Poster for the call. All relevant information is in thread
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Excited to share the call for posters & registration for the 2nd XSCAPE Workshop: "Varieties of Externalism" !
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Friday, April 10th, 2026 โ Gallery Room, Bramber House, University of Sussex
Registration is free but places are limited. ๐งต
OK, it finally happened! My new article, "Gradience as a cognitive principle for evaluating numerical notations", is now out today in @pnas.org. By focusing on numerals' use for communication instead of arithmetic, we have a new tool to assess their efficiency.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Apply at this link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
ABSTRACT The extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) is a school of thought that maintains that genetic determination and natural selection are over-emphasized in the study of evolution at the expense of non-genetic inheritance and processes of evolution beyond selection. Its proponents call for the de-emphasis of genetics and the adoption of a broader model of inheritance that includes cultural and epigenetic transgenerational effects and strong adaptive phenotypic plasticity. Presenting itself as a radical alternative to what it claims is a rigid and ossified theoretical orthodoxy, the EES has lately gained considerable traction among scholars of human evolution, and a distinct sub-branch of the EES unique to the biological anthropological study of human evolution has emerged (the EES in human evolution). To date, however, no direct comparison between the EES in human evolution and other contemporary evolutionary approaches has been attempted to evaluate whether the EES in human evolution affords researchers an edge in articulating good questions and structuring research programs to answer them. After reviewing the landscape of evolutionary theory, we evaluate whether the EES in human evolution is capable of delivering the processually pluralistic vision of evolution it has long promised and whether it brings something that the decades-long ongoing synthesis (OS) of evolutionary theory since the modern synthesis does not. We then conduct a head-to-head comparison to evaluate the relative explanatory efficacy of the EES and our preferred OS theoretical framework on several issues of human morphological evolution. We demonstrate that evolutionary perspectives as drawn from the OS have a much more clarifying effect on the investigation of human evolution than their EES-based competitor. Far from being a radical extension of evolutionary thought, the EES in human evolution offers little more than another idiom in which to tell adaptationist stories and triumphalist narrโฆ
A much-needed critique of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) as applied to human evolution, by @evoroseman.bsky.social and Ben Auerbach (2026).
Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires? ๐งช #BioAnth
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
1/ New paper from @brunelpsy.bsky.social CCE in Evolution & Human Behavior looks at secularisation in Mauritius ๐ฒ๐บ
Nachita Rosun, @matthewmgervais.bsky.social and @aiyanakoka.bsky.social have been testing big theories outside the usual Western settings ๐
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Fair enough!
As a side point: the term "tinkering" is not even new in the context of cultural evolution -- Francois Jacob had a paper on this in 1977 called "Evolution and tinkering" and @svalver.bsky.social + colleagues directly refer to tinkering in their papers on tech evolution
I haven't had chance to read this yet, but wouldn't your points be a *good* reason to write a commentary?
Many thanks also to @elena-moos.bsky.social, who just joined bsky. Elena was the master knapper in the new study who made the application of the new method possible.
Follow Elena, and I am sure you'll see amazing stone tools (and even dice!) made by her.
Demographic shifts, inter-group contact and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification.
#linguistics
Delighted that @conradhackett.bsky.social will be visiting Brunel to give us a talk on โIs the world becoming more religious or less religious?โ, this Thursday 29 January. All welcome, talk will be live-streamed ๐
Post 1/13 ๐ข๐งต
Call for activities proposals !
You are invited to submit proposals for three activities to be held during the upcoming CES2026 conference:
Looking for something new to integrate into an #evolution or #microbiology course? Useful for lectures, labs, homework?
Have a look at our STEPS program, which simulates bacterial evolution, including the #LTEE. Easy web-based interface & lab manual w/ exercises to help develop students' intuition.
Who here nostalgic for Reader?
Dusted off the ol' blog after years of heavy disuse because I'm h*ckin' excited to tell y'all about some of the exciting things we're trying in our stats/methods/skills curriculum at Brunel!
Read! Share! Tell us what you think!
#psychscisky ๐งช #philsci #methodology #teaching
We are pleased to announce that the first LEVANTE data release is now publicly available!
To access and download the pilot data, follow instructions on researcher.levante-network.org/data. This data release accompanies the preprint linked in the thread.
In our new preprint, @chrisvonrueden.bsky.social and I argue that "equality" is a red herring. To understand hunter-gatherer political organization, we must focus on process, not outcome.
Got something to contribute? BBS is accepting commentary proposals!
resolve.cambridge.org/core/journal...
1. My new preprint has its own bluesky account. Why? The problems facing social media & scientific publishing are similar: both are dominated by powerful oligopolies. The @atproto.com tech underlying bluesky that aims to solve the social media prob might also help solve the scientific pub prob ๐งช ๐งต
Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers ๐งโโ๏ธ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal ๐ bit.ly/499QjZM
New article in Hunter Gatherer Research!
Foraging societies practice consensus-based politics. We conduct a xc review and argue that it helps to boost collective intelligence.
Consensus, cooperation and collective intelligence in foraging societies
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...
Happy new year! I wanted to share my new Python package called chatter that streamlines the process of applying AI/ML models to animal communication ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐๐ต๐จโ๐พ masonyoungblood.github.io/chatter/
"Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually." Good piece by @mikemakowsky.bsky.social
economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/12/29/p...
I'd argue that the "new era of theory" is already underway, though, led not by economists, but by comp social sci/cultural evolution folks.
My co-authors and I are happy to present our framework "Collective Intelligence as Collective Information Processing (CIP)."
Here we propose decomposing different information processing mechanisms to unify disparate phenomena traditionally classified as "collective intelligence."
Goal selection through the lens of subjective functions:
arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948
I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.
๐๐พ very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
Massive congrats Oleg! Can't wait to see the research group up and running ๐
1/ In a recent @britishacademy.bsky.social video @rebeccasear.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social takes a clear-eyed look at the 21stโcentury rise of eugenics - an ideology that should have been left behind, yet is now reโemerging in a number of troubling ways โ ๏ธ๐งฌ ๐งช
Watch the full talk here ๐ฅ๐
This week, we talk to @hugoreasoning.bsky.social about all things "epistemic". Are we gullible and prone to misinformation? Are we vigilant in favor of our interests? Enjoy the wide-ranging conversation!
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wphps...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
youtu.be/nf42LNg6y-A
๐๐ฒ๐๐ผ๐ป๐ฑ ๐ป๐ฒ๐๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ๐: ๐ง๐ผ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฑ ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐๐ถ๐๐ฒ ๐บ๐ผ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐น๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ฏ๐ถ๐ผ๐น๐ผ๐ด๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น ๐ฐ๐ผ๐บ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ๐
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Discusses how more standard network models miss key points of brain complexity. And some more radical points at the end.
Wrote paper having in mind younger researchers more open to new ideas :-)
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1016/j.pl...
Oleg Sobchuk @sobchuk.bsky.social
@cudanlab.bsky.social
"Evolution of Literature and the Arts."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnZ...
