I'm a cognitive scientist with an interest in epistemic vigilance, and this essay that's been going around gave me pause.
I don't think it's straightforward to apply the concept of epistemic vigilance to interactions with LLMs, as this essay does.
🧵/
sbgeoaiphd.github.io/rotating_the...
🚨Recrutement au CREST @crestumr.bsky.social
Ingénieur de recherche CDD 3 ans support computationnel aux sciences sociales
Venez rejoindre notre cellule données appui au sciences sociales computationnelles !
Fiche de poste ▶️ nextcloud.lab.groupe-genes.fr/s/XMe4EGtRfb...
Candidature < 15 avril
In poverty, do people take more or less risk? Some theories contend that they avoid risk out of caution. Others that they take risks (e.g. crime) out of desperation.
In our new paper in BBS, we show that they are the two sides of the same coin: the desperation threshold.
Peer commentary call soon!
I'm hiring a postdoc at @cmu.edu (w/ far.ai & @dgrand.bsky.social + @gordpennycook.bsky.social)!
How do LLMs shape human beliefs — and what do we do about it? AI safety meets behavioral science.
Open to technical and social science backgrounds.
In this new paper, @klopfenstein.bsky.social shows that how surprising an explanation is accounts for a good share of its appeal, suggesting that surprising explanations (the aliens built the pyramids!) can be popular even if people aren't really convinced they're great explanation
23.02.2026 13:28 — 👍 15 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)
1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."
My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!
Top panel: My plot of US adult female and male height distributions, which are much narrower, and overlap less than in the figure from Fuentes, which is in the bottom panel.
1. After I posted my critical review of @anthrofuentes.bsky.social Sex is a Spectrum, a colleague pointed out that his figure of adult heights by sex (bottom panel👇) can't be right: there aren't that many US adults shorter than 4' or taller than 7'
Turns out Fuentes' data are made up 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵
CALL: a PhD grant (3 years) to do a PhD with me at @cognitionens.bsky.social on the evolution of graphic codes. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/410213
19.02.2026 12:13 — 👍 21 🔁 30 💬 0 📌 5Félicitations, c'est super !
16.02.2026 23:03 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Votre article du dimanche soir: l'invention d'un prix Nobel ou le narcissisme académique dans toute sa splendeur. Incroyable enquête de l'Est Républicain
www.estrepublicain.fr/faits-divers...
@evoroseman.bsky.social and Auerbach nail the fatal flaw in the ESS: organisms somehow adapt to completely novel situations without natural selection. It's basically Intelligent Design, imo, but with the organism as the intelligent designer instead of God 🧪 #BioAnth 1/2
13.02.2026 14:40 — 👍 12 🔁 2 💬 5 📌 2
New paper in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Coupling surveys of ~8% of the adult Danish population & results of 123 million covid-tests, we show that psychological feelings of coping lowered infection risk. Feelings of fear did not.
Authorities should empower people, not scare them.
📢 New Paper 🚨
Hadza food-sharing is egalitarian, yet offers in giving games have never matched the equitable redistribution seen in real life.
In this study, we allowed people to give *or* take. Lifelike equitable distributions only appeared when people took from peers in surplus.
bit.ly/4kvLOwA
🔴 Gallicagram v2, nous voici ! 🔴
Nouvelle interface en react vachement plus stable et rapide, nouveaux corpus (Mediapart, Libé, le Parisien, Le Figaro…), recherche contextuelle, comparaisons inter-corpus, filtre rubrique, bilingue, infinite scrolling... on vous explique tout !
📌 www.gallicagram.com
Bilbo looking at his phone top on bottom is ChatGPT After all, why not? Why shouldn't I keep it? You're absolutely right — you found it, it's been with you a long while, and it's only natural to feel fond of something that's served you so well, especially when someone like Gandalf suddenly seems to want it for himself.
28.01.2026 01:51 — 👍 25433 🔁 6957 💬 7 📌 155[stares directly into the camera]
26.01.2026 15:30 — 👍 10029 🔁 1837 💬 194 📌 30
Open Position: Knight Postdoctoral Fellow at Wharton School: Expertise in the quantitative study of the information ecosystem, especially news, media, and advertising.
infodem.upenn.edu/wharton-post...
What is it about some stories and situations that make them more effective at evoking fear? One way to answer this is to reverse engineer the emotion of fear 😱
➡️ A short blogpost on the HBES website about our recent article with Coltan Scrivner.
www.hbes.com/engineering-...
Henry Shevlin and I discuss "misinformation", propaganda, mass gullibility, advertising, social media, and deepfakes with the great Sacha Altay (@sachaltay.bsky.social). www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l5T...
24.01.2026 10:28 — 👍 11 🔁 4 💬 2 📌 0
Do YOU want updates on the latest research on #FactChecking AI, social media, persuasion, reasoning and #psychology of decision making? Plus additional commentary to put it all in context?
Then YOU need my newsletter, which appears to weekly at the moment
Today: Grok, the "anti-woke" […]
Dear friends,
We at the Center for European Studies @sciencespo-cee.bsky.social are opening a position of Assistant Professor in political science, with a focus on climate transition policies.
Please apply if you're super good (and not afraid to work with me ;).
www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etude...
Comme promis, un texte où je persiste et signe : le film "Le mage du Kremlin" est dangereux, car il se met au service du pouvoir russe en diffusant une vision du pays exactement conforme à ce que le Kremlin veut nous faire penser.
colinlebedev.fr/2026/01/22/h...
This week, we are talking to Michael Graziano about the easy problem of consciousness.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-qenxi...
youtu.be/O8LEZJvkodc
Headline: "Scientists discover emperor penguin colony in Antarctica using satellite images"
Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.
20.01.2026 18:44 — 👍 9153 🔁 2373 💬 145 📌 203
Our Department at Aalborg University is hiring an Associate Professor in Sociology with a focus on quantitative methods: www.stillinger.aau.dk/videnskabeli...
15.01.2026 10:25 — 👍 15 🔁 19 💬 0 📌 2
New longitudinal study finds no evidence that either #videogames nor #socialmedia use lead to later mental health issues in youth.
I look forward to the extensive news media coverage this receives: academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/a...
“Our findings tell us that young people’s choices around social media and gaming may be shaped by how they’re feeling but not necessarily the other way around,” said Prof Neil Humphrey, a co-author [of a Manchester University study that followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years].
15.01.2026 07:01 — 👍 33 🔁 18 💬 2 📌 4
There’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it.
We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics.
What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.
Our new paper in Hunter-Gatherer Research!
We explored women’s decision-making power within households in two subsistence communities with different gender norms (BaYaka foragers & Bandongo fisher-farmers) in the Congolese rainforest ✨
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...
