Dominik Straub

Delay adaptation does not transfer between discrete button press actions and continuous control - Loes CJ van Dam, Svenja Kernig, Karina Lazarova, Melisa Ünal, Nicole Gappa, Benjamin Straube, Thomas S... When interacting with technology, humans often deal with delays between an action and the desired action outcome. Through delay adaptation these delays will bec...

⬅️➡️ "Delay adaptation does not transfer between discrete button press actions and continuous control" by van Dam et al

Delay adaptation occurs for stylus (graphics tablet) and arrow buttons (keyboard) but doesn't transfer between response styles

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Wahl der Verfassungsrichter: Brosius-Gersdorf berichtet von Drohungen nach gescheiterter Wahl Aufgrund von Drohungen hat Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf ihre Mitarbeiter gebeten, nicht am Lehrstuhl zu arbeiten. Einen Verzicht auf ihre Kandidatur schließt sie nicht aus.

After her party halted the election of Brosius-Gersdorf as a constitutional judge using fake news, the federal minister of science (and space!) expects candidates to have "a little resilience" and "being able to take criticism". Is this how to protect academic freedom?

www.zeit.de/politik/deut...

Wahl der Verfassungsrichter: Brosius-Gersdorf berichtet von Drohungen nach gescheiterter Wahl Aufgrund von Drohungen hat Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf ihre Mitarbeiter gebeten, nicht am Lehrstuhl zu arbeiten. Einen Verzicht auf ihre Kandidatur schließt sie nicht aus.

Eigentlich sollte eine Wissenschaftsministerin Stimme der Wissenschaft im politischen System sein.
Bär will hingegen was anderes sein und fordert von Wissenschaftlerinnen "Kritikfähigkeit" ein, wenn sie diffamiert werden.

www.zeit.de/politik/deut...

So much alignment talk ignores the more traditional and pressing question about who should own the means of production in the first place since that ultimately determines who gets to make these decisions

@meredithmeredith.bsky.social is such a fantastic public face of the countermovement to tech company overreach and creeping fascism.

GitHub - jluttine/tikz-bayesnet: TikZ library for drawing Bayesian networks, graphical models and (directed) factor graphs in LaTeX. TikZ library for drawing Bayesian networks, graphical models and (directed) factor graphs in LaTeX. - jluttine/tikz-bayesnet

github.com/jluttine/tik...

Excited to share that our paper got accepted at #ICML2025!! 🎉

We challenge Vision-Language Models like OpenAI’s o1 with Bongard problems, classic visual reasoning challenges and uncover surprising shortcomings.

Check out the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2410.19546
& read more below 👇

I’m excited to announce that I’m recruiting for a fully-funded 3.5-year PhD position in my lab in Southampton (UK). For details and to apply, see here: www.southampton.ac.uk/study/postgr...

Welcome #VSS2025! For those attending the sunny, beaches, and science at this years Florida conference, make sure not to miss the awesome talks and posters from our lab!

Registration for IICCSSS 2025 in Darmstadt is open! 🥳 Sign up now for a week of exciting talks, hands-on projects and inspiring discussions! www.iiccsss.org/registration/
As always, IICCSSS is free, and open to all students who are excited about computational cognitive science 💡🧠

Although theoretically nice, it is only true under certain assumptions (Gaussian perceptual noise, quadratic costs, no motor variability).

For Bayesian observers, not just SDT, there is a lot to be explored in terms of the behavioral effects we expect when moving beyond these assumptions.

Very excited to be part of the Simons collaboration on ecological neuroscience @simonsfoundation.org together with this fantastic team! Theory-driven investigation of where representations for perception, cognition, and action in ecological tasks come from. POMDPs FTW. Stay tuned for job openings...

And as long as there is no real increase in funding, many countries are just pitching local talent against US talent, which results in a more difficult market for everybody. If you want to attract foreign talent, make sure your fundamental funding is _very_ strong!

@tobnie.bsky.social will be presenting our #ICLR2025 paper on extending Bayesian models of perception and action to arbitrary cost functions and how to fit them to human behavior

Stop by our poster if you're interested in cognitive modeling and Bayesian decision-making!

For the first time since WWII an extreme right party is #1 in the German polls. Anti-fascist economic policy is urgently needed.

Instead the new coalition agenda entails:
- cut profit tax
- end 8 hr workday
- open tap for defense, austerity for the rest
- weaken social security

Congratulations to Matthias Schultheis for defending his PhD thesis 'Inverse reinforcement learning for human decision-making under uncertainty' with distinction. Significant contributions to understanding bounded actors with inverse POMDPs for partial observabilities and non-stationary behavior

It's bonkers that in academic science we spend hours obsessing over the wording of a paper, but often only one person has seen the code that produced the results! 2/N

predicting ≠ understanding

The funniest part:

a (mandatory) German version of the abstract, which contains gems like "optimale Rückkopplungssteuerung mit signalabhängigem Rauschen" 😬

(4/4) finally, a discussion of how future work should further validate the components of normative models (probabilistic internal models, subjective cost functions) experimentally, and how these components might be linked to neural implementations - Chapter 9

(2/3) a methods chapter detailing the computational modeling background (Bayesian models, POMDPs, optimal control) - Chapter 2

(3/4) an overview chapter on probabilistic inverse optimal that tries to link the remaining chapters on IOC in a slightly more general notation - Chapter 4

A figure describing the conceptual framework for inverse normative modeling. A subject sits in front of a screen and performs a task. A thought bubble next to their head says: "What should I do given my beliefs and goals?". A researcher is standing next to the participant. A thought bubble next to the researcher states: "What are their beliefs and goals given their behavior?".

What's new (besides previously published papers):

(1/4) an introduction explaining the logic of fitting normative models behavioral data (what I call "inverse normative modeling" in the thesis) and why that approach is promising for modeling continuous and sequential behavior - Chapter 1

Happy to share that my PhD thesis is now published 🎓

"Inverse normative modeling of continuous perception and action"

tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/29614/

It's giving epicycles.

deutsche akademiker:innen im völlig stellenbefreiten wissenschaftsbetrieb beim lesen der vielen hoffnungsvollen op eds, dass der brain drain aus den usa nach deutschland beginnen könnte

Interesting move after February's email in which we were assured that "VSS remains strong, independent, and committed to... the diversity of our community"

Hey @vssmtg.bsky.social, do you no longer support diversity and inclusion? Looks like your policies were quietly removed from your website? #VSS2025 #VSS

Malmendier: "Stimmung drastisch geändert" Kann Deutschland Top-Wissenschaftler aus den USA anlocken? "Wir brauchen eine Strategie. Wir brauchen konkrete Anreizen," so die Wirtschaftsweise Ulrike Malmendier.

Könnte Deutschland Forscher aus den USA abwerben? Was braucht es dafür? Ein Gespräch mit Ulrike Malmendier, Wirtschaftsweise u Professorin in Berkeley, California.

www.zdf.de/nachrichten/...

Someone pointed out that influencers use serotonin/dopamine/cortisol/oxytocin like they’re the four humors and now I can’t stop seeing it