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Maxime Derex

@maximederex.bsky.social

CNRS Researcher at IAST and Toulouse School of Economics Working on Cumulative culture, Social learning, Innovation, ...

1,022 Followers  |  188 Following  |  22 Posts  |  Joined: 20.10.2023  |  1.8993

Latest posts by maximederex.bsky.social on Bluesky

It's hiring season at @iast.fr!

- 2y research postdoc contract
- Full autonomy, you are your own PI
- Awesome multidisciplinary environment
- All social and behavioral sciences welcome
- Seed funding for projects and workshops
- Gorgeous city in the south of France

www.iast.fr/research-fel...

20.09.2025 09:15 β€” πŸ‘ 62    πŸ” 50    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 4
Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

16.09.2025 14:04 β€” πŸ‘ 106    πŸ” 46    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 9
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Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanismsβ€”such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

πŸ’™New paper!πŸ’™

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

14.09.2025 07:52 β€” πŸ‘ 161    πŸ” 66    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 5
Fees and Funding - Durham University

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

11.09.2025 09:12 β€” πŸ‘ 69    πŸ” 84    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 5

Thrilled that our paper on the mechanisms underlying social learning strategies is out! First big paper from my @erc.europa.eu & @kawresearch.bsky.social funded group. More to come! I'm currently looking to recruit two post docs, get in touch if you find this line of research interesting.

23.07.2025 11:41 β€” πŸ‘ 62    πŸ” 28    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 3
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🚨 New preprint 🚨

Experimental Evidence for the Propagation and Preservation of Machine Discoveries in Human Populations

arxiv.org/abs/2506.17741

with team members @levinbrinkmann.bsky.social @thomasfmueller.bsky.social Ann-Marie Nussberger, @maximederex.bsky.social, Sara Bonati, Valerii Chirkov

27.06.2025 10:33 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 6    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Seeking Behavioral Science PhDs @cuboulderibs.bsky.social @granthamlse.bsky.social @casbsstanford.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @nathumbehav.nature.com @maximederex.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social @casbsstanford.bsky.social

09.06.2025 16:53 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Join us on the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social executive committee! Shape the field of cultural evolution alongside amazing colleagues @maximederex.bsky.social, @nicolewen.bsky.social, @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @ferylbadiani.bsky.social & incoming President Fiona Jordan

05.06.2025 19:23 β€” πŸ‘ 11    πŸ” 10    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

It's CES election time! We have FOUR positions that have come up for renewal, so please consider nominating yourself or your colleagues. Nominations close June 20th, with voting from June 30th -July 4th.

04.06.2025 11:15 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 16    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
OECS thematic collections.

OECS thematic collections.

If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind.

Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!

30.05.2025 00:18 β€” πŸ‘ 417    πŸ” 183    πŸ’¬ 10    πŸ“Œ 7

3 days left until the deadline for these @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social grants

27.05.2025 09:54 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

Do you teach a course on cultural evolution?

The @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social is offering Cultural Evolution Course Design Awards

Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

$4000 award. Apply for up to 3 courses. Less than 30min per course submission.

14.05.2025 20:00 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 9    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

10 days left to apply for our CES awards for Outreach, ECR grants or for building capacity

20.05.2025 05:09 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

πŸ“’ CES launches Advancing Cultural Evolution (ACE) Course Design Awards! πŸŽ‰ $4000 award + global impact for your cultural evolution course materials. Course must be college/grad level with 10+ hrs content.

Application link: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #CulturalEvolution #Education #Grants

14.05.2025 10:39 β€” πŸ‘ 13    πŸ” 18    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 2

Don't forget to put in your application for our 2025 awards!

05.05.2025 18:30 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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We are recruiting two postdoctoral scholars for a research project in human collective intelligence and creativity at UC Davis and Cornell. Joint project with @enfascination.com, @norijacoby.bsky.social, @oferon.bsky.social & Dalton Conley. Please forward this thread to relevant people. 1/n

29.04.2025 02:46 β€” πŸ‘ 22    πŸ” 24    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 2
decision trees in human play in the game of go before and after the arrival of superhuman AI, showing gradual change rather than revolutionary disruption

decision trees in human play in the game of go before and after the arrival of superhuman AI, showing gradual change rather than revolutionary disruption

🚨 New preprint! 🚨

I looked at 400+ years of cumulative cultural evolution in the Game of Go from feudalism to superhuman AI. Did AlphaGo etc. completely disrupt human play? No! More like human-machine convergence, rather than revolution.

Check out these decision trees!

osf.io/preprints/ps...

