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Paul Smaldino

@psmaldino.bsky.social

Paradigmatically promiscuous scientist. Ankylosaur enthusiast. Modeler of cultural evolution and related topics. Anti-fascist. Professor at UC Merced, external prof at the Santa Fe Institute and CSH-Vienna. Web: https://smaldino.com/wp/

857 Posts6089 Follower992 Folgt
Roope Kaaronen@roopekaaronen.net · last wk.

Really enjoyed this one. On "Tower of Babel" -like myths, Berezkin's mythology database claims to have dozens of such cases indexed. Not sure how carefully they have been vetted. :) Attached is one similar case I found when doing mushroom research.

Many thousands of years ago the inhabitants of the earth were all of one race and spoke but one language. Suddenly a fungus of enormous size made its appearance and continued to grow larger and higher every day and was looked upon by the people as a shelter from the sun and rain which had been sent them by the gods; but at last it grew to such a size that their crops, on which they depended entirely for food, suffered by being deprived of the blessings of the sun, rain, and dew, and they began to wish that they had stopped it's (sic) growth before. Sacrifices were offered to the gods who were prayed to remove the fungus from the face of the earth, but their prayers were without effect, and as time went on it became necessary for the preservation of life to cut it down whether the gods resented such action or not. So it was felled, cut up, and everybody eat [sic] of it with the result that they all fell into a kind of stupor and began to speak every man a different language, and the confusion was so great that they scattered over the face of the earth, and it was in this way that the many languages now spoken in the world originated. —An Iban origin story from Borneo by Howell (1908, p. 78).
Paul Smaldino@psmaldino.bsky.social · last wk.

I’ve been considering starting to blog more seriously, like regular posts on topics I don’t have time to write full articles about. On the other hand, it feels like I’m 20 years too late for that medium. Do people even read blogs anymore?

Elise Cutts@elisecutts.bsky.social · 2w ago

Writing this story was so unbelievably fun. And not only bc @mcxfrank.bsky.social says quotes like this: “Kids’ experience looks really radically different than we thought ... They’ve got these little short arms, so the objects are, like, right in front of them. And they live in a forest of knees.”

Alison Gopnik@alisongopnik.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good piece on why kids beat AI at learning, with Mike Frank and me. Behind a paywall but available elsewhere. www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/24/1...

Will Gervais@willgervais.com · 3w ago

looking for book recommendations, esp from my cultural evolution, critical 🧠, philosophy peeps: I'm thinking about *epistemic trust*, how we go about choosing to whom we defer on information. cool overlaps with learning, cultural evo, misinfo, etc. any cool books hitting this from diff directions?

Paul Smaldino@psmaldino.bsky.social · 4w ago

New paper w/ @verwirrt.bsky.social and @lottybrand.bsky.social. We use agent-based modeling w/ NK landscapes to help theorize about role of analogies in language/cultural evolution, and how they solve problems associated with the transmission of complex information. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Analogies evolve by increasing transmission fidelity in the communication of complex information | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core

Analogies evolve by increasing transmission fidelity in the communication of complex information - Volume 8

cambridge.org

Ronen Tamari@ronentk.me · last mo.

Great thread by @shahanmemon.bsky.social Our current institutions are built in a way that discourages empathy and penalizes it. (eg the system selects for single minded type A personalities) We can create new institutions and tech to reward empathy and team science over individual competition >

Shahan Ali Memon@shahanmemon.bsky.social · last mo.

#Academia has an empathy problem. #LongRant We train people to be rigorous thinkers, and productive researchers (or at least claim to). But we do far less to train ourselves to listen, uplift others, and be good members of an intellectual community. We should actively practice empathy too. 🧵

Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · last mo.

Training a generative model to have taste is going to run into the basic problem that generative models are, definitionally, the wrong people. I can see why this will seem frustrating and perverse, if you believe human behavior ought to be rational. But, uh.

Dominik Deffner@dominikdeffner.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Learning from the most successful people makes sense? We show that social learning, and especially payoff bias, is bad when choice outcomes are dependent on prior success💰 As such "rich-get-richer" dynamics are everywhere, this shows fundamental boundary conditions for the benefits of SL!

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Paul Bergmann@pkbergmann.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New preprint with @dominikdeffner.bsky.social: While social learning is broadly adaptive when repeated decision outcomes are independent, we show that when outcomes depend on prior success, most social learning strategies deteriorate performance and increase inequality: doi.org/10.31234/osf... 1/7

jessamyn@librarian.bsky.social · last mo.

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.
Alejandro Pérez Velilla@apvelilla.bsky.social · last mo.

Out now in PNAS. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Thank you to all peers and colleagues who provided invaluable feedback during the process!

A demographic theory of similarity-biased social learning | PNAS

We develop a demographic theory of similarity-biased social learning that formalizes our understanding of when and why individuals should preferent...

pnas.org

Alejandro Pérez Velilla@apvelilla.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New preprint with @psmaldino.bsky.social on the evolution of similarity-biased learning: osf.io/preprints/so... This mathematical treatment both simplifies and extends our previous simulation treatment of the subject: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...