Chaz Firestone

“my kids have such different personalities!”

the personalities:

When a butterfly becomes a bear, perception takes center stage.

Research from @talboger.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and the Perception & Mind Lab.

¿Oso o mariposa? La IA crea nuevos ‘anagramas visuales’ para engañar al cerebro y estudiar nuestra percepción Un equipo de científicos ha creado un nuevo repertorio de imágenes que, gracias a la inteligencia artificial, permiten estudiar mejor la forma en que nuestro cerebro interpreta los estímulos visuales

❗ ¿Oso o mariposa? La IA crea nuevos ‘anagramas visuales’ para engañar al cerebro y estudiar nuestra percepción

Visual anagrams in the @dailymail.co.uk:

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...

Out today!

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵

a meme showing a smiling plush octopus and a frowning plush octopus. beside the smiling octopus: “when your students say they like your class” beside the frowning octopus: “when the same students are happy that you canceled class”

me this week

yes please don’t torture your students too much! they can only take so many em dashes and italics (i get carried away with those)

Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

(And with no paywall here: philpapers.org/archive/GOHE...)

(And with no paywall here: philpapers.org/archive/GOHE...)

Our new paper explores an analogy between representations of objects and representations of events, finding that similar illusions arise for both! Check it out 👇

You will definitely not regret reading this fantastic new paper by my (and @chazfirestone.bsky.social, Hanna Pickard and Monique Wonderly's) brilliant student, Rui Zhe Goh. I learned a huge amount working with him on it.

Really happy to have a new paper forthcoming at PPR!

Ever wondered if there’s any point in feeling regret? In this paper, I argue that regret is valuable because it helps us overcome temptation. Check it out: philpapers.org/rec/GOHRLA

a selfie with chaz and john danaher

screenshot of new yorker profile of danaher

excerpt from interview with danaher: The people I was most interested in were philosophers of science. You have great minds, like Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Kuhn, and my own dissertation supervisor, Isaac Levi. These were people who were fascinated by the question of research programs. What makes some progressive, what makes some regressive? What makes them healthy, what makes them unhealthy? For me, all of my coaching is structured along those lines.

had a little chat with the greatest grappling coach of all time! he was also a philosophy grad student at columbia way back when. mind blown

www.newyorker.com/culture/pers...

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Da...

Why a Classic Psychology Theory about Vision Has Fallen Apart The downfall of a long-standing theory in psychology raises a question: How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we literally see the world?

Do you fall for the Müller-Lyer optical illusion? Psychologists had long thought that it depends on your cultural background—the famous "carpentered-world" hypothesis. Now, that hypothesis is widely disputed. Here's why. 🧪 by @norabradford.bsky.social
www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

A little write-up of our Psych Review paper (with @chazfirestone.bsky.social) on culture and visual illusions — out now in Slate! 👇

hey check out @norabradford.bsky.social's latest!!

Way cool summary on whether the Muller-Lyer illusion shows consistency or differences across cultures. And the next post from Chaz gives a link to the research article.

For some folks, this may require updating how they teach perception. At what level does culture begin to influence perception?

so close bsky.app/profile/chaz...

Great article! Mentions the LEVANTE project and the ManyX efforts.

Thanks so much @dorsaamir.bsky.social and @chazfirestone.bsky.social, along with @mcxfrank.bsky.social, for your input on this! And ofc @sarahexplains.bsky.social and @parshallison.bsky.social for your editing!

For more context:

bsky.app/profile/chaz...

Why a Classic Psychology Theory about Vision Has Fallen Apart The downfall of a long-standing theory in psychology raises a question: How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we literally see the world?

How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we see the world? Wonderful piece in @sciam.bsky.social by @norabradford.bsky.social, ft. an interview with @dorsaamir.bsky.social about our work on the 'cultural byproduct hypothesis'.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

a novelty sign that reads: RATES Answers $1 Answers with Thought $20 Correct Answers $50 - Stupid Looks Are Free -

AI progress

🙃 i'm feeling a bit spun in circles. talk at next year's tiki bar??

well now i'm mixed up…by what principle do you determine which properties are sensible to control and which are hopeless/futile? as now acknowledged, we don't claim to equate literally all low-level properties. but our approach controls for luminance, contrast, spatial frequency, curvature…not bad!

i think that counts as progress! we certainly do disagree about that last part, and it's useful to have clarity on it.

(though now i'm wondering if i should screenshot your comments and use them to sidestep reviewer objections about just this issue…)

i agree with all this! need a new word (can surely have only one elides per day) but you’re leaving out the “” and ~ in the threads, and the nuance in the paper. controlling for low-level confounds is a goal had by many, and our project does that to a greater extent than before on this question