09.04.2025 17:35 β€” πŸ‘ 60    πŸ” 25    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 2
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ACE Outreach Awards CES will give out two awards of up to $2500 each to support activities that translate cultural evolution research for a non-academic audience or for students outside of the field of cultural evolution...

The 2025 Cultural Evolution Society awards are now open for applications!
-Outreach Award (2 awards, up to $2,500 each) forms.gle/Eq6BhtnptQLQ...
-ECR Grant (2 awards, up to $3,000 each) forms.gle/69DpptguwRqN...
-Building Research Capacity Award (1 award, up to $6,000) forms.gle/ZLGEW612GbZ4...

11.04.2025 09:19 β€” πŸ‘ 23    πŸ” 22    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 6
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ACE Lab: Applied Cultural Evolution Laboratory culture, evolution, cooperation, and sustainability

Fully-funded PhD position on the cultural evolution of environmental management!

Link evolution, ecology and behavioral science in the ACE Lab timwaring.info Details: forms.gle/gZWK9BpwYfoG...
@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @alexmesoudi.com @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social @michael.muthukrishna.com

10.03.2025 13:01 β€” πŸ‘ 34    πŸ” 31    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 2
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22,000-year-old tracks are earliest evidence of transport vehicles Tracks and footprints found in New Mexico are by far the earliest evidence of people using primitive vehicles to transport things

Have you ever heard of a travoisβ€”one of the simplest prehistoric vehicles, made of two long poles attached in a V-shape? Turns out it’s way older than we thought! www.newscientist.com/article/2469...

24.02.2025 14:57 β€” πŸ‘ 31    πŸ” 12    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
A picture of a humpback whale just below the sea surface taken by Marc Quintin

A picture of a humpback whale just below the sea surface taken by Marc Quintin

A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first time. We have more in common with whales than we previously thought! doi.org/10.1126/scie...

07.02.2025 11:48 β€” πŸ‘ 843    πŸ” 218    πŸ’¬ 24    πŸ“Œ 27
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Postdoktor i berΓ€kningspsykologi/kognitionsvetenskap med fokus pΓ₯ social inlΓ€rning och kulturell evolution Vill du bidra till medicinsk forskning av toppkvalitet? Gruppen Mechanisms of Social Behavior vid Karolinska Institutet i Stockholm sΓΆker en hΓΆgt kvalificerad postdoktoral forskare fΓΆr att ingΓ₯ i

πŸ’₯Postdoc Opening! πŸ’₯We (@lucasmolleman.bsky.social & Piet van den Berg) seek a postdoc to study social learning and cultural evolution. We are looking for someone with math/computational modeling skills & interest in human behavior. Get in touch if you have any questions! shorturl.at/W6Qsb

30.01.2025 07:39 β€” πŸ‘ 26    πŸ” 40    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1
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Social learning preserves both useful and useless theories by canalizing learners’ exploration | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences In many domains, learning from others is crucial for leveraging cumulative cultural knowledge, which encapsulates the efforts of successive generations of innovators. However, anecdotal and experiment...

πŸ”— Read the full paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
#CulturalEvolution #SocialLearning #Innovation #Science

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

6/ These results challenge the idea that arbitrary solutions persist only when they are intuitive or efficient. Instead, social learning shapes what people even consider as a possibility β€” impacting how traditions, technologies, and scientific ideas persist over time. ⏳

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1
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5/ Why did people stick to their theory? Because social learning canalises exploration. Participants were less likely to test configurations that could challenge their received theory, reducing their chances of discovering the effects of variables not emphasized by that theory. πŸ”„

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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4/ Our main finding: Even when people had incentives to improve their solutions, they stuck to the theory they receivedβ€”even if it was wrong.

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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3/ Some participants received a "theory" about what makes the wheel roll fasterβ€”either correct, partially right, or misleading. We then compared their exploration to participants who received no theory at all.

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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2/ We designed an experiment where participants had to optimize a physical system: a wheel rolling down a track. Their goal? Adjust the weights to make it roll as fast as possible. πŸš€

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

1/ Learning from others is a superpower⚑. It allows us to build on knowledge accumulated over generations. But does it come at a cost? Can it limit our ability to explore new, better solutions? πŸ€”

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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New paper in #ProcB with @alexmesoudi.com, @jfbonnefon.bsky.social, @rmcelreath.bsky.social and Rob Boyd.

We investigate how social learning shapes the way we explore and show that it can even preserve useless theories! πŸ§΅πŸ‘‡

29.01.2025 09:34 β€” πŸ‘ 106    πŸ” 47    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 3

@maximederex is following 20 prominent accounts