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Ehud

@duhe.bsky.social

4.2K followers 770 following 4.9K 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

www.ehudlamm.com

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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.

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 46m

migrantinsider.com/p/scoop-appl...

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 1h

I have a feeling that most of the savings I get from driving a Toyota hybrid go into paying to extend the warranty for the hybrid battery. Total cost of ownership is the important metric.

Reposted by Ehud

Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · 2h

Haven't posted much lately-- busy. One of my Substack projects is republishing my chapters from the Kendler and Parnas series on the philosophy of psychiatry. The books are expensive and hard to find. This is, "The Hard Question in Psychiatric Nosology." /1 @awaisaftab.bsky.social

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Ned Block @neddo.bsky.social · 4h

Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...

authors.elsevier.com

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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 4h

Writing requires reading, and *reading* requires fairly intensive writing. I love what @vcarchidi.bsky.social has done here. It tracks with how I grew and changed during my MA. If I "read" in a meaningful sense, it means I've reconstructed the author's argument in my notes & linked them.

Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 4h

Some quick and honest thoughts on frustration and how (not) to deal with it in my experience.

vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/getting-fr...

Getting From A to D Requires B and C

On the importance of persisting through frustration.

vincentcarchidi.substack.com

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Mike "looking for research fellowship" Caulfield @mikecaulfield.bsky.social · 4h

This Oatmeal piece is a good read, and it makes me think how the whole "be a creator not a consumer" focus in the makerspace years (2000s) of education lead inexorably to this moment where mid-level accounting execs are flooding Facebook with AI slop. theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

This is a comic about AI art.

theoatmeal.com

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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 20h

Please spread the word! I am recruiting a PhD student this cycle (Fall 2026 start) to join my team in a new venture: the neuroscience of mood.

If you are curious to learn more, this short talk provides a good overview of why, what and how.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjIK...

Nicole Rust - The representation of mood in the primate insula (May 6, 2025)

YouTube video by Simons Foundation

www.youtube.com

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 2d

‘The message is clear: 20th-century colonialism created the conditions for a 21st-century tragedy.’

@josephinequinn.bsky.social on an exhibition of Gazan antiquities:

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Josephine Quinn · At the Institut du monde arabe: ‘Trésors sauvés de Gaza’

This show has excited controversy: should we even be talking about damage to antiquities in the context of so much...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Complexity Science Hub @csh.ac.at · 8h

Why do humans live in large-scale societies organized as states? Peter Turchin's "The Great Holocene Transformation" analyzes data from 800+ societies to reveal that #warfare between groups drove humanity's transformation from small bands to complex civilizations. 👉https://shorturl.at/D457n

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 8h

Because there's so much awful stuff to write about, I decided to write my latest column for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social about something interesting and removed from all that: the discovery of a blue pigment in a Neolithic artefact.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...

How did cave artists get a brand new pigment?

The discovery of traces of a blue pigment on a stone shaped into a shallow dish at a Palaeolithic site in Germany is quite a find

www.thenewworld.co.uk

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Sebastian Raschka (rasbt) @sebastianraschka.com · 3d

How do we evaluate LLMs?
I wrote up a new article on
(1) multiple-choice benchmarks,
(2) verifiers,
(3) leaderboards, and
(4) LLM judges

All with from-scratch code examples, of course!

sebastianraschka.com/blog/2025/ll...

Understanding the 4 Main Approaches to LLM Evaluation (From Scratch)

Multiple-Choice Benchmarks, Verifiers, Leaderboards, and LLM Judges with Code Examples

sebastianraschka.com

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 17h

analytic philosopher, continental philosopher, African Studies theorist

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 1d

quantitative methods, qualitative methods, mixed methods

Photo of a Kansas City Chiefs press conference with Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Patrick Mahomes. Reid is wearing a gray suit and red tie with a lapel pin. Kelce is wearing a camp-style short-sleeved shirt with a bird print, along with a suede cap, and Mahomes is wearing a white collared shirt, a pink checkered double-breasted vest, and a pale pink tie.

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 10h

No one can acquire a language on Duolingo.

Reposted by Ehud

Cassandra Yang @cassandrazieyang.bsky.social · 16h

Reading group alert!🔔 This term, our History and Philosophy of Biology reading group will be reading 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 (2000) by Susan Oyama. Online participants welcome! More details here: www.hps.cam.ac.uk/news-events/...

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 10h

Jews everywhere: if you can’t complain in it it’s not a language.

Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 10h

We studied To Kill a Mockingbird in school.

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 10h

doomscroll break

Reposted by Ehud

Jennifer Kretchmer @dreamwisp.bsky.social · 19h

Because it feels relevant as we continue to evaluate the media and our representatives’ statements, my favorite way to identify the active vs. passive voice.

A post by Rebecca Johnson:
“I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb, you have passive voice.”

A tumblr respond from mightymur:
“The final, brilliant word on passive voice.
"She was killed [by zombies.]"<--passive
"Zombies killed [by zombies] her." <-- active”

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 10h

No, I’m not gong to post about the philosophy of slurs . But as usual, lease don’t do semantics when you need to do pragmatics.

Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 10h

It can happen to white people?! Who knew?

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Andrea Matranga @andreamatranga.bsky.social · 11h

We have to all learn Navajo so we can talk without AI unserstanding

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 11h

I dunno, I’m worried now.

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 11h

WHAT

Downtown Brandi Frown 😾 @itsthebrandi.bsky.social · 12h

Her sister definitely texts like a parent who says CALL ME NOW about something not urgent.

www.wsmv.com/2025/10/08/i...

‘I didn’t mean to scare anyone’: Dolly Parton’s sister says after asking for prayers

Dolly postponed her first Las Vegas residency in more than 30 years late last month, saying she was dealing with health challenges.

www.wsmv.com

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 11h

I guess because software allows it, ppl keep trying to estimate diversification rates on phylogenies. This is not in principle possible, because infinite combinations of diversification and extinction rates can explain almost any tree. Short, clear recent-ish paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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damned soul-o-man @dansolomon.com · 13h

i’ve wondered whether the traditional tactic of peaceful resistance to shock the conscience of observers who see nonviolence met with force is still possible in a media environment where only novelty can get the attention of the people you need to be shocked, and portland seems to have an answer

Courtney Vaughn @courtneyvaughn.bsky.social · 14h

Streets are still closed off in front of the Portland ICE facility at 8:30pm. Protesters have gathered on a side street. Dance party in progress.

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Danny Robb @inverting-vision.bsky.social · 6d

Aristotle noticed that when bees returned to the hive, they shook or "danced" in front of a group. Millennia later, scientists debated whether it was a form of "language" amid shifts in scientific methods and philosophies in the 20th century.

#histsci 🗃️ #bees

daily.jstor.org/the-bee-danc...

The Bee Dance Debate - JSTOR Daily

Can insects communicate? In the middle of the twentieth century, scientists disagreed on whether bees could possess a “language” expressed through motion.

daily.jstor.org

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