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Will Gervais

@willgervais.com

9.5K followers 5.3K following 1.8K posts

psych prof & author | culture & evolution | atheists | methodological pluralism FTW | comic & horror nerd | he/him Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species https://www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Origins-Atheism-Religious-Species/dp/1633889246/ .. more

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Nov 13

Hi all 👋

I’m a cultural & evolutionary scientist obsessed with 2 ideas:

1) humans are the only species with religion
2) within our religious species, atheism comes naturally

I wrote a book on that, here’s a short 🧵 with some fun book tidbits. Enjoy & share!

💙📚
🧪

www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Or...

Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species: Gervais Ph.D, Will M.: 9781633889248: Amazon.com: Books

Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species [Gervais Ph.D, Will M.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species

www.amazon.com

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · 1d

Yeah that wouldn't be my first choice.

#2 perhaps

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · 1d

Also: Yeah, I'm in London and the mnemonic came out regionally applicable with THAMES.

I kind of hate that, but those were the letters I needed and the other acronyms were less...fit...for various reasons.

AS METH
SH MEAT
HAM SET

you see the problem

Will Gervais @willgervais.com · 1d

Thinking about dusting off the ol' blog to talk about the methods/stats/skills revamp we did here at Brunel. This module is now 1 of 9 (!) in our methods/stats/skills stream. So many cool things going on there!!!

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Will Gervais @willgervais.com · 1d

Teaching a fun science & critical thinking course this semester.

Trying out THAMES as a handy mnemonic for what to look for in evaluating science papers & such (obvs not all are as relevant for every paper)...

THAMES mnemonic for reading science:

T
Theory
•What BIG IDEA is the focus?

H
Hypothesis
•What SMALLER IDEA is actually getting tested?

A
Assumptions &
Alternatives
•What needs to be true to connect T:H?
•What else could explain results/predictions?

M
Methods:
Measures & Manipulations
•Were methodological tools validated?
•Evidence that we’re measuring/manip what’s claimed?

E
Evidence &
Ethics
•Are claims calibrated to EVIDENCE? Is EVIDENCE appropriate?
•ETHICALLY sound in practice/intent/implication/application?

S
Sampling
Statistical Model
•Who was studied? Who are claims about?
•Do stat results match verbal ideas?

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Reposted by Timnit Gebru, Mark Rubin, Lesley A. Hall , and 3 more Timnit Gebru, Mark Rubin, Lesley A. Hall, Rebecca Sear, Michael W. Kraus, Will M. Gervais

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 7d

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧵 1/

Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · 15d

Oh cool, glad to see these are up! And thanks for the kind words

I really enjoyed your commentary! Hope the enthusiasm for the ideas and conversation moving forward comes through in my bit

Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, William J. Brady, Martin Paul Eve , and 2 more Rosemary A. Joyce, William J. Brady, Martin Paul Eve, Zen Faulkes, Will M. Gervais

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19d

Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases.

This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122

Prestige over merit: An adapted audit of LLM bias in peer review

Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly integral, though largely informal, role in scholarly peer review. Yet it remains unclear whether LLMs reproduce the biases observed in human de...

arxiv.org

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Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @london.gov.uk · 24d

In London, hate will never win.

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Reposted by Timnit Gebru, Dorothy Bishop, Steve Peers , and 8 more Timnit Gebru, Dorothy Bishop, Steve Peers, Jonathan Wolff, Elizabeth Stokoe, Martin Tomko, Peter Gratton, Stella M. Rouse, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Will M. Gervais, Southern Africa

Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy.bsky.social · 24d

Scoop: Business Insider informed its staff this week that they are allowed to use ChatGPT to generate first drafts of their stories, while also indicating the newsroom will not disclose such A.I. use to readers.

Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/business-i...

Business Insider and the Bots

The Axel Springer-owned newsroom is buzzing over new ChatGPT writing guidelines—part of an aggressive A.I. strategy pushed by its German parentco and detailed in a memo obtained by Status.

www.status.news

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais, Southern Africa

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 25d

what to do when a "let's all respectfully debate the intelligence of Black people" guy pops around is itself a political intelligence test and it's wild how poorly allegedly Serious Thinkers score on it

Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 25d

Maybe but then "let's all respectfully debate the intelligence of black people" was/is a part of that. And if he doesn't understand that then he has an enormous blind spot and I hope someone close to him sits him down for a talk.

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Reposted by Julie L. Lockwood, Euan G. Ritchie, Stephen D. Murphy , and 3 more Julie L. Lockwood, Euan G. Ritchie, Stephen D. Murphy, Alessandro Nai, Urška Demšar, Will M. Gervais

Dr Nadiah Kristensen @nadiah.bsky.social · Aug 25

Check out the graphical abstract for a paper recently published in Ecological Modelling.

