🚨 PNAS paper: "Indirect reciprocity undermines indirect reciprocity destabilizing large-scale cooperation" w/ Eric Schnell How do we achieve global cooperation on climate or conflict reduction? The problem isn't selfishness as much as it is cooperation itself - at a smaller scale. 1/

Before entering a long decline that continues into the present, humanity may have spoken far more languages, experiencing a “golden age” of linguistic diversity, with tens of thousands of languages spoken worldwide only several thousand years ago, a new Science study finds. https://scim.ag/4b8zW0b

The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene

Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...

scim.ag

Psychedelics raise a host of questions: ethical questions, metaphysical questions, questions about the nature of mind. Philosophers have taken note. A listener favorite from our archives, a conversation w/ Dr. Chris Letheby about the philosophy of psychedelics! Listen: disi.org/philosophers...

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science

As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...

arxiv.org

🚨 New paper in iScience: "Ecological not social factors explain brain size in cephalopods" In 2017, we published the Cultural Brain Hypothesis, a model of human brain evolution. It made an unexpected prediction: non-social animals could evolve big brains too, if their ecology was rich enough. 1/

📣New Lecture with @chriskrupenye.bsky.social Learn how studies of great apes are reshaping our understanding of social cognition and animal intelligence. 📅 Saturday, 11 July 🕓 16:00 GMT | 12:00 EDT | 09:00 PDT 📍 Online (Zoom) 🔗https://shorturl.at/FmkNy

One of Darwin's most powerful insights was that small changes— accumulated over large swaths of time—can have huge impacts. Where did that idea come from? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode—a discussion of Darwin's life and mind w/ Janet Browne! Listen: disi.org/the-origins-...

New episode!!🎙️🎉 A conversation w/ Dr. Janet Browne about Charles Darwin. Darwin's ideas continue to reverberate across the intellectual landscape. But where did they come from? How did they grow out of his travels, his social circle, and his cast of mind? Listen: disi.org/the-origins-...

Opportunity to pursue a doctoral thesis in the Goffin Lab and the Kea Lab The research will focus on play, exploration, and problem-solving abilities in cockatoos and kea. If exploring the minds of other species fascinates you, I highly recommend this opportunity.

If you have (or will soon) complete your PhD & would like to join a thriving cultural evolution research group in NEW ZEALAND, drop me a line. UoA offers a handful of funded research fellowships. Applications must be made by a faculty member. Deadline August. Pls share with your students

For the very first time, biologists packed nonliving components into a cell-like membrane, piece by piece, and slowly witnessed the bag of molecules start to behave like life. @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-firs...

For the First Time, a Cell Built From Scratch Grows and Divides | Quanta Magazine

Scientists built a synthetic cell that combines more lifelike properties than ever before — proof of concept that it’s possible to bring nonliving materials to life, or something close to it, in the l...

quantamagazine.org

The functions of bioluminescence are many. Marine creatures use it to lure prey, startle predators, court mates, and disguise their silhouettes. Some even seem to use it to exact revenge. Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ Dr. Sönke Johnsen! Listen: disi.org/the-sparklin...

Bioluminescence is utterly commonplace in the open ocean. Meanwhile it's rare on land and all but absent in freshwater. How do we explain this curious distribution? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ Sönke Johnsen! Listen: disi.org/the-sparklin...

1st published paper alert ⚠️ in which @mcxfrank.bsky.social and I ask: How robust is the “shape bias”? a phenomenon that has been central to theories of early word learning: If a child hears a new word for an object, they often extend it to other objects with the same shape. tinyurl.com/JCL-shapebias

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ A conversation w/ Dr. Sönke Johnsen about bioluminescence. The open ocean is a world apart—vast, clear, featureless, and mostly populated by creatures that make their own light. How did this ability evolve? Why here? What functions does it serve? Listen: disi.org/the-sparklin...

How do other animals experience time? It's been a pleasure to work with @singhal.bsky.social and @anilseth.bsky.social on a paper exploring how temporal illusions and other experimental strategies can shed light on this. It's our today! www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

1/16 Do other species understand death? In this study with cockatoos, we approach this question from its foundation, by studying one of its central components: sensitivity to the permanent loss of a function. I will explain it in this thread (with videos) (paper) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀, 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻?? Biological systems unlike computers, but what does that mean? Join us in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon discussion with Romain Brette of his great book. July 9, noon (USA-EST) Open to all; registration required. umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #neuroskyence

The ethnographic record shows that women do hunt, sometimes for big game. Does that mean that 'Man the Hunter' was a myth all along? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @vivek123.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/is-man-the-h...

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A conversation w/ @vivek123.bsky.social about Man the Hunter. The idea that male hunting propelled our evolution is old and contested. Yet it endures, especially in the popular imagination. Is it merely a "paleofantasy," or is there more to it? Listen: disi.org/is-man-the-h...

It's always a treat to read Ted Chiang's thoughts on AI. www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...

No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious

Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.

theatlantic.com

New paper in @pnas.org - using playback experiments we provide further evidence that bottlenose dolphins can use individual identity signals + social memory to guide decision-making. Female dolphins use individual vocal labels to track coercive males | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In case it's of interest to anyone, here's a regularly updated list of UK postdoctoral research fellowships - feel free to share/copy sites.google.com/site/blakemo...

Blakemore Lab - Postdoctoral Fellowships

Below is an overview of Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in the United Kingdom, which was originally curated by Professor Rogier Kievit. These have a special focus on psychology, neuroscience, develo...

sites.google.com

Which kinds of words are the easiest to learn? Which prove harder? And is it the same for dogs and infants? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ Claudia Fugazza & @bergelsonlab.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/babies-dogs-...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ A conversation w/ @bergelsonlab.bsky.social & Claudia Fugazza. Babies and dogs know more about words than we realized. But do they learn words in the same ways? Or differently? And what does it mean, really, to "understand" a word? Listen: disi.org/babies-dogs-...

Human hands have partnered with tools for millions of years, allowing us to do things we otherwise could not. Is this a case of brain "plasticity"? Or perhaps "motor abstraction"? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @mattlongo.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-inner-li...

New episode!! 🎉🎙️ An interview w/ @mattlongo.bsky.social about the cognitive neuroscience of hands. The hand is often celebrated as a paragon of engineering, but the meat-and-bones design is not particularly novel. Could the real power of the hand lie elsewhere? Listen: disi.org/the-inner-li...

Join us in Barcelona for a postdoc! We are looking for candidates with a strong NLP/ML/AI background and an interest in linguistic diversity and human and machine cognition: dub.sh/blasi_nlp_po...

Cuttlefish can put on dazzling displays of color, thanks to chromatophores and other specialized cell types. The irony is that these creatures seem to be colorblind. Just one of the topics discussed in our archive pick, with @tessamontague.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-cuttlefi...