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Elizabeth Mieczkowski

@emiecz.bsky.social

150 followers 170 following 17 posts

Studying multi-agent collaboration 🤝🧩🤖 PhD Candidate at Princeton CS with Tom Griffiths & Natalia Vélez @cocoscilab.bsky.social @velezcolab.bsky.social Prev: Cornell CS, MIT BCS

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Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Mar 26

We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇

⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams, @neilbramley.bsky.social, Chris Lucas, @natvelali.bsky.social & @cocoscilab.bsky.social

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Bella Fascendini @bellafascendini.bsky.social · 2d

Honored to contribute a Journal Club piece to @natrevpsychol.nature.com!

I explore Robert White's seminal "competence motivation" framework (1959) and why it remains relevant over 60 years later—from why toddlers insist on doing things themselves to designing intrinsically motivated AI. 🤖

Nature Reviews Psychology @natrevpsychol.nature.com · 2d

‘Motivation reconsidered’ reconsidered

Journal Club by Bella Fascendini

go.nature.com/3IwYftH

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Mark Ho @markkho.bsky.social · 2d

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

codec lab

codec-lab.github.io

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Kunal Jha @kjha02.bsky.social · 5d

Forget modeling every belief and goal! What if we represented people as following simple scripts instead (i.e "cross the crosswalk")?

Our new paper shows AI which models others’ minds as Python code 💻 can quickly and accurately predict human behavior!

shorturl.at/siUYI%F0%9F%...

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 15d

Timely reminder that 'associative' language leads lay people to confuse correlation and causation, as @tomerullman.bsky.social and I showed a few years ago.
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Snapshot from the BBC:
www.bbc.com/news/article...

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 20d

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention

Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Brenden Lake @brendenlake.bsky.social · Sep 8

Our new lab for Human & Machine Intelligence is officially open at Princeton University!

Consider applying for a PhD or Postdoc position, either through Computer Science or Psychology. You can register interest on our new website lake-lab.github.io (1/2)

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Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Aug 18

Bonan's energy and excitement for CogSci are truly unmatched 🤩 Apply!

Bonan Zhao (赵博囡) @bonan.bsky.social · Aug 17

My Lab at the University of Edinburgh🇬🇧 has funded PhD positions for this cycle!

We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate.

It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations.

Spread the words!

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

CoLab at Princeton University @velezcolab.bsky.social · Jul 29

The CoLab is headed to #CogSci2025!! 🥳 Here's where to find us!

A lineup showing upcoming talks and posters for the CoLab at CogSci 2025.

Wednesday
Natalia Vélez: Understanding structural diversity in human collaboration
Metareasoning Workshop, Pacific H, 10:30-11:10am

Thursday
Huang Ham: Collaborative encoding of visual working memory
P1-H-244

Friday
Bonan Zhao (new PI!): Discovering hidden laws in innovation by recombination
P2-Z-231

Elizabeth Mieczkowski: A normative account of specialization: How task and environment shape role differentiation in collaboration
P2-M-133

Bella Fascendini: Are two-year-olds intrinsically motivated to explore their own competence?
Learning & Development 2, Salon 6, 1-2:30pm

Saturday
Renée Creppy (first-timer!): Children’s expectations of dominant and prestigious leaders
P3-C-40

Natalia Vélez: Thinking in teams
Invited Symposium: New Theoretical Directions in Cognitive Science
Salon 7, 2:15-3:45pm

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Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Jul 24

Really exciting step toward AI-informed policy design! Nice work @sethkarten.ai 🙌

Seth Karten @sethkarten.ai · Jul 23

🚀 New preprint!
🤔 Can one agent “nudge” a synthetic civilization of Census‑grounded agents toward higher social welfare—all by optimizing utilities in‑context? Meet the LLM Economist ↓

Diagram of LLM Economist: left—grid of persona‑conditioned worker agents; center—planner LLM sends tax schedule; right—social‑welfare ‘hill‑climb’.

Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Yang Xiang @yangxiang.bsky.social · Jul 24

Our latest on the cognitive science of LLMs! To be presented @CogSci‬2025 🎉

LLMs are increasingly involved in human collaborations. How do LLMs assign responsibility and reward to collaborators? Is it similar to how humans do it? 🤖🧑

📃 gershmanlab.com/pubs/XiangBi... (1/4)

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Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Jul 23

I've learned so much working with Rachit! Highly recommend joining his lab 👏

Rachit Dubey @rachitdubey.bsky.social · Jul 23

Headed to #CogSci2025 next week!

