Ed Hagen
LightNews LightNews
banner
edhagen.net
Ed Hagen
@edhagen.net
5.6K followers 2K following 980 posts
Professor of Anthropology at Washington State University. Faculty page: https://anthro.vancouver.wsu.edu/people/hagen/

Views expressed are my own and do not reflect those of my employer or other organizations I'm affiliated with.
Posts Replies Media Videos
edhagen.net
I was surprised by children's large contribution to family food production in my hunter-gatherer family simulation. Of course, they're eating most of this food, too! From this paper linking the evolution of menopause to family energy balance: menopause-preprint.wisp.place 🧪 #BioAnth
A plot from the wife's age at first birth to the end of her life showing the contributions to family energy production by her, the husband, and their children. Initially, with no children, all energy is produced by the couple. As children arrive and gain foraging skills, their total contribution to family energy production grows and then begins to decline at the age of menopause as they mature and leave the family. Mortality takes its toll as the parents age.
January 21, 2026 at 2:07 PM
edhagen.net
From this book:
The NASA Archives
January 19, 2026 at 8:29 PM
edhagen.net
Pick up the nearest book. Open to page 42 and post your second sentence. Add #page42 and include this rule as a reply.
In some ways, just as groundbreaking as the X-planes themselves were the subtle social changes pioneered by NACA from the I93os and beyond, when the employee pool began to incorporate "women computers" who actually worked out much of the aerodynamics using standard Io-inch (25-cm) slide rules and mechanical calculating machines. Virginia Tucker was appointed the first NACA "computer" in 1935, and expanded the program, traveling widely around the nation on the lookout for women educated in mathematics and engineering. NACA came to rely on these adept women, who calculated data often more rapidly and accurately than the men could. Women computers proved critical to wartime success.
January 19, 2026 at 8:29 PM
edhagen.net
To answer this question you raise: because the network is open, it's possible to build services that provide content-specific views (termed "appviews"). @chive.pub is building one for academic papers, which can work with personal accounts or paper accounts: bsky.app/profile/chiv...
I must admit, I’m skeptical. The interface really seems poorly-suited for this. Hagen’s paper’s account is called @menopause-preprint.edhagen.net. What happens when he publishes another paper on menopause, what will he call it? How is he planning to keep track of interactions from other scientists with an account for every single paper, won’t swapping between fifteen Bluesky accounts every morning get tedious? Or will he just do this with papers he wants to promote? I applaud the general idea. Decentralized hosting seems like a great way to get around some of the problems of academic publishing. But this will definitely take a lot more work, if it’s ever going to be viable on a useful scale.
January 16, 2026 at 6:34 PM
edhagen.net
For us evolutionary psychologists: web.archive.org/web/20120318...
The Psychological Foundations of Culture JOHN TOOBY AND LEDA COSMIDES INTRODUCTION: THE UNITY OF SCIENCE One of the strengths of scientific inquiry is that it can progress with any mixture of empiricism, intuition, and formal theory that suits the convenience of the investigator. Many sciences develop for a time as exercises in description and empirical generalization. Only later do they acquire reasoned connections within themselves and with other branches of knowledge. Many things were scientifically known of human anatomy and the motions of the planets before they were scientifically explained. -GEORGE WILLIAMS, Adaptation and Natural Selection
January 8, 2026 at 10:45 PM
edhagen.net
Consider pairing it with one of the critiques, e.g., this one by Al Houston: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Abstract Gould and Lewontin use San Marco, Venice, to criticise the adaptationist program in biology. Following their lead, the architectural term “spandrel” is now widely used in biology to denote a feature that is a necessary byproduct of other aspects of the organism. I review the debate over San Marco and argue that the spandrels are not necessary in the sense originally used by Gould and Lewontin. I conclude that almost all the claims that Gould makes about San Marco are wrong and that it is reasonable to view the architectural spandrel as an adaptation. The spandrels example has not provided a good illustration of why adaptive explanations should be avoided. In fact, it can be used as an example of how adaptive explanations can be dismissed even when there is evidence in their favour. I also discuss the use of the concept of a spandrel in biology.
