Simon Brown

Guidance for responding to 'A Fairer Pathway to Settlement' consultation We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.

The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

Very happy to see "Pretending not to know reveals a capacity for model-based self-simulation", a collaboration with @chazfirestone.bsky.social and @ianbphillips.bsky.social, out in Psych. Science!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177...

🧵

Anyone with at least an undergrad degree can apply! I think we could be an attractive option for a wide range of people from around the world, especially for those interested in Indian philosophy (and especially Buddhism)!

Opportunities for Indian (and other Global South) students to study PhDs abroad are rapidly drying up/looking less and less attractive. So we're excited to offer high-quality education in all areas of philosophy accessible to such students!

Ph.D. Programme in Philosophy - Ashoka University The PhD in Philosophy programme conforms to all Ashoka PhD programme guidelines. Additional guidelines specific to the Philosophy PhD programme […]

We're starting a PhD programme in Philosophy at Ashoka! Anyone can apply by April 15 for admission this year, and we will ensure that admitted applicants receive enough funding to support them for the 5 year programme. More info here:
www.ashoka.edu.in/programme/ph...

YouTube video by Johns Hopkins University Apes Share Human Ability to Imagine

Imagination in bonobos!

I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org

We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative

youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

Now with an official Teaching and Learning Guide! compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I've read a lot of slanted papers from tech company employees about the 'benefits' of AI, but the fact that Anthropic themselves have put out such a cautious paper should be a big cause for alarm for people who are trading learning for prompting

And it doesn't improve productivity!

Fortunately the part about it being a table he was delivering was accurate! Although I have since eaten off it...

Screenshot showing that r/Conservative, noted bastion of free/awful speech, is now ranked just one above us in weekly visitor numbers.

Please make it your new resolution to visit AskHistorians once a week, because we've never been this invested in overtaking another community.

Whatsapp screenshot with messages in short succession reading "Hy", "Sir, I am bathing in delivery curry.", "I brought your dining table"

My Hindi is terrible and most Delhi delivery drivers' English isn't much better, so we often have to rely on google translate. Mix this with lack of standardisation in how Hindi is spelled in Latin alphabet and the results can be glorious:

Reform council spends £600k on eight free parking spaces for senior councillors | LBC The majority of staff, who will not be able to use the free parking facilities available to their senior colleagues, will still be expected to pay to park every day

A Reform-led council has spent £600,000 on an eight-space car park, of which six spaces are reserved for senior Reform councillors, who get to park there at no charge.

www.lbc.co.uk/article/refo...

A new study from Anthropic finds that gains in coding efficiency when relying on AI assistance did did not meet statistical significance; AI use noticeably degraded programmers’ understanding of what they were doing. Incredible.

PhD Scholarship

My Centre is a unique place to do a PhD in Philosophy, because you can be in constant contact with experts in veterinary medicine, psychology, zoology and policy and be part of a team united by a shared interest in animal minds. We now have our 1st ever PhD scholarship: www.lse.ac.uk/sentience/phd

A discreet intellectual network has been reshaping the world for 70 years. Here's how A constant battle of ideas reshapes the world we live in, and few groups have been more successful in winning the war than the little-known Atlas Network.

In an event which appears to have been real rather than a fever dream of Carol J. Adams, Friedrich Hayek once molested a bull so that a photograph could be sent to Margaret Thatcher with the caption "Hayek's Got Inflation By The Balls" www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Staff Entomologist — Insect Welfare Research Society Work with Us

The IWRS is hiring! Help us build the infrastructure for invertebrate welfare research—from husbandry databases to educational resources. 🐛📖

Remote Research Scientist position, $55-60K. We will begin reviewing applications on March 15.

