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Christopher J Stevens

@metaphysiology.bsky.social

940 followers 1.2K following 3K posts

Lecturer/researcher in phil & neuro. Éireannach en France/immigrant. Education, evolution, embodied mind/metaphysiology, memory, deliberation, myside bias, representation, reasoning, perspectivism, pragmatism. Universités de Bordeaux & Bdx-Montaigne.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · Dec 8

Will do a thread on this soon, too busy with corrections, etc., right now. In the meantime, new preprint from my PhD project in a single hypothesis: the deep cognitive bases of myside confirmation bias run much deeper in evolutionary history than posited in the literature.
#cognition #behavior

bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · Dec 8

Mice-side bias: Deliberative decision making in a model of rule revision reveals 'myside' confirmation bias-like cognitive processes in mice. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.03.626648v1

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Sam Tranum @samtranum.bsky.social · 10m

There's been a great deal of debate about how safe Dublin city centre is, but when we @dublininquirer.com looked for data to resolve this, we couldn't find much useful – so we commissioned a survey to try to add some facts/data to the debate. Today we've published five articles about the results. 1/

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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 34m

We’ve come to accept the 45-minute data dump: a PI sprinting through dozens of studies to prove how much they’ve done. I’d rather hear one clear question followed to its end than a career retrospective pretending to be a talk.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 37m

Well done New Yorkers! A beacon has been lit 🙏

Power To The People (Remastered 2010)

YouTube video by John Lennon - Topic

youtu.be

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 40m

A swim in the Seine may be all it takes! No, I know: not worth it 😃

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 9h

I know... cionn fiú.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 11h

jfc. a psycho. that's someone who needs to be monitored for life.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 11h

Yeah, he ended up becoming a key bridge between the neuro (experimental) and phil (pragmatist) dimensions of my phd work.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 11h

"These AI tools are supposed to be there to serve us honestly with facts."

As the kids say: "supposed to be" is doing a lot of work here Pete. Now, get off the site run by the white supremacist and push your colleagues and affiliated institutions to do the same.

Pete Wishart @petewishart.bsky.social · 12h

I've just been called a "rape enabler" by the X AI tool Grok. This is a shocking allegation which has totally taken me aback & beyond anything I've ever encountered in normal political discourse. These AI tools are supposed to be there to serve us honestly with facts. Disturbing.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 11h

Ha, that's harsh on (early) Metallica imo, but funny too as I was coming in to say precisely that, as a metal fan, I have endless examples of this phenomenon.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 11h

I'd certainly recommend it! I regularly use him as an example of 'crucial experiments' à la Platt's strong inference too, since the school around him designed several experiments directly aimed at deciding between behaviorist and cognitivist hypotheses. See 'Cognitive maps in rats & men' for review.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 11h

If you read a (good) history of cognitive science, you'll find him discussed as a precursor. Pretty much only because of human exceptionalism that cog science didn't grow directly from him. Researchers happier to be identified with something humans made rather than what we actually came from/are.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

He was quite a character, I enjoy reading him a lot. This is from his 1932 book 'Purposive Behavior in Animals & Men':
"I wish now, once & for all, to put myself on record as feeling
a distaste for most of the terms & neologisms I have introduced. I especially dislike the terms purpose & cognition"

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

Tolman referred to himself as a cognitive behaviorist.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

Very disappointing it's not because he's a huge fan of Prince.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

Actually, looking again, it wouldn't be hard to make an argument that the roots of all of them are in the (missed) Tolmanian revolution.

Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

The cog sci roots of about half of them are pre-Fodor, in the likes of Tolman, Lashley, etc.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 12h

The future is passé.

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 13h

Not particularly interested in reading it, but just from skimming their profiles: are they *all* already working in AI? Seems like key information for the blurb; like saying "Researchers are experimenting with cocaine" without specifying they're addiction researchers.

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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 13h

Musk doesn't deny that he's endorsing a sexual predator

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Politis @politis.fr · 17h

Soudan 🇸🇩 Les massacres du Darfour, liés à l’affrontement sanglant entre les généraux ennemis Bourhane et Daglo, ne sont pas seulement le fait de fanatismes dont les puissances étrangères seraient innocentes.

Le regard de Denis Sieffert ⤵️
buff.ly/0TEYzZr

Soudan : une guerre par procuration

Les massacres du Darfour, liés à l'affrontement sanglant entre les généraux ennemis Bourhane et Daglo, ne sont pas seulement le fait de fanatismes dont les puissances étrangères seraient innocentes.

www.politis.fr

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 1d

A few head-the-balls:
www.nbcnews.com/world/russia...

U.S. family moved to Russia to escape liberal culture and got drawn into the war with Ukraine

As many as 1,500 “ideological immigrants,” including 127 Americans, have applied for temporary residence in Russia in the last year.

www.nbcnews.com

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 1d

"Yu Ming is ainm dom. Tá mé anseo don agallamh, a Uachtaráin."

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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 1d

Revisiting Brexit debates during the Irish presidential campaign, one EU criticism Uachtarán Connolly was formulating at the time (~10 yrs ago) jumped out at me: obstacles posed to house building.

While mud-hunting during the campaign, were FFG making a separate "might be useful to pinch" pile? 🤔🤡

Una Mullally @unamullally.bsky.social · 1d

The so-called "red tape" that needs cutting is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's chaotic housing policies that created and then compounded the housing crisis.

Zero point trying to blame anything or anyone else, or trying to pretend that the financialisation of housing isn't a core ideological failure.

Micheál Martin says house building in Ireland is hampered by 'gold-plating' of EU rules

Taoiseach says 'going beyond what is required' is slowing down delivery of housing and other big projects in Ireland

www.irishexaminer.com

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Fintan Mallory @fintanmallory.com · 16d

Monday morning, time to rise and grind!*

*Cultivate wisdom and compassion.

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Jack Kennedy @jackkennedy.ie · 2d

They doused petrol on a building housing of refugee families and set it alight. They were trying to burn these people out, if not actually burn them alive. It was a pogrom. It's important we identify it properly

And the government is encouraging the politics behind this. It'll happen again

RTÉ News @news.rte.ie · 3d

An investigation into an arson attack at an IPAS centre in Drogheda is continuing, after gardaí confirmed a fire had been deliberately started in the building on Friday night.

Investigation continues into arson attack at IPAS centre

An investigation into an arson attack at an IPAS centre in Drogheda is continuing, after gardaí confirmed a fire had been deliberately started in the building on Friday night.

www.rte.ie

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