I have papers published in Ecological Modelling. Never again, I guess.

A diagram titled "Ecological Network Optimisation" with attractive landscapes and networks and very clear AI-generation artifacts.

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Salty MacTavish @saltymactavish.bsky.social · Aug 21

It all went to hell when we quit painting pictures of oryxes on cave walls

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Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Michelle Everson, Adrian Vickers , and 5 more Shannon Vallor, Michelle Everson, Adrian Vickers, Margot C. Finn, Christine Kooi, Karen L. Cox, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Will M. Gervais

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · Aug 21

When the dust settles, and if universities have meaningfully survived, it will be worth asking how institutions usually so resistant to thoroughgoing change chose to leap with both feet into an untested technology they didn't understand and didn't know how to use.

Karen Graubart @kbgraubart.bsky.social · Aug 20

Universities doubling down as public sentiment shifts away from dependence upon AI. This is the problem with the buy-in.

Theo Nash @theonash.bsky.social · Aug 20

The University of Michigan is now claiming that students have an ‘ethical responsibility’ to use AI.

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 19

Online reaction seems to have an interesting mix of “I dnf 30% in, too bleak and pointless” and “so glad I pushed through, so worth it, my favorite book 🥰”

Take that for what it’s worth

Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 19

I tried to go a bit immersive for the second read. I’d listen to music from the era/areas (found some rad 70s 🇦🇷 tunes). Followed maps & scoped scenery online. Read up on artists and architects mentioned. Located houses.

Every deep dive was 100% worth it. A 700+ pager with iceberg-like hidden depth

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 19

On second read, a masterpiece.

History, power, (in)humanity, all on full display across decades & continents.

Characters you feel deeply for & about. Depth of worldbuilding, tersely and sparingly revealed.

It’s dark, it’s bleak, it has passages that’ll sear.

Not for all, but richly rewarding

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 19

4. Science of Science, with its data-intensive descriptive approach is useful, but insufficient. Metascience, with its laser focus on a replication crisis in psychology, likewise.

We need broader humanistic thinking about the social processes involved in the construction and valuation of knowledge.

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · Aug 18

Obviously you need empirical work, and the best mature work integrates both models and empirical data. And obviously there’s a lot of crap modeling (and also tons of crap empirical studies). But the best thing about the field of cultural evolution is arguably its mathematical theoretical foundations

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · Aug 18

Brilliant strategy: become the contemporary version of a Victorian bachelor whose debts keep him from having Prospects

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · Aug 18

Gotta say genius move by me to accumulate student debt in my 20s that would haunt me in my 40s while I struggle at my genteel-precarity brain job

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 17

Say what you want about the tenets of Darkseid, Dude, at least it’s

Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 14

Haven’t been on here much this summer. Have a picture about it

The prettiest mutt ever swimming in a Welsh mountain lake with green-covered ridges and cliffs in the background

Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 14

Lady Tasting Tea?

Dienes?

Just a bunch of fun blog posts?

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 14

Heya stats nerdy friends!

Brainstorming materials for a new 1st year course aiming to teach just the conceptual side of stats -- the kinds of things we're trying to do with stats, how things like NHST work at a purely conceptual level.

Any tips for short/fun/accessible/cheap books to pair?

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 8

I'm tentatively game! Will have to see what my fall semester schedule looks like before committing to midnight.

My Brunel email from the website would be best! That gets things into my long-term memory (inbox)

Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Aug 7

Wow, amazing!!! Thanks so much!

I'd be happy to pop into a Zoom thing to say hi if people would be interested and schedules/time zones align!

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Indrapramit Das @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · Aug 3

My Lambda Award-winning debut novel THE DEVOURERS, a dark, queer, mythic realist tale about sex, love, violence, & shapeshifting, has finally surpassed 20k sales. Those may be rookie numbers to many authors, but for me, it's a big deal, even if not big money. Sincerest gratitude to my readers 🖤

The Devourers by Indra Das: 9781101967539 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

For readers of Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination. LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER •...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · Jul 27

Enjoy!

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Centre for Culture and Evolution @brunelcce.bsky.social · Jul 9

🧵 1/4 🥴 Enough with calling agnosticism the ultimate fence-sit - it's its own philosophical question!

CCE’s @willgervais.com et al pre-print shows religious metaphysics (theism vs. atheism) and epistemology (gnosticism vs. agnosticism) are totally orthogonal (fully unrelated)

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Bruno J. Navarro @brunojnavarro.bsky.social · Jul 7

who the @nytimes.com calls an ‘academic’

Jordan Lasker (known as Crémieux) is an American far-right eugenicist and hereditarianism pseudoscientist who is involved with Richard Hanania's Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) and is a writer for the white nationalist Aporia Magazine.

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