J. Brendan Ritchie

Thanks, @bhanlon15.bsky.social Here’s a free link www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

I'm hiring again!!
Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp

- to work with me!

Deadline: March 20, 2026

More info on PhilJobs

American Psychological Association Reaffirms Support For Trans Youth Care, Pushes Back Against NYT A recent article from Jesse Singal in the New York Times seemed to indicate the organization might be quietly retreating from supporting trans youth care.

1. Major news on trans youth care. The American Psychological Association has reaffirmed its full support for its 2024 guidelines supporting trans youth car.e

It provided documentation showing Jesse Singal mischaracterized their position in the NYT.

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Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex A wealth of studies report evidence that occipitotemporal cortex tessellates into ‘category-selective’ brain regions that are apparently specialized for representing ecologically important visual s...

Again, I want to thank the commentators for engaging with our piece. Here is a link to our Discussion article they were replying to. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Second, assuming we want to study behavioral relevance, there are a number of things that need to be addressed, like the natural behaviors to focus on, what visual dimensions are important, and how it is shaped during development. Here commentators made a bunch of great suggestions! 5/x

But overall we think these commentaries made clear that work remains to be done in clarifying the differing frameworks, and and their opposing theoretical claims and empirical predictions. 4/x

First, some commentaries drew distinctions that did not quite aline with our contrast between category-selectivity and behavioral relevance. TL;DR, the former is centered on selectivity for region-defining stimuli; the latter selectivity for stimuli relevant to region-defining behaviors. 3/x

Overall we think the commentators were sympathetic to the more ethological focus we argued for in our piece, even if they raised criticisms with our suggestion that research should focus on behavioral relevance, rather than category-selectivity. We highlighted two avenues for future work. 2/x

What behavioral relevance is (not) We are thankful for the thoughtful commentaries of our colleagues. In our discussion article, we argued for a course correction to how the field approaches the organization of visual function in oc...

Our reply to 11 commentaries on our article ("Rethinking category-selectivity in human visual cortex") is out in Cognitive Neuroscience! Thanks to @susanwardle.bsky.social @maryamvaziri.bsky.social Dwight Kravitz @cibaker.bsky.social and all who contributed! 1/x www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

the benefit from writing the paper is not having a 30-page paper as a result

the benefit is the thinking that goes along with writing the paper — that is part of writing the paper.

If all that's done is the pre-analysis plan and the analysis then that limits the new thinking

Civil Servants Demand: Impeach Russell Vought The Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is the central architect driving the destruction of your government. Russell Vought created lawlessness in every part of the Trump administ...

Russell Vought is the central architect driving the destruction of your government. We are urging Congress to act now to protect the American people by impeaching and convicting Vought. We invite all Americans to join us by signing on to our letter to Congress.

actionnetwork.org/forms/civil-...

‘No one deserves this’: Beaverton father dies after deportation to Mexico A Beaverton family is grieving after the father, who was detained and deported by ICE, has now died.

This 53 year old man who lived in my neighborhood w/no criminal record & who had been in the US for 30 years, was detained and thrown into a cold cell for days, caught pneumonia and COVID there and deported.

He finally died.

I am so angry.
www.kptv.com/2026/02/21/n...

With New Momentum, Republican States Push Broader Limits for Trans Americans In states that once focused mainly on health care and sports for transgender minors, debates now revolve around the validity of transgender identity.

The subheadline on this NYT piece is going to turn me into the Joker.

Like... this... is exactly what trans people have been saying was going to happen for years.

Exclusive | OpenAI Employees Raised Alarms About Canada Shooting Suspect Months Ago The ChatGPT maker opted against informing Canadian authorities about Jesse Van Rootselaar’s descriptions of violence last June.

Absolutely wild. WSJ reporting that some OpenAI staffers thought the Tumbler Ridge shooter's use of ChatGPT raised the potential of real world violence but leadership decided not to alert RCMP. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

This is correct. A serious “middle power” would be investing like mad right now in advanced knowledge right across the disciplines. It is the best reaction to the world’s greatest power seeking to return to the Middle Ages.