Interested in computational cognitive science applied to climate change and real-world policy? Come find me!

My lab at UCLA is recruiting 1–2 fully funded PhD students.

We work on:
• decision-making
• climate perception
• human–AI collaboration for policy design

Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Max Kleiman-Weiner @maxkw.bsky.social · Jul 22

Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"!

Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind | PNAS

Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...

www.pnas.org

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Robert Hawkins @rdhawkins.bsky.social · Jul 21

"We introduce Collaborative Rational Speech Act (CRSA), an information-theoretic (IT) extension of RSA that models multi-turn dialog by optimizing a gain function adapted from rate-distortion theory."

arxiv.org/abs/2507.14063

Collaborative Rational Speech Act: Pragmatic Reasoning for Multi-Turn Dialog

As AI systems take on collaborative roles, they must reason about shared goals and beliefs-not just generate fluent language. The Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework offers a principled approach to pr...

arxiv.org

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Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Jul 19

Thanks Bella! 😊

Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Jul 18

So excited our paper is now out in ‪@cognitionjournal.bsky.social‬! Huge thanks to our editor and reviewers 🧠 Their thoughtful suggestions inspired Experiments 3 & 4, including a striking inverse correlation between idleness judgments and speed-up predictions

Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · Jul 18

“People Evaluate Idle Collaborators Based on their Impact on Task Efficiency”

📢 New paper from: Elizabeth Mieczkowski, Cameron Rouse Turner, Natalia Vélez, & Tom Griffiths

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

TL;DR: Sometimes it's acceptable not to help with group work 🧵👇

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

annecollins.bsky.social @annecollins.bsky.social · Jul 11

New published paper with Ham Huang and @actlab.bsky.social! @cognitionjournal.bsky.social
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Wolfram Barfuss @wbarfuss.bsky.social · Jun 17

How to cooperate for a sustainable future? We don't know (yet), but I'm thrilled to share that our new perspective piece has just been published in @pnas.org. Bridging complexity science and multiagent reinforcement learning can lead to a much-needed science of collective, cooperative intelligence.

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Elizabeth Mieczkowski @emiecz.bsky.social · Jun 17

Excited to share our findings on prediction in the brain’s "physics network" 🧠 Honored to have contributed to this work, & huge kudos to @rtpramod.bsky.social for leading the project!

RT Pramod @rtpramod.bsky.social · Jun 17

Thrilled to announce our new publication titled 'Decoding predicted future states from the brain's physics engine' with @emiecz.bsky.social, Cyn X. Fang, @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

(1/n)

Decoding predicted future states from the brain’s “physics engine”

Using fMRI in humans, this study provides evidence for future state prediction in brain regions involved in physical reasoning.

www.science.org

Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Francisco Cruz @cruzf.bsky.social · Jun 12

Across 9 experiments (+6600 participants), we explored a paradox: How do non-experts judge scientific explanations they can’t fully understand? We found that scientific jargon can increase people’s satisfaction with explanations, even though it makes them less comprehensible.
2/9

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

nitasha tiku @nitasha.bsky.social · Jun 5

A lot of people say generative AI shouldn't infringe on copyright. These researchers actually tried to do it. The result: an 8 terabyte dataset of text that's openly licensed or in the public domain & 7 B parameter model that performs as well as Meta's Llama 7B www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Analysis | AI firms say they can’t respect copyright. These researchers tried.

A new effort using only openly licensed data may have implications on thorny policy disputes around copyright and AI

www.washingtonpost.com

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · Jun 2

Out now in TiCS, something i've been thinking about a lot:

"Physics vs. graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"

(by Balaban & me)

relevant for many people, related to imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, aphantasia, and more

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lBaC4sIRv...

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · May 23

Are you an RL PhD at Harvard who has had your funding wrecked by the government and working on topics related to multi-agent? Reach out, I am happy to try to find a way to support you.

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Nori Jacoby @norijacoby.bsky.social · Apr 29

We are recruiting two postdoctoral scholars for a research project in human collective intelligence and creativity at UC Davis and Cornell. Joint project with @enfascination.com, @norijacoby.bsky.social, @oferon.bsky.social & Dalton Conley. Please forward this thread to relevant people. 1/n

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Reposted by Elizabeth Mieczkowski

Fred Callaway @fredcallaway.bsky.social · May 7

Despite the world being on fire, I can't help but be thrilled to announce that I'll be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth in Fall '26. I'll be recruiting grad students this upcoming cycle—get in touch if you're interested!

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