January 8, 2026 at 9:07 PM
edhagen.net
Twain called it
An excerpt from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Then the king made another speech about his dear dead brother, and invited everyone in the room to come to the funeral. Suddenly, a man laughed right in his face. Everyone turned to see who had dared to laugh at such a sad time. “Why, Dr. Robinson,” said Abner Shackleford, “you’ve been away and haven’t met this man. This is Harvey Wilks.” The king smiled and extended his hand to shake the hand of the doctor. “Keep your hands to yourself,” said the doctor. “You’re no Englishman. Your voice sounds nothing like an Englishman. You say that you’re Peter Wilks’s brother! Never! You’ve been lying.” The crowd around the doctor tried to quiet him and tried to explain to him how Harvey had proved in many ways that he was Peter Wilks’s brother—how he knew everyone’s name in town and even knew the names of the dogs. They begged the doctor not to hurt the girls’ feelings, but the doctor wouldn’t listen to them. Peter Wilks’s three nieces began to cry and begged the doctor to stop. “I was your father’s friend, and I’m your friend,” the doctor said to them. “I warn you as a friend, and an honest one who wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on these two liars and have nothing to do with them. This man has given you a lot of names and facts which he learned somewhere, and you’re eager to believe that this proves that he is your uncle. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for your friend, send these two liars away. I beg you to do this. Will you?” Mary Jane looked into the doctor’s eyes and said, “Here’s your answer.” She picked up the bag of gold dollars and put it into the king’s hands and said to the king, “Take this 6,000 dollars and put it into a bank or a business for my sisters and me. I trust you.” She then put her arms around the king and her sisters did the same. The king held up his head and smiled proudly.
January 7, 2026 at 1:29 AM
edhagen.net
2. Social media oligopolies trap users in walled gardens, own their identities and social graphs, and shape feeds to benefit themselves.

Scientific oligopolies charge to publish and access content paid for by the public, and increasingly publish junk science to increase profits.
Left column: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok Right column: Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley
January 6, 2026 at 3:12 PM
edhagen.net
Noticed this guy seated next to us at a restaurant in Mexico City when LA Law was going strong. When he realized I recognized him he crumpled up his napkin and threw it at me with a smile.
Richard Dysart, who played Leland McKenzie on LA Law
December 29, 2025 at 7:59 PM
edhagen.net
Evolutionary anthropology is a synthesis of the fossil evidence for human evolution (genus Homo emerged in Pleistocene Africa), primatology, studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers & other pops, & behavioral ecology. Primatologist Washburn & his students, especially. DeVore, were major influences:
December 25, 2025 at 7:44 PM
edhagen.net
Most UCSB ev anth and ev psych funding has been from the NIH & NSF. Here are totals I compiled last spring (I'm not sure if there are other sources, though):
Santa Barbara Evo funding (PI or Co-PI) Total amounts, including student DDRIGS (not adjusted for inflation) Chagnon NSF: $289,375 Cosmides NIH Director's Pioneer Award: $735,000 Cosmides/Tooby NSF: $399,792 Tooby NSF: $312,500 Gurven NIH: $7,930,000 Gurven NSF: $674,501 Conroy-Beam NSF CAREER: $635,758 Lawson NSF: $245,504 Gaulin NSF: $226,784
December 25, 2025 at 7:44 PM
edhagen.net
Richard Lee, author of the ethnography The Dobe !Kung (Ju/'hoansi), a staple of Anthro 101 courses, w/ Ju/'hoansi women & their kids in 2013.

