Ehud
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duhe.bsky.social
Ehud
@duhe.bsky.social
4.3K followers 780 following 5.4K posts
Do you really don’t know?

(I’m a philosopher and historian of biology, interested in all things evolutionary, #genetic, or #cognitive. I find most things ridiculous.)
http://www.ehudlamm.com
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duhe.bsky.social
Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · May 29
New paper alert:
Finkel & Lamm, Cultural evolution beyond the individual: what human collective knowledge adds to high fidelity copying.

This is the third in the Distributed Adaptation series.

Many thanks to the diligent reviewers! #philbio #cultevo

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Our analysis points to several conclusions. First, the phenomena highlighted by the notion of DA are contexts of selection, and may favor traits beyond high-fidelity copying. Second, high-fidelity copying is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining these cultural phenomena. Studying these DA phenomena draws attention to the likely importance of cognitive abilities beyond copying (i.e.– imitation or emulation), that support knowledge aggregation processes. They also highlight the importance of population structure, distribution of a population in the environment, and population density, that are also emphasized by other proposals discussed above. Third, because DAs rely on a variety of population level processes there does not seem to be a general mechanism ensuring a ratchet effect on DAs, unlike the role attributed to high fidelity copying in CCE. Fourth, some games through which children acquire skills are contexts of information acquisition or learning that occurs not only through imitation.
duhe.bsky.social
Next time I need to explain the Stag Hunt game, I will use the three dogs carrying a big stick out of the lake.
weratedogs.com WeRateDogs @weratedogs.com · 2h
Here are my top 10 dogs carrying big sticks!
November 25, 2025 at 4:12 PM
duhe.bsky.social
What's not to like?! LC conversion FTW!
oldjerryfodor.bsky.social Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 2h
"Unlike continental nonsense, analytic philosophy is clear and intelligible"
Cian Dorr giving us some grues and bleens in "To be F is to be G" (2016)
November 25, 2025 at 4:10 PM
duhe.bsky.social
November 25, 2025 at 3:08 PM
duhe.bsky.social
Finally, cultural universals supported by evidence!
cockamamied.bsky.social Helena @cockamamied.bsky.social · 14h
Things almost every culture has in common:

• some sort of dumpling
• history of misogyny
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
duhe.bsky.social
Here's an interim report. We've discussed chapters 1&2. 1 student loves the book and understands the argument.Another is insistent that the nature-nurture debate is solved ("interactions"), so EFK isn't convincing. A 3rd, a physician, says book is really hard for her to read&follow the argument.
duhe.bsky.social Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 25d
After discussing it with the group, the students in my supervised reading course and I decided that we will be reading EFK's The Mirage of Space Between Nature and Nurture.
November 25, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Ehud
fintanmallory.com
This Millikan line goes (as they say) hard.
"White Queen Psychology" is a diatribe against meaning rationalism, as was the Epilogue of LTOBC. My desire is to kill meaning rationalism dead, and then beat on it. Perhaps I will succeed in raising one or two more doubts about it. Reasoning, I insist, is done in the world, not in one's head. Logical pos- sibility (known a priori) is impossible. And the only hope for inten- tional psychology is to embrace its biological roots.
November 25, 2025 at 11:36 AM
Reposted by Ehud
rutgerbregman.com
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1
November 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by Ehud
ufeest.bsky.social
I will be one of the speakers at next year's meeting of the European Network for the Philosophy of Social Sciences. Consider sbmitting something (by March 1).
#ENPOSS, #philsci
jeroenvanbouwel.bsky.social Jeroen Van Bouwel @jeroenvanbouwel.bsky.social · 4d
The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS) invites submissions to its 15th Conference at the University of Helsinki, 26-28 August 2026. More info here: enposs.eu
European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS)
enposs.eu
November 25, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Ehud
davekeating.substack.com
BREAKING: This is huge news, the EU's equivalent of the 🇺🇸Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.

🇪🇺Court of Justice just ruled all 🇪🇺countries must recognise same-sex marriages granted in other member states.

This effectively legalises gay marriage across 🇪🇺
www.reuters.com
November 25, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Ehud
neillevy.bsky.social
And this. Cognitive dissonance can no longer be regarded as established.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
A Multilab Replication of the Induced-Compliance Paradigm of Cognitive Dissonance - David C. Vaidis, Willem W. A. Sleegers, Florian van Leeuwen, Kenneth G. DeMarree, Bjørn Sætrevik, Robert M. Ross, Ka...
According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by...
journals.sagepub.com
November 24, 2025 at 9:28 PM
duhe.bsky.social
My philosophy of teaching:

Always remain committed to the bit.
November 25, 2025 at 7:13 AM
duhe.bsky.social
I'm unconvinced that llms care less about truth than most humans.
November 25, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by Ehud
eugenevinitsky.bsky.social
If I'm aware that I'm reading LLM text, I can do a reasonable job editing it, but if I don't it often winds up just bypassing a lot of my mental filters
November 25, 2025 at 5:12 AM
Reposted by Ehud
iuliabadescu.bsky.social
Young chimps play weird with tools and other objects & this can lead to innovation! Moss sponging, doll play, leaf clipping to ask for carrying. If copied and retained, rare kid innovations can contribute to cultural complexity 🧪🔬🐵
My fav article I've ever worked on: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 21, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Ehud
laurahelmuth.bsky.social
Has anybody else gotten a flip phone just so it'll fit in your pocket? I need to replace an ancient iPhone mini and the new models are huge.
November 24, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Ehud
ctennie.bsky.social
I had not seen this before. Very interesting, by Jane Goodall - taken from the transcipt of this interview: freakonomics.com/podcast/jane...
"LEVITT: I think it’s fair to say that the most impactful single insight from your early work is that the chimps in the wild use tools. They make tools. They take objects and intentionally alter those objects to make them better at accomplishing a task. Like stripping away at blades of grass until they’re just right for dipping into the anthills. And before you observed that, there was a thought that humans were the only species that made these tools. To you personally, is that the most notable insight? GOODALL: When I started in 1960, nobody had studied chimps in the wild. No scientist, that is. If, at that time you had gone into some of the indigenous people living deep in the rainforest, they would’ve told you chimpanzees used to make tools. They knew it. But, of course, now we are back on the scientific bandwagon. So when I saw David Greybeard using and making tools, I knew it was really exciting. It was what enabled Leakey to go to the Geographic to get funding when my six months of money ran out. But there’s a wonderful book written by a psychologist, called The Mentality of Apes, Wolfgang Köhler, and he studied this colony of captive apes, and he described so many innovative use of objects. But at that time, the scientific community said, “Oh, well, these were chimpanzees in captivity. Therefore, our human characteristics had rubbed off onto them. It’s nothing to do with what they, as wild individuals, would be capable of.” So when I observed that momentous day of David using and making tools, I knew that it was going to make a big impression on the science of the time. But I wasn’t surprised because I, unlike the other scientists, had believed that what Köhler was reporting was the ability of chimpanzees to use and make tools."
November 25, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by Ehud
wiglet1981.bsky.social
New blogpost: Formal Methods in
Philosophy.

This is an entry I wrote five years ago for a handbook, but it hasn’t come out yet, so I figured it might be worth posting here. It’s sort of a paean to formal methods in philosophy. The idea was to give a sense of the variety and power of these methods.
Formal methods in philosophy
This is an entry I wrote five years ago for a handbook, but it hasn’t come out yet, so I figured it might be worth posting here.
open.substack.com
November 24, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Ehud
greally.bsky.social
If you want to read something completely nuts from the unregulated world of direct to consumer genomics, look no further.

And when I say completely nuts, I’m being restrained and polite. Criminal is another word that springs to mind.
November 25, 2025 at 2:13 AM
duhe.bsky.social
It's the time of year to start seriously considering making Pfeffernüsse cookies.
November 25, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Reposted by Ehud
offline.mountainherder.xyz
Eh, I doubt this, though it's possibly that XTwitter may no longer be a useful or fruitful platform for influence operations targeting the left.

Anyway.
A meme featuring two images of Garfield with a sarcastic, self-aware tone. The left image shows Garfield looking sideways, and the right image is a meme-style overlay saying "YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA" on a blue background. Below is text reading "Huh. I wonder who that's for.", implying ironic obliviousness to the message.
November 24, 2025 at 2:30 AM
duhe.bsky.social
Change we can get behind! Joining Lina Khan in recreating Biden's dream team.
alondra.bsky.social Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 19h
Honored to serve on Mayor-elect @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social Transition Committee on Technology. For too long, too many New Yorkers have been left behind. NYC deserves governance that centers affordability, equity, and the public good-looking forward to the work ahead. www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...
NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announces transition committees
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani​ announced Monday the creation of 17 transition advisory committees made up of more than 400 people.
www.cbsnews.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by Ehud
erantal.bsky.social
🚨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
Assistant Professor (Tenure Track), Department of Equity, Ethics, and Policy and Department of Philosophy, McGill University - PhilJobs:JFP Assistant Professor (Tenure Track), Department of Equity...
An international database of jobs for philosophers
philjobs.org
November 25, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Ehud
hoposjournal.bsky.social
In the latest issue of #HOPOS Jacob McDowell notes the surprising fact that Thomas Kuhn endorses "aspects of the causal theory [of reference] in several later essays while maintaining the possibility of incommensurability".

Link to the article: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
Readable text available at link in post
November 24, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Reposted by Ehud
boruttrpin.bsky.social
Learned recently that Gerd Gigerenzer appears in a 1974 Volkswagen Golf ad - and with a banjo, no less!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxss...
Original TV ad for VW Golf with The Munich Beefeaters Dixieland Band
YouTube video by Thalia Gigerenzer
www.youtube.com
November 23, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Ehud
lastpositivist.bsky.social
I honestly find the MensWearGuy inspirational for what I think a good kind of cultured humanism can look like. This is the sort of presence I would like to have in the world.
dieworkwear.bsky.social derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 1d
A friend who teaches theology shared with me a post about CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, which discusses foundational Christian logic across denominations. It reminded me of Dale's tweet below, and I wanted to share some thoughts here regarding modesty and respectability, which are often hot topics.
Dale Partridge on Twitter writes: "Feminist media is BIG mad about me saying that women shouldn’t wear underwear (leggings and sports bras) as outerwear. As Pearl says, “It’s amazing how hard women will fight to be naked.” Immodest ladies, read 1 Tim. 2:9, repent, and follow Christ." Attached are two images. Image 1 headline: “Outraged pastor slams worker at quaint coffee shop for wearing ‘sinful’ leggings and sports bra in front of kids” Image 2 headline: “‘Make sin shameful again’: Pastor sparks row after sports bra complaint”
November 24, 2025 at 8:12 AM