Dan Sperber

Complex technology requires cultural innovations for distributing cognition Over the last decade, new research has shown how human collectives can develop technologies that no single individual could discover on their own. However, this research often overlooks how technology can become so complex that individuals cannot operate it on their own. At this level of technological complexity, distributing cognition is a necessary process for reducing cognitive load on individuals. Yet distributing cognition also imposes coordination costs as technological systems become larger and the individuals in these systems become more specialized. We describe a sprawling set of cultural innovations that facilitate cognitive distribution by reducing cognitive load, reducing coordination costs, or doing both. Preliminary evidence suggests that these cultural innovations co-evolve with technological complexity.

Online Now: Complex technology requires cultural innovations for distributing cognition

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...

Opinion | He Was the Face and Voice of Gaza. Israel Assassinated Him.

An excellent but devastating piece on the Israeli assassination of the brave and beloved Gazan journalist Anas Al-Sharif:
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/o...
This is on us in the US: our government could stop this with a single phone call.
Call your reps to demand an end to US military support of Israel

Is Gaza still a place for newborn life? 10 months after a warning that Gaza's maternal and neonatal health sector was sliding from crisis towards collapse,1 fresh field reports reveal an even starker picture. In the first 6 months of 2025, ...

“What name do we give to a policy environment that suppresses the arrival of new life?”

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Israel/OPT: New testimonies provide compelling evidence that Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is a deliberate policy Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life, Amnesty International said today.

Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life.

Read more:

Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution Humans stand alone in terms of their potential to collectively and cumulatively improve technologies in an open-ended manner. This open-endedness provides societies with the ability to continually exp...

🚨🚨 New preprint 📜 with Mathieu Charbonneau (@matcharbonneau.bsky.social‬): Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution (arxiv.org/abs/2508.04828). Feedback welcomed! #Evolution #Technology #Culture #OpenEnded #TechnologicalEvolution #CulturalEvolution 🧵: 1/29

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

Onlookers threw them dried bread loafs making the Jews fight for food and causing boats to capsize. Jews said: "God is just. Yes, of us he has made victims, but of you he has made persecutors."

My father, Manès Sperber, told me a story that terribly resonnates today:

In 1420, at a time of persecution known as the "Vienna Gesera", Jews were banned from the city. Many were killed. Others were placed on rudderless boats on the Danube River and left starving.

This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like In a post-American world, greed and nihilism are destroying Sudan.

Earlier this year, I made two trips to Sudan, where a terrible civil war has displaced 14 million people. The state is absent, international institutions are weak.Outside powers, motivated by greed and nihilism, have stepped into the vacuum

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

‘They slaughtered us like animals’: the inside story of how one of the biggest atrocities of the Sudan war unfolded in Zamzam As the UK prepared to host a global summit on bringing peace to Sudan, the RSF paramilitary began a ‘genocidal’ massacre in Zamzam refugee camp. But when reports emerged of the killings, London held i...

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Il est atroce que les guerres puissent ne pas épargner l’enfance, non seulement parce qu’elle est l’avenir mais surtout parce que sa tendre faiblesse et son irresponsabilité adressent à notre protection un si confiant appel."

Il est un de ces tableaux, cependant, auquel je sens bien que je ne m’habituerai jamais : celui de la terreur sur des visages d’enfants fuyant la chute des bombes, dans un village survolé....

Dans Marc Bloch, "L'Etrange Défaite" (Ecrit en 1940):

"Je n’ai pas, je crois, l’âme inaccessible à la pitié. Peut-être les spectacles que deux guerres successives m’ont imposés l’ont-ils quelque peu endurcie.

Is mind-reading involved in ownership judgments?

By @rekablazsek.bsky.social & @heintz-c.bsky.social

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible

Rashid Khalidi withdraws course on Middle East history, saying it's 'impossible to teach' given adoption of IHRA.

'Columbia's capitulation..is being done to cover up...the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia's leadership is now fully complicit' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Palestinian who helped make Oscar-winning No Other Land killed in West Bank Israeli settler Yinon Levi, whom Trump removed from US sanctions list, arrested after death of Awdah Hathaleen

And in the meantime, in the West Bank, Israeli settlers proceed with their own genocidal goals:
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

It contains a radical and I believe serious critique of the very idea of scalars implicatures. I wondered why it has never been discussed at all. I downed on me that it has probably never been read. Oh well!
Here is the 2012 version.
www.dan.sperber.fr/wp-content/u...

ABOUT SCALARS:
Ira Noveck and I published in 2007 "The why and the how of experimental pragmatics: The case of scalar inferences" in _Advances in Pragmatics_ (N Burton-Roberts ed.), republished in D. Wilson & D. Sperber _Meaning and Relevance_ 2012, as ch 14.

Excellent article: "Tracking minds in communication" by
Paula Rubio-Fernandez, Marlene D.Berke, and
Julian Jara-Ettinger
Open access at pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i...

i.guim.co.uk/img/media/48...

YouTube video by Météore Films Le Rire et le Couteau | Bande-Annonce | au cinéma le 9 juillet 2025

youtu.be/2AcoQk1u20I?...
An totally out-of-the-ordinary wonderful portuguese film directed by Pedro Pinho: "O riso e a faca", "Le rire et le couteau", "I only sleep in the storm", action taking place in Guinea Bissau, shown at the festival de Cannes, now showing in France.

Opinion | I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...

Helen De Cruz (1978-2025) - Daily Nous Helen De Cruz, professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University, has died. Professor De Cruz specialized in philosophy of religion and cognitive science. They were the author of Wonderstruck: How Won...

Philosopher Helen De Cruz has died.

Israel is accused of the gravest war crimes in Gaza Distinguished lawyers, senior humanitarians and diplomats tell Jeremy Bowen why they are increasingly concerned about the catastrophe inside Gaza.

Well worth a read.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Rethinking Ostensive Communication in an Evolutionary, Comparative, and Developmental Perspective" now published in Psychological Review
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Happy In Theory This is the short story of my long search for a stable academic home. There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending.

thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

There is suffering everywhere you look, says mother of emaciated baby girl trapped in Gaza Babies such as Siwar Ashour are suffering from malnutrition as crucial supplies run out amid Israel’s total blockade on aid

Gaza and Warsaw Ghetto: Compare
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Cognitive Artifacts

Valeria Giardino on cognitive artifacts:
oecs.mit.edu/pub/bx21plqj...

Joshua Craze, Sudan’s World War — Sidecar Two years of conflict.

Read to understand how: "The last two years of war have lain waste to the country. Over 150,000 people are estimated to have died. ... 13 million people have fled from their homes."
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...