Olivier Morin
@OliverWithAnI
Researcher @Cognition_ENS (formerly @MPI_GEA). Culture, cognition, things in between. Now also active on the other social network.
New paper out: "The puzzle of Ideography" (target article @BBS ). Why is it so hard for humans to communicate with pictures that represent ideas, not for words? And are we getting better at doing this? psyarxiv.com/7pd5m/ A thread ⬇
It's a privilege to engage with an expert like @JoHenrich on a question as important and foundational as the role of culture in perception. But @DorsaAmir and I think this thread gets several key details wrong, both bigger-picture and finer-grained. Here's how (🧵):
Let's review. Game on. The question: Is there evidence that population-level variation exists in susceptibility to visual illusions? @DorsaAmir & @chazfirestone wrote a fascinating paper to which I will reply in two storm tweets. I see major problems. Storm 1 coming...
Zipf’s law of abbreviation explained by a simple cultural evolutionary model: - no pressure for efficiency - general pressure for brevity applying to all words - explains the weak correlation between frequency and brevity - explains heteroskedasticity osf.io/preprints/psya…
Cumulative culture, archaeology, skill, evolution of cognition. Sterelny & Hiscock in *Current Anthropology*: expertise isn't copying; social scaffolding of skill is complex! Responses Valentine Roux, @OliverWithAnI, Steven Kuhn, @DoctorSpurt, @CTennie, me journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…
In episode 223, I interview Dr. Pascal Boyer (@PascalBoyerUSA) about his book, Minds Make Societies. #Anthropology #psychology #CognitiveScience #humanevolution #Science Full interview: youtu.be/4i5S4Lnm1qs
HBES mourns the death of one of its founders, John Tooby (1952-2023), on Fri Nov 10th. John was co-director of the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology with Leda Cosmides, and was HBES President (1999-2001). He had an enormous impact on the field & will be sorely missed.
Cognitive fossils: using cultural artifacts to reconstruct psychological changes throughout history Review by Nicolas Baumard, Lou Safra, Mauricio Martins, & Coralie Chevallier @MauJDMartins @CoralieChevall1 Free access until December 28: authors.elsevier.com/a/1i3644sIRvPN…
I humbly did some maths and graphs on this preprint from @acerbialberto, which has a clear and important message, I believe. Also he's a great writer! Also features this gorgeous saddle-node bifurcation👇
Just uploaded an heavily updated version of a preprint (basically a new manuscript), now with @benoitdecourson mathematical models! "Weak content preferences stabilise culture" THREAD 1/8 osf.io/7z4ws