Since coming back to Canada I've been shocked by the lack of Long Covid research funding compared to the US (eg RECOVER-TLC at NIH). LC is now the most common chronic illness amongst kids. It needs to be a Tri-Agency priority.

@altfda.altgov.info challenged us to list #5Things that each of us Alts think have caused the most damage in our agencies over the past year. Each of the five items is chock full of sub-items…adding up to far more “things.” Here goes.

Ida Momennejad, The Ontological Reversal of Computation and the Brain - PhilArchive The Brain Abstracted (2025) critiques treating abstractions in neuroscience as complete explanations of the brain, for their oversimplification and control-orientation. Chirimuuta argues that neurosci...

On the invitation for a commentary on Mazviita Chirimuuta's The Brain Abstracted, I had the pleasure of writing on equating the brain with computation.

The Ontological Reversal of Computation and the Brain

in Philosophy & the Mind Sciences.
Below see what I agree & disagree with in the book.
🧵 1/n

ITS TIME TO STAND UP FOR SCIENCE RALLY ON MARCH 7th AT YOUR NEAREST RALLY OR REGISTER TO HOST A RALLY! A map showing the various rallies being hosted across the US. standupforscience.net/march7

On March 7th, we are rallying nationwide and NEED YOU 🫵 to rally with us! Visit standupforscience.net/march7 to find a rally near you and volunteer or to host your own rally!

#March7
#standupforscience
#rally
#ImpeachRFKJr
#RFKJr

Wow.

NHS closed Tavistock over care complaints – there were only eight An eye-opening FOI report has revealed that just eight people complained about the Tavistock gender clinic's care provision in 10 years.

a clinic that provided services to 12,000 people being closed on the basis of 8 complaints perfectly captures the nature of the uk 'trans-debate'

www.thepinknews.com/2026/02/11/n...

Well, this seems downright evil

The guy is a AI hype man who was accused of making fraudulent claims about his model a year or so ago.
He's about the last person I'm gonna listen to.

Anyone want to do a PhD with me at the Sunny Coast? I'm recruiting, and I wanna do some fun psychophysics (but the possibilities for the PhD are very broad). Domestic students only, sadly.

In case y'all happen to know someone:
@nataliepeluso.com
@reubenrideaux.bsky.social
@visnerd.bsky.social

U of A looks to remove EDI from hiring policy | CBC News The University of Alberta is proposing to eliminate Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) from its hiring policy, a year after the school initially said it was moving away from the term.

New emails obtained by CBC through access of information show that before announcing the end of EDI at the University of Alberta, the president sent his announcement to the UCP before publication.

How's that for institutional neutrality?

Visual language models show widespread visual deficits on neuropsychological tests - Nature Machine Intelligence Tangtartharakul and Storrs use standardized neuropsychological tests to compare human visual abilities with those of visual language models (VLMs). They report that while VLMs excel in high-level obje...

Our latest paper, “Visual language models show widespread visual deficits on neuropsychological tests”, is now out in Nature Machine Intelligence: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Non-paywalled version:
arxiv.org/abs/2504.10786

Tweet thread below from first author @genetang.bsky.social...

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

I have news! After 4 fabulous years at Northeastern, this July I will be moving to Duke—with tenure! It’s hard to convey how grateful I am to everyone who has made this possible: from old professors in Mexico and mentors in the US to students, colleagues, and, of course, my amazing wife and family.

Spoke with a PI whose postdoc is trapped abroad because of social media vetting. It appears the postdoc missed disclosing one account and it's unclear if they can come back… ever.

This is the country we live in now.

Thousands may have been exposed to measles at Brandon Ag Days event, province warns | CBC News Thousands of people who attended what's touted as Canada's largest indoor farm show this year may have been exposed to measles, Manitoba public health officials warn.

“…. the province said in a media bulletin Friday afternoon.”

Classic late Friday public health bulletin bombshell from the prov. PCs always did this with bad Covid news.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...