Lee's research on this south African hunter-gatherer population profoundly shaped our perceptions of human evolution. 🧪

Source: hdl.handle.net/1807/76329
Richard B. Lee with five Ju/'hoansi women and several kids in a local village
December 18, 2025 at 11:44 PM
edhagen.net
But it's a great one to describe systems with two mating types (e.g., sperm only fuse with eggs, and not with other cells, and there are evolved mechanisms to ensure this). Here's a recent paper on binary fusion mechanisms (but there's a lot we still don't know): elifesciences.org/articles/93131
Abstract A crucial event in sexual reproduction is when haploid sperm and egg fuse to form a new diploid organism at fertilization. In mammals, direct interaction between egg JUNO and sperm IZUMO1 mediates gamete membrane adhesion, yet their role in fusion remains enigmatic. We used AlphaFold to predict the structure of other extracellular proteins essential for fertilization to determine if they could form a complex that may mediate fusion. We first identified TMEM81, whose gene is expressed by mouse and human spermatids, as a protein having structural homologies with both IZUMO1 and another sperm molecule essential for gamete fusion, SPACA6. Using a set of proteins known to be important for fertilization and TMEM81, we then systematically searched for predicted binary interactions using an unguided approach and identified a pentameric complex involving sperm IZUMO1, SPACA6, TMEM81 and egg JUNO, CD9. This complex is structurally consistent with both the expected topology on opposing gamete membranes and the location of predicted N-glycans not modeled by AlphaFold-Multimer, suggesting that its components could organize into a synapse-like assembly at the point of fusion. Finally, the structural modeling approach described here could be more generally useful to gain insights into transient protein complexes difficult to detect experimentally.
December 4, 2025 at 1:41 AM
edhagen.net
Anisogamy (the binary sex concept) helps explain variation within-species, but, interacting with ecology, it also helps explain speciation itself: 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Speciation by sexual selection: 20 years of progress. Twenty years ago, a seminal paper summarized the role of sexual selection in speciation as the coordinated evolution of (male) courtship signals and (female) preferences leading to prezygotic (behavioral) isolation between divergent lineages. Here, we discuss areas of progress that inspire an updated perspective. First, research has identified multiple mechanisms of sexual selection, in addition to female mate choice, that drive the origin and maintenance of species. Second, reviews and empirical data now conclude that sexual selection alone will rarely lead to reproductive isolation without ecological divergence, and we discuss the assumptions and possible exceptions underlying that conclusion. Finally, we consider the variable ways in which sexual selection contributes to divergence according to the spatial, temporal, social, ecological, and genomic context of speciation.
December 3, 2025 at 11:46 PM
edhagen.net
Outlier appropriately named 🧪
Scatterplot showing kcals per kg for game animals of different sizes. The Edible dormouse has exceptionally high caloric value for its size.
December 1, 2025 at 4:22 AM
edhagen.net
Twitter's original lead (for a time, only) developer @blaine.bsky.social discussing @bsky.app, & more crucially, the @atproto.com on which it runs atprotocommunity.leaflet.pub/3m6mw6rogyk2t

One chaotic possibility for #AcademicSky? One day our papers could be published here, on OUR personal servers
Herzog and the Jungle One of my favorite clips comes from Werner Herzog’s Burden of Dreams, where he reflects on the chaos of the jungle while filming Fitzcarraldo. “Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony — the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder… We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and lack of order. There is no real harmony as we conceive it… But I love it against my better judgment.” There’s an incredible tension in Herzog — this rational man trying to find order in chaos. He loves the creativity, even though it terrifies him. Blue Sky is like that: a simulacrum of Twitter, designed to be approachable and understandable — an amazing achievement. But the jungle is more interesting. AT Protocol could be the jungle — if we let it. Its flexibility and culture of openness can be fertile ground for new experimentation. We’re already seeing it: not just existing mediums like events, portable moderation tools, or communities-as-mediums, but weird stuff — experiments that stretch the imagination of what “social” can be.
