todd gureckis

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

one of the reason older academics become less productive is that they eventually have worked with so many people, it takes up all their time just updating their website about what all the former lab people are currently doing.

nice, thanks so much!

lab, do you have a template or screenshot of your spreadsheet you’d share?

anyone have a good technique for tracking project progress (app? whiteboard? a piece of paper?). i know someone that list all lab projects on a white board and have magnets that track through status like “coding” “in review” “in revision” etc…i’m wondering if someone dialed in a process for that

* my lab's new interest intake form was inspired by @brendenlake.bsky.social's process (lake-lab.github.io/apply/) which has served him well, and i welcome people to copy these questions --- it'd be fine if applicants adopt broadly similar text across labs! intake.gureckislab.org/interest/

yes, and i had the same thought, but many people on visa are "trapped" in the US due to the risk of leaving in the middle of of a phd, etc... so US conference are the only places where they present. there's no single option that seems ideal.

I think people are still trying to understand exactly what in-context learning in LLMs means for cognition because it's completely different than how most people imagined things working in cog sci (much more explicit and structural, but limited, approaches to analogy).

So far, learning traps seem robust to social learning in our cases. Surprisingly, despite many manipulations that have tried to reduce this learning trap, the most effective has been simply being a child (see @emilyliquin.bsky.social's work on traps in children) osf.io/preprints/ps...

This pattern was surprising given the popularity of the "social shaping" story of social influence whereby other people's choices act as a implicit reward signal for individual learning. Our results imply a more social-cognitive learning strategy based on inferring a partner's decision policy.

The basic punchline is that people have difficulty learning from other people (inferring another person's decision rule), and the trap remains robust! One exception if we essentially spoon-feed you what your partner is doing.

In a tour-de-force Rheza conducted five social learning experiments looking at how learning and deciding in the context of other people influences the tendency to fall into these traps.

We wondered though -- in real life we are surrounded by other people 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 with different tendencies to explore and different beliefs. How robust are these learning traps observed in individuals to social learning? e.g., if you see someone else explore it might encourage u to explore reducing traps.

Several years ago Alex Rich and I developed this task called the "attentional learning trap" wherein learners in a reinforcement learning task get robustly "trapped" in a suboptimal belief due to self-reinforcing patterns of avoidance. This pattern is rock solid 🪨 and has been replicated many times.

🚨 New preprint: "Decision rule inference limits social escape from learning traps" (with Rheza Budiono and Cate Hartley of the @hartleylabnyu.bsky.social ✨). Read here: osf.io/preprints/ps.... This is more work on a very curious phenomena!

This form is for students and scientists interested in doing research with us. Before applying, please read this page to learn more about our lab and opportunities. Keep in mind that we have a limited number of spots and many applicants. We review applications submitted through this form and usually can respond within two weeks. Due to limited time, Prof. Gureckis does not reply to emails about research opportunities that are not submitted through this form.

Interested in research in my lab? intake.gureckislab.org/interest/

the second best thing to having solved an important problem is to at least be working on an important problem.

weird - i studied categorization, concepts, analogy, similarity, & reasoning while being told it was a "dead area," people called my advisors "dinosaurs." in 2025 i'm listening to podcasts where like the gov. and tech giants are talking about how analogy is basically the key to the global economy. 🤷

... and belated congratulations to @guydav.bsky.social on an awesome dissertation!! Tour de force.

osf.io?

me too!

Releases · gureckis/slidev-theme-neversink Slidev Theme Neversink. Contribute to gureckis/slidev-theme-neversink development by creating an account on GitHub.

just in time for teaching, release 0.4.0 of slidev-theme-neversink, adds custom classes to stickynote and admonitions, a few bug fixes, updated to work with latest slidev 52.1.0 github.com/gureckis/sli...

ATTN🚨: I will be looking for PhD students through NYU's Center for Data Science PhD program this year. Applicants should have an interest in either NeuroAI (specifically biological attention or AI interpretability) or ML for Remote Sensing. Visit my lab website for more info: lindsay-lab.github.io

Final reminder: Capstone proposal deadline is this Sunday, August 17!

Partner with our master's students to solve real-world data challenges.

Submit your proposal: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

More info: cds.nyu.edu/masters-in-d...

we're hosting a science party in nyc next summer 👇

Researchers uncover surprising limit on human imagination Human beings can juggle up to 10 balls at once. But how many can they move through the air with their imaginations? The answer, published last month in Nature Communications,…

fun write up about our recent work on the limits of mental simulation:

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

(original paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

example lab structures

tryin' to be in the band, not the band manager. todd.gureckislab.org/2024/09/25/l...

Job announcement 📢

@shawnrhoadsphd.bsky.social and I are looking for a joint postdoc interested in computational models of social interaction!

Interested? If you’ll be at #rlc2025 (or I missed you at #cogsci2025) feel free to reach out with any questions!

apply.interfolio.com/165809

YouTube video by ToddGureckis Introducing Smile v0.1.0

New on YouTube: (Informally) Introducing Smile v0.1.0. Video walkthrough which might be helpful for people who are smile-curious. youtu.be/m0nDalDrLMI?...

The mental simulation adversarial collaboration continues... #cogsci2025