Max Puelma Touzel
@mptouzel.bsky.social
Data scientist of human individual and collective behaviour.
Statistical inference and decision theory.
Web: mptouzel.github.io
Fields: AI/ML/(MA)RL/psych/soc/pol/econ/energy.
Statistical inference and decision theory.
Web: mptouzel.github.io
Fields: AI/ML/(MA)RL/psych/soc/pol/econ/energy.
Pinned
Max Puelma Touzel
@mptouzel.bsky.social
· Oct 23
2 years ago I asked myself what work I could do that might have impact as the climate crisis deepens.
Social/economic phenomena seems central to solutions. So, I started a move from NeuroAI/RL to AI-powered social science.
I want to share a bit of my trajectory since. 🚀🧵
Social/economic phenomena seems central to solutions. So, I started a move from NeuroAI/RL to AI-powered social science.
I want to share a bit of my trajectory since. 🚀🧵
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
I am recruiting graduate students for the experimental side of my lab @mcgill.ca for admission in Fall 2026!
Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.
Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.
November 19, 2025 at 6:04 PM
I am recruiting graduate students for the experimental side of my lab @mcgill.ca for admission in Fall 2026!
Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.
Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.
Some views on why cognitive effort exertion can feel costly.
New pontification piece with @awestbrook.bsky.social and Jean Daunizeau, just out in TICS:
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
(or why does it hurt to think)
never written a review paper before in my life, that was a new and unusual experience
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
(or why does it hurt to think)
never written a review paper before in my life, that was a new and unusual experience
Why is cognitive effort experienced as costly?
A widespread observation is that people avoid mentally effortful courses of action,
and much recent work examining cognitive effort has explained subjective effort evaluation
– and, consequently, pref...
www.cell.com
November 19, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Some views on why cognitive effort exertion can feel costly.
Reassuring that we have set reasonable submission limits. Something to aspire to! lol
November 19, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reassuring that we have set reasonable submission limits. Something to aspire to! lol
Move fast, break things.
apnews.com/article/open...
Even if their recent push has largely fixed this issue
openai.com/index/streng...
Can't help but think why they didn't push earlier...
apnews.com/article/open...
Even if their recent push has largely fixed this issue
openai.com/index/streng...
Can't help but think why they didn't push earlier...
OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
apnews.com
November 7, 2025 at 2:09 AM
Move fast, break things.
apnews.com/article/open...
Even if their recent push has largely fixed this issue
openai.com/index/streng...
Can't help but think why they didn't push earlier...
apnews.com/article/open...
Even if their recent push has largely fixed this issue
openai.com/index/streng...
Can't help but think why they didn't push earlier...
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
Canadian researchers should be aware the there is a motion before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research to force Tricouncils to hand over disaggregated peer review data on all applications:
Applicant names, profiles, demographics
Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores
Applicant names, profiles, demographics
Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores
October 30, 2025 at 8:33 PM
Canadian researchers should be aware the there is a motion before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Research to force Tricouncils to hand over disaggregated peer review data on all applications:
Applicant names, profiles, demographics
Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores
Applicant names, profiles, demographics
Reviewers names, profiles, comments, and scores
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
If you don't think rando MPs (and whoever else they share it with) should have access to personal information of individual applicants, reviewers, and students, confidential data, & full applications and reviews in every Canadian research grant (funded or not), please sign.
Yes! Contact them and sign this petition here —it’s not just about EDI data! So much personally identifying information for applicants and reviewers will not be protected!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Open Letter to Protect Tri-Council EDI Data
Why do we need urgent action to protect our data?
The mandate of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research is to review and report on topics relating to science and research in ...
docs.google.com
October 31, 2025 at 12:46 AM
If you don't think rando MPs (and whoever else they share it with) should have access to personal information of individual applicants, reviewers, and students, confidential data, & full applications and reviews in every Canadian research grant (funded or not), please sign.
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
Tell that to Jamaica
"Bill Gates Says Climate Change Isn’t So Bad After All --Experts are calling his latest memo "pointless, vague, unhelpful and confusing" by Victor Tangermann for @futurism.com: futurism.com/science-ener...
