Joseph Sommer

2. Symbolic cognitive processes; some/a lot of access, the mind involves structured computations, not just associations; LLMs don't work like people because they lack compositionality/structure; behavior is *a means of inferring theoretical constructs*

100% agree. IMO, there are 2 mutually reinforcing clusters:

1. Everything is unconscious reinforcement learning; no introspective access; the mind is just (an emergent property of) many conditioned neurons; LLMs (therefore) work like people; behavior/metrics are the only important thing...

Np! If you're interested, here are a few other recent papers I had in mind:
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

osf.io/preprints/ps...

FWIW, pretty strong (imo) critiques of the N+W analysis have been around since their original work (e.g., psycnet.apa.org/record/1980-...) and there appears (to my eyes, at least) to be a big trend toward finding more introspective access than we've thought (one ex: mitpress.mit.edu/978026254619...)

Happy In Theory This is the short story of my long, 20 year search for a stable academic home. There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending.

New Substack post

It's very personal: my story of a 20-year academic career, and the many challenges of theoretical and cross-disciplinary work

As I put it in the subtitle: There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending

thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

Maps by Which We May Not Steer: Why Psychologists Should Expect Low Belief-Behavior Correspondence Published in Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory (Vol. 36, No. 1, 2025)

"cognitive scientists should *expect* low belief-behavior correlations: after all, beliefs may be maps by which we steer, but steering takes much more than just a map"

• Moè: intentions vs. reality
• Osman: mis/disinfo impacts @osman
• Pierre: consistency puzzles
• Sommer & Oktar: expecting low links @keremoktar.bsky.social @bayesandbounds.bsky.social
• Westaby et al.: behavioral reasoning

Nice video - something to consider:

"what people believed was based not on evidence but on how they felt about the advocates"

I think it looks like this from the outside, but trusting (authoritative) in-group members *is* (defeasible!) evidence. Compare trusting vaccine researchers' testimony

The Venn diagram of the target demographic for this beer and me might be a circle

Well, the bar seems clear

YouTube video by Language of Mind 10 most important books in Cognitive Science

Last new year's, I hung out with my friend Joseph @bayesandbounds.bsky.social to talk about the 100 most influential works in cognitive science. All the big names are here: Turing, Fodor, Marr, Miller, (Joseph's favorite) Herb Simon, and of course - Noam Chomsky!

youtu.be/Zu6ZoZsRGG0

Psychoanalysis has concepts of a plan

I regularly invite my students to ponder the puzzle of how humans often violate Bayes theorem and yet tiny bumblebee brains are capable of optimal Bayesian foraging. This paper might offer the solution: psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-... @bayesandbounds.bsky.social

Joseph Sommer, Religion as belief, a realist theory: a commentary on _Religion as Make-Believe, A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity_ - PhilPapers Van Leeuwen’s Religion as Make-Believe, A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity argues that religious and political beliefs are fundamentally different from mundane, factual beliefs and re...

This was a very interesting summary and commentary on a book I haven’t read yet (Religion as Make-Believe). I think the question “what are beliefs even?” may be one of the most consequential in psychology/philosophy of mind.

philpapers.org/rec/SOMRAB

Consider two beliefs:

1. Believing that the bathroom is down the hall

2. Believing that the Democratic Party is a threat to our whole society

It seems like there’s some deep difference between these two beliefs. But what is the difference? Our studies explore that question

Cosign: "Herbert Simon ftw"

"An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed" (Mermin, 1990)

Cognitive Processes And Judgmental Strategies In Belief Updating Joseph Sommer & Perille Hemmer

3. @bayesandbounds.bsky.social reported progress on identifying the mechanism(s) of a phenomena reported in [...checks notes...] the 1960s!

Further confirmation may involve think-aloud protocols — one of my favorites! 🤓

#Bayes #probability #cogSci #epistemology #xPhi #psychology #logic #history

Thanks for this! Could you add me too please?