November 27, 2025 at 9:04 PM
edhagen.net
2/2 Agent-based models have revealed even more complexities. Here's a recent example in @asn-amnat.bsky.social

Long et al (2025) A Life History Perspective on the Evolutionary Interplay of Sex Ratios and Parental Sex Roles www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
The parental roles of males and females differ remarkably across the tree of life, and several studies suggest that parental sex roles are associated with biased sex ratios. However, there is considerable debate on the causal relationship between sex roles and sex ratios and on the relative importance of the operational sex ratio (OSR), the adult sex ratio (ASR), and the maturation sex ratio (MSR). Here, we use individual-based evolutionary simulations to investigate the joint evolution of sex-specific parental behavior and the various sex ratios in several life history scenarios. We show that typically, but not always, the sex with lower mortality or faster maturity tends to provide most of the care. The association of parental sex roles with the various sex ratios is more intricate. At equilibrium, the OSR is typically biased toward the less caring sex, but the direction and strength of OSR biases may change considerably during evolution. When the MSR or ASR is biased, a broad spectrum of parental care patterns can evolve, although the overrepresented sex generally does most of the caring. We conclude that none of the sex ratios is a driver of parental sex roles; they rather coevolve with care biases in a subtle manner.
November 25, 2025 at 4:50 PM
edhagen.net
Still citing Trivers (1972) on parental investment? There's been a ton of empirical and theoretical work since then. Kokko and Jennions overheard a couple of goby fish chatting about some of the complexities 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵 1/2 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
The paper is open access. Click on the link for the full text
November 25, 2025 at 4:50 PM
edhagen.net
Perhaps the most influential table in hunter-gatherer studies, published in Lee's chapter in the famous 1968 edited volume by Lee and DeVore titled, ironically, Man the Hunter 🧪 #BioAnth
Lee: What Hunters Do for a Living, or, How to Make Out on Scarce Resources. Table 6 Primary Subsistence Source by Latitude. The table shows that less than 50 degrees from the equator, most hunter-gatherer societies rely mainly on gathering plant foods.
November 21, 2025 at 12:58 AM
edhagen.net
November 14, 2025 at 2:35 AM
edhagen.net
In the long-running Nativism-Empiricism debate, have the impressive successes of AI based on blank slate-ish connectionist architectures dealt a knock-out blow for Empiricism? Is it game over for Nativism? @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social gently pushes back 🧪 philpapers.org/archive/KARA...
Al empiricism: the only game in town? Abstract I offer an epistemic argument against the dominance of empiricism and empiricist-inspired methods in contemporary machine learning (ML) research. I first establish, as many ML researchers and philosophers of ML claim, that standard methods for constructing deep learning networks are best thought of as a kind of empiricism about cognitive architecture. I then argue that, even given the resounding success of contemporary ML models, there are few (if any) strong reasons to interpret their success as ruling out competing nativist approaches to cognitive architecture, especially given the extreme resource capture that empiricist methods have undergone in ML research. If we care about research goals like modeling human cognition or building genuinely rational machines, I argue we have good reason to support a robust competing artificial intelligence (AI) nativist tradition. I show how this argument applies to two recent defenses of Al empiricism in the philosophical literature: Buckner (2023)'s book-length defense of moderate Al empiricism, and Long (2024)'s dilemma argument against Al nativism.
November 5, 2025 at 9:18 PM
edhagen.net
Great dogs!
Leica, an Australian cattle dog
November 2, 2025 at 1:29 AM
edhagen.net
Left: all adult women (18-60) to all adult men (18-60)
Right: all adult women (18-60) to older men (28-60)
October 29, 2025 at 4:11 PM
edhagen.net
Thanks Hampton. I agree there are strong assumptions. I view this as the boundary if all adult men pursue women capable of producing offspring, regardless of their relative ages. Here's my plot of that model:
Ratio of fertile women (18-45) to adult men (18-60) as a function of female life expectancy at birth vs. male life expectancy at birth. Most of the parameter space shows that there are fewer fertile women than adult men, with a ratio of about 0.8 for some reasonable values of e0_f and e0_m.
October 29, 2025 at 1:51 PM
edhagen.net
Thanks Hampton. As a first pass toward evolutionary implications, I'm trying to use your code to compute the ratio of fertile women to adult men (and I know nothing about demography). Would this code do the trick for growth rate = 1 (I haven't changed anything else)?
October 26, 2025 at 6:44 PM