Learn more and apply here:

NEW: India is avoiding the fossil fuel detour 🪝

Where China built first on coal and gas, India is taking a shortcut >>> read in 5 graphics🧵

Podcast: Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith · Nature in Crisis: ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson

A new podcast series through the London Review of Books (@lrb.co.uk): "Nature in Crisis." Close readings of books about nature, conservation, climate, & energy.
Once a month, with myself & Meehan Crist.
Episode 1, out now, is about Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and...

title of Michel's Consciousness Doesn't Do That

Is Signal Strength a Confound in Consciousness Research?

today's blog post, critiquing @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @hakwan.bsky.social -- link in comments

Aaaand we're back!!

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

Number of UK newspaper editorials arguing for more (blue) and less (red) climate action, 2011-2025. Some editorials also present a “balanced” view, which is categorised as advocating for neither “more” nor “less” climate action. These editorials are not represented in this chart. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

NEW – Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time | @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social @sylviahayes.bsky.social

Read here: buff.ly/eAPkvkx

Sentience in cephalopod molluscs: an updated assessment This article evaluates the evidence for sentience – the capacity to have feelings – in cephalopod molluscs: octopus, cuttlefish, squid, and nautilus. Our framework includes eight criteria, covering b...

For those cephalopod lovers among you, our new updated review of the evidence for cephalpod sentience has now been published in Biological Reviews. (Sadly the picture is of birds rather than cephalopods, as this is the journal cover!)
doi.org/10.1002/brv....

UFAW Centenary Conference 2026 celebrating 100 years of science for animal welfare, held 23-25 June at Senate House, University of London and online.

📢 Abstract submission and registration reminder!

As we celebrate 100 years of UFAW, we invite you to join our 3-day conference to explore the latest developments in #AnimalWelfareScience

More details and submission portal: https://www.scienceforanimalwelfare2026.org/

New UCC paper shows how low beef and sheep systems are for net digestible protein per hectare: they produce protein for 2–3 people per ha, versus ~23 for milk and ~40 for legumes. That’s ~15× more digestible protein per hectare from legumes than beef.

Robert Jenrick is unique in British politics for being the only MP who is an anagram of his constituency

To encourage reuse of our data, Pew Research Center, with support from the John Templeton Foundation, invites researchers to submit proposals for new research publications that use one or more of the following datasets (collectively, Datasets) from the Global Religious Futures (GRF) project: Global Restrictions on Religion 2007-2022 dataset. This cumulative dataset includes measures of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion in nearly 200 countries and territories. Spring 2024 Survey. This dataset includes measures of religion and spirituality in 35 countries. (Comparable data was also collected in 2023 and 2024 for the United States. The downloadable materials which accompany the international dataset include additional information about U.S. data.) Dataset of Global Religious Composition Estimates for 2010 and 2020. This dataset includes estimates of the size of seven major religious groups in more than 200 countries and territories. We encourag

Please share: Pew Research Center will provide $3,000 each for 19 new papers using our recent global datasets. We encourage reuse of our Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures data!
https://www.pewresearch.org/2026/01/16/seeking-research-using-recent-pew-templeton-global-religious-futures-datasets/

"x happened following y" does not entail "y caused x" or even "x happened immediately following y"

Savouring Truth: Exposing Disinformation in the World of Alternative Meats This chapter analyses the deceptive tactics employed by the Center for Consumer Freedom’s (CCF) Clean Food Facts campaign, an astroturfing effort targeting

The "Clean Food Facts" campaign of the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is funded by the meat industry, is an #astroturfing effort targeting #plantbased meat alternatives thru manipulative strategies: the illusion of credibility, emotional #manipulation and… (1/2) doi.org/10.1108/978-...

The utterly shameless & widely covered "report" out today, claiming net zero will "cost" £9tn is based on:

* Assuming free fossil-fuel energy, free petrol cars, free gas boilers, free gas power plants etc

AND

* Including climate damages in the "cost" of net zero

I kid you not, it is that stupid

New paper from the IMC lab! I am very excited about this one. For years, I have been arguing that one of the main claims of the so-called "simulation heuristic" is likely not true for episodic counterfactual thinking, namely that the harder it is to mentally simulate it, the less plausible (1/n)