reminds me of Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies. Universities grow increasingly complex to solve problems created by their own, or funders', bureaucratic machine. Ethical permits, security assessments, data management plans, work plans, heavy grant applications.

Paul Smaldino@psmaldino.bsky.social · 2w ago

My paper on the Varieties of Cultural Selection is now in press at @biologicaltheory.bsky.social. It's also about 30% longer than the original draft, with additions and clarifications inspired by the excellent comments I received from reviewers and colleagues. Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/so...

Paul Smaldino@psmaldino.bsky.social · 7mo ago

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...

Title page for working paper: "The Varieties of Cultural Selection"
Adam Rutherford@adamrutherford.bsky.social · 2w ago

This is INCREDIBLE. A point and click on cracking the genetic code. Based on @matthewcobb.bsky.social’s superlative account. Scicomm FTW

Professor - The Genetic Code@profsciencegame.bsky.social · 2w ago

We can neither confirm nor deny that we read Matthew Cobb's Life's Greatest Secret until the spine gave up. Our game is the 1961 lab that book describes. @matthewcobb.bsky.social store.steampowered.com/app/5411530/... #indiegame #histsci #genetics

Centre for Culture and Evolution@brunelcce.bsky.social · 2w ago

How is the manosphere spreading misogyny on TikTok? 📱 @brunelpsy.bsky.social PhD researcher Hannah Mays is speaking at the first event in The Room, a new public feminist conversation series co-organised by CCEs @loraadair.bsky.social 📅 27 Oct, 6pm @ Bush Theatre, London Free tickets! 🎟️

The Room: From Forums to For You – The Manosphere and Misogyny on TikTok

What's really showing up on your For You page? Explore TikTok, the manosphere and online misogyny in this unfiltered feminist conversation.

eventbrite.co.uk

Giacomo Benati@giacomobenati.bsky.social · 2w ago

🚨Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances! We reconstruct communication networks across Mesopotamia during the rise of the world's first cities (3900-3000 BCE) and ask how large-scale connectivity emerged before modern states. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The network structure of the urban revolution

Long-distance interaction has deep prehistoric roots, but the networks that emerged during the Urban Revolution were unprecedented in scale and organization. How early cities sustained this extensive ...

science.org

Roope Kaaronen@roopekaaronen.net · 3w ago

It's a major structural problem in academia that we are incentivised, basically soft-forced, to apply for the Big Money, even though all many of us would need is a meagre Researcher Basic Income. It's all a big waste and misallocation of resources at the Altar of Overheads.

Andrew Curry@andrewcurry.com · 3w ago

Neanderthals were talented hunters AND home decorators. Evidence from a Spanish rock shelter includes new tool types and evidence for windbreaks and other domestic arrangements. “Now we can start to imagine the spaces they were living in,” says archaeologist @annemiekemilks.bsky.social. @science.org

Neanderthals were skilled woodworkers, first-of-its-kind tool trove reveals

Find in Spanish cave provides rare window into the domestic lives of our closest relatives

science.org

Kayla Kolff@kaylakolff.bsky.social · 4w ago

“Huh?” “I meant...” “What?” 💬 When interacting with each other, we often fix errors or mishearings through communicative repair, which restores progressivity. Our ✨ new paper ✨ asks: what do chimpanzees do when an initial gestural request does not land during an interaction? 🧵 1/4 bit.ly/4rSQosE

When grooming stalls: Assessing communicative repair, negotiation, and progressivity in chimpanzees

Communication; Animal behavior; Zoology

cell.com

Simon Fisher@profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 4w ago

Today marks the 25th anniversary (😯) of our publication on discovery of FOXP2. To commemorate, I’ll repost a few prior threads about the gene. Here’s my explainer of how we tracked down FOXP2 & implicated it in speech/language deficits, in the days before completion of the human genome project.🗣️🧬🧪👇

Simon Fisher@profsimonfisher.bsky.social · last yr.

Twenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350.... A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n 🗣️🧬🧪

Image shows the first two printed pages of the paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” by Cecilia Lai and colleagues, published in Nature in 2001 (volume 413, pages 519-523). The abstract reads as follows: Individuals affected with developmental disorders of speech and language have substantial difficulty acquiring expressive and/or receptive language in the absence of any profound sensory or neurological impairment and despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although studies of twins consistently indicate that a significant genetic component is involved, most families segregating speech and language deficits show complex patterns of inheritance, and a gene that predisposes individuals to such disorders has not been identified. We have studied a unique three-generation pedigree, KE, in which a severe speech and language disorder is transmitted as an autosomal-dominant monogenic trait. Our previous work mapped the locus responsible, SPCH1, to a 5.6-cM interval of region 7q31 on chromosome 7. We also identified an unrelated individual, CS, in whom speech and language impairment is associated with a chromosomal translocation involving the SPCH1 interval. Here we show that the gene FOXP2, which encodes a putative transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead DNA-binding domain, is directly disrupted by the translocation breakpoint in CS. In addition, we identify a point mutation in affected members of the KE family that alters an invariant amino-acid residue in the forkhead domain. Our findings suggest that FOXP2 is involved in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.
Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦@sobchuk.bsky.social · 4w ago

This paper sets my personal record for the largest number of co-authors: 33! It explores why people like certain stories and story elements, and was lead by @edgardubourg.bsky.social . Check it out!

Edgar Dubourg@edgardubourg.bsky.social · 4w ago

Our paper 'Carving Stories at Their Natural Joints' is out in Psychological Review (@apajournals.bsky.social). It means a lot to me, especially because I got to collaborate with many researchers from different disciplines whose work I truly admire.

Dominik Deffner@dominikdeffner.bsky.social · last mo.

Now published in @natcomms.nature.com! Using a 3D immersive-reality group experiment, we show how people integrate dynamically changing personal and social cues in realistic environments, resulting in either collective intelligence or maladaptive behavior! Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dominik Deffner@dominikdeffner.bsky.social · last yr.

Which processes underlie collective intelligence in naturalistic human groups? In new work led by Valerii Chirkov, we show that payoff selectivity is key in transforming a group of individuals into an intelligent collective 🤝🧠 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7n... Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...