Here is a PhD fellowship in one of the best places in the world to study cognition and culture.
1. Cultural phenomenon: writing
2. Cognitive capacity: to detect what is unpredictable
3. Mission: Show how (2) drives the evolution of (1) 😲
4. Methods: you’ll eventually master some powerful ones
"Social sadism"? Great quote (from Merton, R. K. (1972). Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge. American journal of sociology, 78(1)), serious issue.
The cold-blooded, brutal grab of Palestinian land in the West Bank goes on in the shadow of the ongoing anihilation of Gaza.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Thom Scott-Phillips presents a novel analysis of people's spontaneous intuitions about sentence acceptability "grounded in theoretical and empirical knowledge from cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and evolutionary approaches to the mind." cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca...
25 year ago, Monsanto (acquired by Bayer in 2018) acting against public health and honest science
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
I agree: there’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles, which will save many lives. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes yearly. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...
Not a topic on which I would normally post, but given that road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years (www.who.int/news-room/fa...), this is hugely relevant.
Don’t Fear Self-Driving Cars. They Save Lives. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...
Thank you Ben Rhodes for this important column:
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o...
Some exerpts:
"If you believe a Palestinian child is equal in dignity and worth to an Israeli or American child, it is no longer possible to support this Israeli government while hiding behind platitudes about peace.
...
At last, the final publication in 'Cognitive Technologies and their Histories': the editorial introduction to the issue in TopiCS, by myself and @helenamiton.bsky.social. 4.5 years since our initial @cogscisociety.bsky.social panel. Free access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Yuli Novak (executive director of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem):
"Demanding accountability from Israeli leaders isn’t just about the past, it’s the only way to challenge a system designed to repeat such violence."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Join me in signing the #JewsDemandAction petition calling on governments around the world to impose meaningful consequences on the Israeli government, including appropriate sanctions, enforcement of ICJ and ICC rulings and warrants, and withholding of arms. jewsdemandaction.org jewsdemandaction.org
Cheyenne Dosso, Tiffany Morisseau, Christophe Heintz, Jean-Sébastien Vayre, A cognitive resource-rational account of epistemic injustice, The Philosophical Quarterly, 2025;, pqaf088, doi.org/10.1093/pq/p...
Preprint in FREE ACCESS at philpapers.org/archive/DOSA...
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Preprint: Jan Pfänder and Hugo Mercier "The rational impression account of trust in science"
Online Now: Complex technology requires cultural innovations for distributing cognition
An excellent but devastating piece on the Israeli assassination of the brave and beloved Gazan journalist Anas Al-Sharif:
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/o...
This is on us in the US: our government could stop this with a single phone call.
Call your reps to demand an end to US military support of Israel
“What name do we give to a policy environment that suppresses the arrival of new life?”
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life.
Read more:
🚨🚨 New preprint 📜 with Mathieu Charbonneau (@matcharbonneau.bsky.social): Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution (arxiv.org/abs/2508.04828). Feedback welcomed! #Evolution #Technology #Culture #OpenEnded #TechnologicalEvolution #CulturalEvolution 🧵: 1/29
From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?
Onlookers threw them dried bread loafs making the Jews fight for food and causing boats to capsize. Jews said: "God is just. Yes, of us he has made victims, but of you he has made persecutors."
My father, Manès Sperber, told me a story that terribly resonnates today:
In 1420, at a time of persecution known as the "Vienna Gesera", Jews were banned from the city. Many were killed. Others were placed on rudderless boats on the Danube River and left starving.
Earlier this year, I made two trips to Sudan, where a terrible civil war has displaced 14 million people. The state is absent, international institutions are weak.Outside powers, motivated by greed and nihilism, have stepped into the vacuum
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
Il est atroce que les guerres puissent ne pas épargner l’enfance, non seulement parce qu’elle est l’avenir mais surtout parce que sa tendre faiblesse et son irresponsabilité adressent à notre protection un si confiant appel."
Il est un de ces tableaux, cependant, auquel je sens bien que je ne m’habituerai jamais : celui de la terreur sur des visages d’enfants fuyant la chute des bombes, dans un village survolé....
Dans Marc Bloch, "L'Etrange Défaite" (Ecrit en 1940):
"Je n’ai pas, je crois, l’âme inaccessible à la pitié. Peut-être les spectacles que deux guerres successives m’ont imposés l’ont-ils quelque peu endurcie.
