Emily M. Sanford

Really enjoyed chatting with @michaelhobbes.bsky.social for this episode! In addition to being a delight to talk to, Michael was _extremely_ committed to getting the facts right & engaged very earnestly with our feedback. A scientist's dream.

Somehow I spoke to more anthropologists for my silly little podcast than Yuval Harari did for his bestselling book

HUGE thanks to our incredible team: @janengelmann.bsky.social and the @socialoriginslab.bsky.social, @estherherrmann.bsky.social, @wdt.bsky.social, Josep Call, Snow Zhang, Dr. Joshua Rukundo and the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, and most of all, thanks to the brilliant chimpanzees!!

A close up photo of a chimpanzee's eyes

“It is a profound gift to know that when a chimpanzee stares into a person’s eyes, they too could be reflecting on their beliefs about humans.” - Brian Hare (photo by Innocent Ampeire) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Figure depicting modeling results for all experiments. The tested models are Recency Bias (where the subject only uses evidence perceived most recently), Belief Perseveration (where the subject only uses evidence perceived first), Cue Saliency (where the subject only uses the strongest evidence they've perceived), and Rational Choice (where the subject combines all relevant evidence). Recency Bias and Belief Perseveration failed to explain behavior in Experiments 1 and 2. Both Cue Saliency and Rational Choice are consistent with the results of Experiments 1 and 2. Cue Saliency fails to explain behavior in Experiments 3, 4, and 5. Rational Choice is the best explanation for behavior across all 5 experiments.

Across experiments, our computational modeling analyses demonstrated that the best explanation for the chimps’ behavior was rational reasoning.

A figure illustrating the experimental procedure. Top panel: Defeater condition. Evidence 1: One box is shaken, and the chimpanzee hears something inside. Evidence 2: The chimpanzee sees through blurry glass into the other box, which appears to contain an apple. Choice 1: The chimpanzee indicates which box they think contains food. Evidence 3: Panels of glass are removed from both boxes. The glass removed from the shaken box is blank. The glass removed from the blurry visual box has a picture of an apple on it. Choice 2: The chimpanzee again indicates which box contains food. Bottom panel: Non-Defeater condition. Evidence 1: One box is shaken, and the chimpanzee hears something inside. Evidence 2: The chimpanzee sees through blurry glass into the other box, which appears to contain an apple. Choice 1: The chimpanzee indicates which box they think contains food. Evidence 3: Panels of glass are removed from both boxes. Both panes of glass are blank. Choice 2: The chimpanzee again indicates which box contains food.

My favorite result: chimps metacognitively re-evaluated old evidence. We showed them food in the box, then we showed them that there was a sticker that looked like food in the box. Astonishingly, chimps re-evaluated their previous construal of the evidence, revising their belief away from that box!

A figure illustrating the experimental procedure. Left panel: Strong evidence first condition. Evidence 1: The chimpanzee sees through blurry glass into a box containing an apple. Choice 1: The chimpanzee indicates which box they think contains food. Evidence 2: The other box is shaken and something can be heard inside. Choice 2: The chimpanzee again indicates which box contains food. Right panel: Weak Evidence First condition. Evidence 1: One box is shaken, and the chimpanzee hears something inside. Choice 1: The chimpanzee indicates which box they think contains food. Evidence 2: The chimpanzee sees through blurry glass into the other box, which looks to contain an apple. Choice 2: The chimpanzee again indicates which box contains food.

In our study, chimps had to guess where food was hidden. They got strong evidence for one box and weak evidence for the other. Consistent with rationality, the chimps revised their choice more often when weak evidence came first, overwhelmingly choosing the option supported by stronger evidence!

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

Nothing can prepare you for the factual basis behind this 'wokeness gone too far' anecdote.

In my opinion it’s time to retire the Nobel prizes for fields where most of the important discoveries have already been made, like physics, and add prizes for newer fields where substantial innovations occur every year, like speedrunning

He Grew Obsessed With an AI Chatbot. Then He Vanished in the Ozarks Jon Ganz committed a terrible crime in his youth, but he survived prison, fell in love, and started over. His new life unraveled in a way nobody could have predicted.

This is the biggest, toughest article I’ve done about so-called “AI psychosis.” It’s the story of a man who committed a horrific crime in his youth but served his time and against all odds found love and a new life—one that completely unraveled after he started talking to Google’s Gemini chatbot.

We need a bigger tent, that’s why we must betray and expel the following types of people:

Opinion | The Right Didn’t Catch Cancel Culture From the Left

great piece from the always-great @pastpunditry.bsky.social and a welcome antidote to vacuous commentators whose historical memories seem to go back no further than the first iron man movie

One little thing I’m really getting tired of is insecure over-empowered crybaby hypocritical disingenuous hate-filled white guys.

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

NSF changed their eligibility requirements for the GRFP a month before the deadline. Students used to be able to apply in their 1st or 2nd year, now only 1st years can apply - excluding an entire cohort of students with no notice. Yet another way this admin is kneecapping American science

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.

The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP

jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

Depolarization is not "a scalable solution for reducing societal-level conflict.... achieving lasting depolarization will likely require....moving beyond individual-level treatments to address the elite behaviors and structural incentives that fuel partisan conflict" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

They are literally canceling culture

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

they are vaccine deniers tbh

i don't believe these because you're not willing to write 900 pages of notes on a 300 page book, which is critical for an accurate michael impression

The free speech activist who built a list of professors he worked to get fired for their speech must be celebrated for his support of free speech, and anyone who quotes his speech accurately in context will be fired and/or face state punishment by the champions of free speech, do I have that right?

We’ve been living through 72 nonstop hours of this exact tweet

The fact that Matthew Dowd lost his job for pointing out Charlie Kirk’s hate speech, while Brian Kilmeade openly suggests we should euthanize the homeless and there is zero outrage, shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.

What Ezra means by "the right way," and what I meant expressing a similar line this morning, is that Kirk was operating within a liberal framework that was modeled on persuasion and included real, robust support for free speech. Obviously it's not an endorsement of the content.

These people have smarted themselves into the dumbest fucking arguments.

Determining whether someone is "doing politics the right way" depends almost entirely on the content of their speech! If someone lies constantly and endorses authoritarians that's not practicing good politics.

G.I. Jane with Rhiannon Hamam

I went on Bechdel Cast to talk about when a woman shaves her head and withstands torture so she can…idk man it gets complicated just listen to us lose our minds

@jamieloftus.bsky.social @caitlindurante.bsky.social

open.spotify.com/episode/6tSZ...?

Extremist murders by ideology, 2013 to 2022. www.pbump.net/o/reassessin...

Step back, have a little perspective. This is a better headline: "University turns Judith Butler over to the police for thought crime"