Paul Smaldino
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psmaldino.bsky.social
Paul Smaldino
@psmaldino.bsky.social

Paradigmatically promiscuous scientist. Ankylosaur enthusiast. Modeler of cultural evolution and related topics. Professor at UC Merced and the Santa Fe Institute.
Web: https://smaldino.com/wp/

Physics 20%
Sociology 17%

We are on the brink of a once in a generation transformation in world politics. @erikvoeten.bsky.social @segoddard.bsky.social and I talk neo-royalism as one future.
Give a list: goodauthority.org/news/the-new...
Check out the article it is based on here:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Here’s a bsky post of the same. bsky.app/profile/slot...
We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship.

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

I cosign every single word of this

anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

Using AI to amplify societal biases, exhibit 2490439840398
Researchers are now saying that AI can find correlations between facial characteristics and success on the job.

The Economist says that corporations would have a “strong incentive” to deploy this technology when looking at applicants.
1/This week has seen a blitz of what looks like corruption sandals: Saudi development deals for US military tech, Pakistani payments to Trump insiders for tariff relief, Swiss gold bars for a trade deal. Far from a payoff, this is a reordering of internat'l system.
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mxthh...
www.dropbox.com
We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship.

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Researchers are now saying that AI can find correlations between facial characteristics and success on the job.

The Economist says that corporations would have a “strong incentive” to deploy this technology when looking at applicants.
Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social
learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz

files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...
files.newsletter2go.com

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Monday boost for yesterday's newsletter, looking at whether we can discern general principles for how to connect teams to make them smarter:

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/when-less-communication-is-more-collective

#psychology #cogsci #collectiveintelligence
When less (communication) is more (collective intelligence)
Team work, complex problems, and preserving diversity in the ecosystem of ideas
tomstafford.substack.com
Come and do a PhD at Exeter with me and Chico Camargo (Computer Science) on human-genAI coevolution

"Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Data-Driven Agent-Based Modelling of Online Cultural Dynamics"

www.exeter.ac.uk/v8media/recr...

More details here:
www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...
www.exeter.ac.uk
Open AI loses copyright case in Germany.

Judge Elke Schwager summarized the case saying that if you want to build something and need components, "then you purchase them and do not use the property of others."
Blow for OpenAI in Germany as court rules song lyrics used illegally
A German court ruled on Tuesday that OpenAI violated copyright on nine popular songs in a lawsuit that marked another attempt to prevent the free use of artists' content online. The Munich Regional Co...
www.yahoo.com

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Congratulations to Dr @mariapykala.bsky.social for successfully defending her PhD thesis yesterday. Two big themes. 1) Social learning as a two-step process with psychological biases shaping both network formation and social learning given a network. 2) Cumulative cultural evolution in an AI world.

And what it all comes down to
Is that everything's gonna be fine, fine, fine
'Cause I've got Einstein in my pocket
And the other one is writing a eulogy for our entire goddamn society

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Congratulations to Andoni Sergiou for defending his PhD thesis today! And special thanks to @psmaldino.bsky.social and @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social for examining his thesis
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com

We did some reviewing of this idea in this paper, but I’d love to see a more in depth treatment. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Information architectures: a framework for understanding socio-technical systems - npj Complexity
A sequence of technological inventions over several centuries has dramatically lowered the cost of producing and distributing information. Because societies ride on a substrate of information, these c...
www.nature.com

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

why has no-one written a book on the evolution of cooperation titled "Decent with Modification"?

#evolution #culturalevolution

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Thinking this level of inequality is unsustainable isn’t radical, thinking it isn’t is
Four (!) three-year postdoc positions available at @au.dk: international.au.dk/about/profil...

Join an incredible team & help understand the psychological & political implications of the clash between high-speed society & slow-speed democracy.

Please share! @tboeggild.bsky.social can help with Qs
Four three-year postdoctoral positions in the project Slow-Motion Democracy - Vacancy at Aarhus University
Vacancy at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University
international.au.dk

Great story.

I’ll just call it silly.

Yeah, it was something as banal as "I will refer to this phenomenon as X."

I was once told "APA format does not permit the future tense."

I recently learned there’s a documentary about this. Haven’t seen it, but there it is. mubi.com/en/films/fre...
TRAILER - Freak Power: The Ballot or the Bomb (2020)
Disgusted by the way police are abusing their power, outlaw journalist Hunter S. Thompson starts his own political movement, Freak Power, to fight corruption and cronyism in his town and across Americ...
mubi.com

In 1970, Hunter S Thompson ran for sheriff of Aspen, CO, under the progressive “Freak Power” party platform. He lost by 31 votes despite receiving more votes than the previous winner, largely because the Dems and Republicans colluded to run a single candidate.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bat...

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

This week we talk to @babeheim.bsky.social about culture, change, modeling, running red lights, and the game of go.
youtu.be/nqTkSK-qtJM
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-hrn9v...
Cultural Dynamics with Bret Breheim
YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast)
youtu.be
They just gutted Teen Vogue which had top notch political journalism. The media is continuing to purge any sort of political dissent to Trump and the oligarchs.

www.vogue.com/article/teen...
I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.