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

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-025-09982-4

From the conclusions:

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

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-025-09982-4

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...

New research suggests that contrary to the conventional narrative, complex societies do not necessarily lead to more inequality. Which is to say, there is historical precedence for sustainable growth.

“The traditional thinking is that once you get larger societies with formal leaders, or once you have farming, inequality is going to go way up. But high degrees of inequality are not inevitable in large societies.”

https://archaeologymag.com/2025/04/study-reveals-inequality-was-never-inevitable/

This is obscene. (The three singers have all passed away.) www.ynetnews.com/article/epit...

Ofra Haza, Shoshana Damari and...

I’m kind of surprised I haven’t seen this book before. Is it as good as I hope it is? www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B009...

Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six ...

I know I'm old man yelling at clouds, but I miss not only physical buttons on devices, but multiple physical buttons.

I'm really getting tired of the current trend seen on headphones. Hold for 5 seconds to turn on, hold 5 seconds to turn off. Tap once for volume up. Double tap for next song, triple tap to turn on noise canceling. Hold the button down for 20 seconds while patting your head and doing interpretive dance in order to pair Bluetooth.

Give me an on/off switch. Give me an analog volume wheel. Give me dedicated buttons for functions

It's like a generation of designers grew up with one button Apple mice, and forgot how much more simple doing actual work with dedicated buttons actually is

This llama is so very, very patient, and baby goats can be so very, very annoying!

Surprising to see Youtuber PewDiePie (110M subscribers) publishing a video last night , "I installed Linux (so should you)" with a call to his community to join the platform, underlining the fun of customisation and DIY, in opposition to all the enshitification of Windows. His main point of friction for moving was Photoshop, and he explained how he made the effort to adapt GIMP to his needs. Always good to see initiatives like that shared to large audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVI_smLgTY0

A bit repetitive but still terrific episode on Merleau-Ponty. Probably worth your time if you are a #cogsci or #neuro person. Embodiment/Enactivism and all that jazz ultimately go back to him (and Husserl & Heidegger, but his work is key to later developments e.g. Gibson).

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2nyjawhtjiof2wn7aqvtpwlm/post/3llen3ckow22n

Is #rationality a normative or descriptive concept?

Kevin Reuter, Lucien Baumgartner, Michael Messerli "present the findings of a #corpusLinguistics study revealing that people commonly perceive the concept of rationality as normative."

https://doi.org/10.5840/tht20253442 #xPhi #bigData

One thing I don't understand about people wanting self-determination is why if they have it, they immediately form a government to take it away.

Another (scholarly) life hack: If you are even slightly historically inclined, reading oral histories is the bees knees.

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders? A fundamental theory of evolution cannot assume heredity, generations, lineages, or what variation looks like. All of these are things that have themselves evolved.

Anarchism does not depend on theory or programs, which try to grasp man's life in its entirety. It is a teaching, which is based on real life, which outgrows all artificial limitations, which cannot be constricted by any system.
-- Nestor Makhno

#anarchism #quote #bot

Applications these days have no respect for a computer's limited resources:

- Chat apps consume 0.5GB RAM (e.g. Messenger)
- IDEs take 5GB of space and consume 4+ GB of RAM (e.g. Rider)
- A VS Code for a tiny F# project eats 1 GB of RAM

And then there's #Emacs which consumes 200MB after 1 month...

I guess most people don't really care about this, as long as they have the resources needed, but it always bothers me.

Writing this morning about "post-truth" and forking realities. Reading some great stuff in support of my arguments, including this killer piece by Henry Farrell

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/were-getting-the-social-media-crisis 

"...X/Twitter is a Pornhub where everything is twisted around the particular kinks of a specific, and visibly disturbed individual"

For an upcoming talk I want to show a series of videos, pause and restrart as needed, go back to previous clips, skip entire clips etc. I want this to be as smooth as possible. Seems LO Impress is not up to this. How can I do this on my ubuntu machine or do I need windows (shudder)?

Reichmam U. deans and Weizmann Science Institute leadership join the strike.