Mathieu Charbonneau

All proposals should be submitted by email to ces2026@um6p.ma

Post 13/13 📩
All activities proposals, video submissions, and further questions should be sent to CES2026@um6p.ma

Post 1/13 📢🧵

Call for activities proposals !

You are invited to submit proposals for three activities to be held during the upcoming CES2026 conference:

Due to the the high volume of submissions received, abstract decision notifications for the upcoming Cultural Evolution Society 2026 Conference in Rabat are slightly delayed.

Expect to see it in your inbox in ~ 1 week, and fingers crossed you got your presentation of choice!

The deadline has been extended - there is still time to get your abstracts in to join us in Morocco!

The submission deadline for #CESRabat has been extended to 30 November

@ces2026.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

👉 A reminder that the deadline for submitting your abstract to the CES 2026 #CESRabat is the 16th of November.

🔗Submit here: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

We look forward to seeing you in Rabat!

👉 A reminder that the deadline for submitting your abstract to the CES 2026 #CESRabat is the 16th of November.

🔗Submit here: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

We look forward to seeing you in Rabat!

Looks great! ToC here: mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/conten...

Book launch for “Methods in the Philosophy of Science: a user’s guide”. Ftf in Exeter and online on the 29th of Sept feat Sophie Veigl, Kerry McKenzie, Hasok Chang, and me. It should be fun! (the book will be open access in July, contact me in the meantime) www.exeter.ac.uk/events/detai... #philsci

We’re delighted to share that the CES2026 Conference website is now live!

We warmly invite researchers, scholars, and practitioners to submit their presentation proposals by November 16th through the submission portal on the website.

Find out more on the new conference website: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

Presentation submissions are open until November 16, with four submission formats: standard talks (15-20 minutes), lightning talks (5 minutes), poster presentations, and thematic sessions.

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.

Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright

We are delighted to announce that the CES2026 conference website is now live! We invite you to submit your presentation proposals using the link on the webpage, deadline November 16th:
airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

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

8/8 This contributes to understanding human technological uniqueness *by identifying a mechanism and explaining the dynamics* that enable open-ended cultural evolution, how we escape the optimization traps that constrain other species and achieve truly unbounded technological development.

7/8 This process differs from cumulative optimization because it involves expanding the range of problems that can be solved (evolvability) rather than optimizing solutions to existing problems (adaptation). It's about accessing new problems, not just solving old ones better.

6/8 I propose a model for how cultural evolution of increasingly sophisticated cognitive technologies enables access to previously unreachable invention problems, driving open-ended technological change.

5/8 These inventions include further empowering cognitive technologies, creating a feedback loop. Inventors become increasingly capable of making themselves even more capable inventors. We literally make ourselves smarter at making ourselves smarter.

4/8 By inventing technologies that enhance cognition, we become able to invent technologies that would have been impossible using only our core (non-cultural) cognitive abilities. Writing, math, measuring tools—these expand what our minds can accomplish.

3/8 My argument: human open-ended technological evolution emerges from cultural evolutionary bootstrapping of our inventive capabilities through cognitive technologies. We invent technologies that enhance our cognitive capabilities.

2/8 A puzzle (2): Yet humans are capable of open-ended or evolvable technological change: we generate novel and useful technological solutions for an ever-expanding set of increasingly complex problems. But how are novel problems of increasing complexity accessed?

1/8 🧵 A puzzle (1): While cumulative improvement explains how specific technological traditions get increasingly better at solving pre-existing problems, it's fundamentally an optimization process, one which halts when an optimal solution is found (optimization trap).

Open‐Ended Technological Evolution: The Co‐Evolution of Invention and Cognitive Technologies Open-ended technological evolution is the result of the co-evolution of invention and cognitive technologies that enhances our cognitive capabilities and generates a feedback loop of ever-expanding t....

New paper out in Topics in Cognitive Science! "Open-Ended Technological Evolution: The Co-Evolution of Invention and Cognitive Technologies" 🧵
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

There is a job opening (Post-Doctoral Research Associate, 2 years, 100%) in my new VW project on the macro-evolution of Pleistocene technological ecosystems in Europe: ecolithic.uni-koeln.de/opportunitie...

Deadline 25.05.2025

Please distribute widely!
🏺🦣

Quote: " In sum, leader-directed teaching of opaque cooperative norms would be a mutually beneficial strategy, where the costs incurred by influential teachers are, at least partly, outweighed by the long-term benefits of cultivating cooperation within the group."

Mosaic plot illustrating the relationship between evidence for teaching and non-teaching social learning, based on a binary researcher-coded measure of teaching. "Although instrumental cultural transmission frequently occurs through both teaching and non-teaching social learning, opaque cultural information is predominantly transmitted through teaching, with relatively fewer instances of non-teaching social learning."

With @sheinalew.bsky.social: Teaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, in @naturecomms.bsky.social

#evolution #culture 🧪 #LeadSciSky #CultEvo

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cultural Evolution Society 2026 Conference Announced - Cultural Evolution Society

Announcement! The next @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau, @sarahalami.bsky.social, @zhgarfield.com & @edseabright.bsky.social. Save the dates!

culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

Looking forward to it!

I see why you say 'smarter', but they seem to say, then: 'smarter = better inheritance system' no? So its not 'smarter' in terms of *producing* new variation (vs. intelligent invention), but rather in terms of being capable of *learning/transmitting* more various information, no?