Bill Gates Says Climate Change Isn't So Bad After All
In a new memo published on his blog, Bill Gates pushed back on a "doomsday view of climate change," arguing we should help the poor instead.
futurism.com
October 28, 2025 at 8:56 PM
Tell that to Jamaica
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
How does behavior spread? New insights on complex contagion in social networks with causal evidence from a country-scale field experiment @davidlazer.bsky.social sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...
October 16, 2025 at 5:51 PM
How does behavior spread? New insights on complex contagion in social networks with causal evidence from a country-scale field experiment @davidlazer.bsky.social sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...
Had an amazing time at #COLM2025 It was vibrant, high level, and seemed a healthy balance of LLM critique and solution focussed. I am so happy with how our social simulation workshop went. Chairing and panel moderating was a pleasure thanks to the many that participated. Stay tuned for recordings!
October 11, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Had an amazing time at #COLM2025 It was vibrant, high level, and seemed a healthy balance of LLM critique and solution focussed. I am so happy with how our social simulation workshop went. Chairing and panel moderating was a pleasure thanks to the many that participated. Stay tuned for recordings!
Excited to be at #COLM2025 and to be organizing one of (perhaps the?) first workshop on social modelling with LLMs! Looking forward to this community-wide stocktake on the state of the field, main challenges, and promising applications!
sites.google.com/view/social-...
sites.google.com/view/social-...
Social Simulation with LLMs
Important Information
Workshop Date: October 10, 2025
Workshop Room: 523AB Workshop Time Zone: Montreal (UTC -4)
Contact Email: [email protected]
sites.google.com
October 7, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Excited to be at #COLM2025 and to be organizing one of (perhaps the?) first workshop on social modelling with LLMs! Looking forward to this community-wide stocktake on the state of the field, main challenges, and promising applications!
sites.google.com/view/social-...
sites.google.com/view/social-...
Looks like I missed the publication of another stochastic thermodynamics text in June. Seifert is arguably better positioned, but let's see about his exposition style. The other text is Politi & Pigolotti, which was nice, but light on the info side.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...
www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...
Stochastic Thermodynamics
Cambridge Core - Statistical Physics - Stochastic Thermodynamics
www.cambridge.org
September 30, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Looks like I missed the publication of another stochastic thermodynamics text in June. Seifert is arguably better positioned, but let's see about his exposition style. The other text is Politi & Pigolotti, which was nice, but light on the info side.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...
www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
September 19, 2025 at 1:05 PM
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
I am recruiting (Canadian🇨🇦) graduate students at York University for Fall 2026 in Social and Personality Psychology! If you are interested in misinformation, political polarization, and/or computational social science, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
September 15, 2025 at 7:29 PM
I am recruiting (Canadian🇨🇦) graduate students at York University for Fall 2026 in Social and Personality Psychology! If you are interested in misinformation, political polarization, and/or computational social science, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
It seems obvious that we should prioritize addressing misinformation that is more harmful. But what makes something more likely to be harmful? Can we can reason about it before the harm has occurred?
📣 In an upcoming #CSCW2024 paper, we present a taxonomy of *Misinformation as a Harm* ➡️
📣 In an upcoming #CSCW2024 paper, we present a taxonomy of *Misinformation as a Harm* ➡️
April 15, 2024 at 5:42 PM
It seems obvious that we should prioritize addressing misinformation that is more harmful. But what makes something more likely to be harmful? Can we can reason about it before the harm has occurred?
📣 In an upcoming #CSCW2024 paper, we present a taxonomy of *Misinformation as a Harm* ➡️
📣 In an upcoming #CSCW2024 paper, we present a taxonomy of *Misinformation as a Harm* ➡️
If there is anything worse than "economist brain", it's economist brain arguments about how inefficient the state is.
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 PM
If there is anything worse than "economist brain", it's economist brain arguments about how inefficient the state is.
