David Barack

Yes! I have many new thoughts

James Bogen (1935-2025) - Daily Nous James "Jim" Bogen, a longtime professor of philosophy at Pitzer College as well as an adjunct professor in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, has died. Professor Bogen ...

Jim Bogen, a philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh and, before that, Pitzer College, has died. dailynous.com/2025/12/04/j...

Embedded Universal Predictive Intelligence: a coherent framework for multi-agent learning The standard theory of model-free reinforcement learning assumes that the environment dynamics are stationary and that agents are decoupled from their environment, such that policies are treated as be...

18/ The full paper can be found here: www.arxiv.org/abs/2511.22226

It’s an extensive piece of theory, we hope you enjoy the beast! (Borrowing the phrase from Marcus Hutter.)

Hey everyone—check out this second research program from #SPAN

December 9th at 12PM: Lucina Uddin will be discussing brain networks during the Philosophy and Neuroscience Salon hosted by @pessoabrain.bsky.social

Sign up here: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀?
Do they even exist...?
Join @lucinauddin.bsky.social who will present, followed by discussion in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon.
Open to all.
Date: Dec 9, 12pm EST-US
Register: umd.zoom.us/meeting/regi... (you need a zoom account which is free)
#neuroskyence

"The inevitability and superfluousness of cell types in spatial cognition". Intuitive cell types are found in random artificial networks using the same selection criteria neuroscientists use with actual data. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... 1/2

Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - Compositional Abduction and Scientific Interpretation

www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

#hps #philsci

🚨We're hiring! A tenure track position at McGill University in the area of #bioethics and / or philosophy of science, with a special focus on the ethics of medical technologies. Please share widely. #philsky #ethics #philsci philjobs.org/job/show/30402

Y’all are reading this paper in the wrong way.

We love to trash dominant hypothesis, but we need to look for evidence against the manifold hypothesis elsewhere:

This elegant work doesn't show neural dynamics are high D, nor that we should stop using PCA

It’s quite the opposite!

(thread)

Simons Foundation Now Accepting Applications for Workshop on Canonical Cortical Computations Simons Foundation Now Accepting Applications for Workshop on Canonical Cortical Computations on Simons Foundation

Inviting apps for a workshop to develop a project focused on a mechanistic understanding of canonical cortical computations at the circuit level. Deadline is 1/5/2026: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/simons-foundation-now-accepting-applications-for-workshop-on-canonical-cortical-computations

📍Excited to share that our paper was selected as a Spotlight at #NeurIPS2025!

arxiv.org/pdf/2410.03972

It started from a question I kept running into:

When do RNNs trained on the same task converge/diverge in their solutions?
🧵⬇️

New mentorship program for interdisciplinary crossover philosophy-neuroscience work, from #SPAN. Check it out and apply!

15-year-old bug 😐 in an industry that has the highest profit margins possible pretty much

www.theguardian.com/science/2017...

Neural dynamics outside task-coding dimensions drive decision trajectories through transient amplification Most behaviors involve neural dynamics in high-dimensional activity spaces. A common approach is to extract dimensions that capture task-related variability, such as those separating stimuli or choice...

“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”

The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted.

If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.

🚨🚨 New tenure-track job posting! 🚨🚨

The University of Florida is hiring an Assistant Professor in Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, with an open research focus.

Job ad here: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Here's some info about why you should apply to this job! 1/

A remarkable journey of resilience and transformation, from the chaotic corridors of group homes to the halls of Columbia and Stanford, EMERGENCE is a coming-of-age tale where heartbreak and humor meet the scientific wonder of modern artificial intelligence.

🔗 Preorder: tinyurl.com/fzcxb5ea

Coming to the Society for Neuroscience meeting? Come to my lecture and say hi. I'm going to be talking about some crazy stuff. #neuroscience #SFN2025

Heading to the Eastern APA? Stop by SPAN's session on Cognitive Ontology! 🧠

Great idea!

🧪Preprint!
How foragers depart from optimal models can tell us a lot about how they compute their decisions.

A strong but underexplored departure is that foragers widely vary when they leave identical patches.

A 🧵
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

With
@emmavscholey.bsky.social @brainapps.bsky.social

Hey all-check out my talk on the Neuron Doctrine, and why it is so hard to overturn. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0EQ...

Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit

Syntax, Language?
See you in 20 minutes

3 Postdoctoral Research Fellows Champalimaud Foundation (Fundação D. Anna de Sommer Champalimaud e Dr.

🚨Job alert🚨

The lab has up to *3 postdoc openings* for comp systems neuroscientists interested in describing and manipulating neural population dynamics mediating behaviour

This is part of a collaborative ARIA grant "4D precision control of cortical dynamics"

euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/383909

Nearly ready to go! Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025!

New post now up on THE FEEDBACK: Epistemic reduction of the concept of ‘decision’ by: Daniel Burnston (Tulane University)

Read the post here: thefeedback.blog/2025/11/03/e...

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