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
1800 block of South Western Avenue in Chicago
August 16, 2025 at 8:28 PM
1800 block of South Western Avenue in Chicago
Ironic how that last sentance in the image (as a belief) is a deeply held fiction for certain individuals ('deep state is after me') who voted for a govmnt that's doing just that to other people whose idealistic notion of govmnt presumably made them not believe it could happen, least of all to them.
One trademark of an authoritarian regime is the use of the legal system to target political opponents. Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has been using his position to concoct accusations of mortgage fraud against Letitia James, Adam Schiff and now Cook.
August 20, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Ironic how that last sentance in the image (as a belief) is a deeply held fiction for certain individuals ('deep state is after me') who voted for a govmnt that's doing just that to other people whose idealistic notion of govmnt presumably made them not believe it could happen, least of all to them.
Interesting analysis that reminds me that political discourse is a technology of control in democracy that is used to stabilize ideologies.
Okay, so:
The European democracies under study almost all use PR, and in PR, the median voter is not a useful or meaningful concept: there are many parties, not two, & they chase their own & ideologically proximate voters, not the median (unless they're centrist, but then it's incidental)
The European democracies under study almost all use PR, and in PR, the median voter is not a useful or meaningful concept: there are many parties, not two, & they chase their own & ideologically proximate voters, not the median (unless they're centrist, but then it's incidental)
August 17, 2025 at 3:03 AM
Interesting analysis that reminds me that political discourse is a technology of control in democracy that is used to stabilize ideologies.
I don't like where this is going...the distinction is nuance and the modern media bit just isn't equipped for nuance.
See, right to the “jail scientists” take.
August 6, 2025 at 7:23 PM
I don't like where this is going...the distinction is nuance and the modern media bit just isn't equipped for nuance.
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.
The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. https://www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-student-enrollment-outlook-and-economic-impact
August 4, 2025 at 12:02 AM
A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
Motherfucking wind farms…
July 30, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Motherfucking wind farms…
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
Listings! Bring them back!! (Also a wonderful love letter to NYC at a certain formative time.)
In my debut for @theatlantic.com, I wrote about the disappearance of cultural listings from major New York media outlets, and what it portends for artists, audiences, institutions, and journalists. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Why No One Knows What’s Happening Tonight
A love letter to music listings
www.theatlantic.com
July 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Listings! Bring them back!! (Also a wonderful love letter to NYC at a certain formative time.)
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.
“Wikipedia is this economic anomaly. In many ways, it’s sort of magical that people will just volunteer without explicit economic incentives to create artifacts that are meant to share knowledge with everyone in the world”
July 26, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Most of the internet used to be like this. This is actually the default, it took companies enclosing the internet and adding weird, soul-killing incentives to make people behave the way they do now. In a way, there is truly nothing special about Wikipedia except that it survived longer.
Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel
Review "Opinion dynamics: Statistical physics and beyond"
arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521
Lab experiments, data, models, analytical/computational tools. 93 pages, >1k references.
With Fabian Baumann, David Garcia, Gerardo Iñiguez, Márton Karsai, Jan Lorenz, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron. Led by Michele Starnini
arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521
Lab experiments, data, models, analytical/computational tools. 93 pages, >1k references.
With Fabian Baumann, David Garcia, Gerardo Iñiguez, Márton Karsai, Jan Lorenz, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron. Led by Michele Starnini
Opinion dynamics: Statistical physics and beyond
Opinion dynamics, the study of how individual beliefs and collective public opinion evolve, is a fertile domain for applying statistical physics to complex social phenomena. Like physical systems, soc...
arxiv.org
July 16, 2025 at 5:57 AM
Review "Opinion dynamics: Statistical physics and beyond"
arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521
Lab experiments, data, models, analytical/computational tools. 93 pages, >1k references.
With Fabian Baumann, David Garcia, Gerardo Iñiguez, Márton Karsai, Jan Lorenz, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron. Led by Michele Starnini
arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521
Lab experiments, data, models, analytical/computational tools. 93 pages, >1k references.
With Fabian Baumann, David Garcia, Gerardo Iñiguez, Márton Karsai, Jan Lorenz, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron. Led by Michele Starnini