Paul E. Smaldino | Lightnews

Paul Smaldino

@psmaldino.bsky.social

5.9K followers 950 following 740 posts

Paradigmatically promiscuous scientist. Ankylosaur enthusiast. Modeler of cultural evolution and related topics. Anti-fascist. Professor at UC Merced and the Santa Fe Institute.
Web: https://smaldino.com/wp/

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Physics 20%

Sociology 17%

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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 16d

“Bella Ciao”, translated and recorded by Tom Waits and Marc Ribot in 2018.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=50Gv...

Marc Ribot - "Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful)" (feat. Tom Waits)

YouTube video by Pitchfork

m.youtube.com

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino, Ingo Rohlfing, James E. Bartlett

Naomi Saphra @nsaphra.bsky.social · 7d

New sci-hub just dropped.

From X:
Renaud Foucart
@RenaudFoucart
Few people now this but the Epstein library can be used to bypass academic journal paywalls. You search for a paper and if someone sent it to Epstein the pdf is there.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 10d

"It sounds better in the original Croatian."

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

Kids in the hall "life is short life is shit and soon it will be over"

YouTube video by Satan Mouse “Satan Mouse Productions” Productions

www.youtube.com

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 10d

Meanwhile the corruption is just absolutely staggering. They are literally looting government coffers. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 10d

That's why pluralistic appeals to the public good and human decency aren't working -- the dominant narrative too many have bought in the US is that there are two sides that are incompatible, and therefore one must triumph over the other.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 10d

Another is extreme parochialism -- some people want a country where people like them are in charge, and are willing (and excited) to violently dominate or remove those in their way. Govt corruption and incompetence is a price they're willing to pay.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 10d

Definitely seems plausible for some, seems unlikely to be the dominant narrative for most. Strategic ambiguity allows for multiple reasons under the same banner.

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 10d

disturbingly plausible

Fascism is a literally suicidal ideology, one obsessed with purging the body politic to the point of total self-negation. What’s funny about Suicide Rightism is how direct it is about all this. You don’t need some big theoretical analysis; there’s no level of abstraction to move through. It’s just pretty straightforwardly pro-suicide. I don’t think you have to be a professional psychologist to understand why dramatic, attention-grabbing suicide might be appealing to semi-employed guys who spend 14 hours a day watching Asmongold or whatever. Its promise is that all the pain and frustration you feel can be visited on the people you believe authored it--and then ended. Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is school-shooter ideology.

And as the D.H.S. tweet of the penguin meme makes clear, the Suicide Right case for Trump is that he gets this. The reward for supporting him is oblivion. He and I.C.E. and the C.B.P. are the armored bulldozer giving you the chance to kill immigrants and liberal white women and male nurses before you put a gun in your mouth. His administration is the plane, just waiting for you to get inside. I guess 2024 was a Flight 93 election, after all.

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 10d

disturbingly plausible

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 11d

I love this.

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Nicholas Landry @nwlandry.bsky.social · 11d

I had the most wholesome moment today---I requested @psmaldino.bsky.social's book from the library, and when I picked it up today, someone had left me a little note inside, saying that they'd love to meet to talk about it. Yay :)

Reposted by Elizabeth Saunders, Nandita Sharma, Paul E. Smaldino

Myriam Gurba (Serrano through my mom) @lesbrains.bsky.social · 12d

ICE kidnapped 5 people from my community this morning. I don’t live in Minneapolis. I live in LA County. They’re still here and their still brutalizing.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 12d

a man is saying cast it into the fire

Alt: Elrond tells Isildor what to do with AI slop

media.tenor.com

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 13d

I had a really nice time on the @epthepod.bsky.social podcast. Here you can listen to me blathering about evolutionary social science and some of the things I work on.

Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast) @epthepod.bsky.social · 13d

This week, we talk to @psmaldino.bsky.social about selection, the covert signalling of social identities, and how to think about models, science, and what it is we're all doing with our lives.

youtu.be/0h9qAhwixJ4
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-gkf6w...

Selection with Paul Smaldino

YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast)

youtu.be

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast) @epthepod.bsky.social · 13d

Selection with Paul Smaldino

YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast)

youtu.be

Reposted by Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Paul E. Smaldino, Trevon D. Logan , and 3 more Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Paul E. Smaldino, Trevon D. Logan, Jason Lyall, Dan Immergluck, Jeannette Sutton

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 16d

Sayre: "My background is in international humanitarian response in conflict zones in Yemen, Haiti, Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine. What I've seen here is what I've seen there. A powerful entity violently and intentionally terrorizing people."

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 16d

(I know, as if uncritically and unreservedly supporting cops isn’t already halfway to fascism)

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 16d

I got into an argument with someone back around 2020 when I said the “thin blue line” flags were fascist symbols and should be actively condemned (they argued it was just supporting local cops). Well, here we are.

Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 16d

At the end of the day, the Black Lives Matter era was about whether people should be killed in the street, and lots of people decided yeah and put those little blue flags on their cars. It spread to everyone because it stopped for no one.

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Mark Bray, Richard Hall , and 4 more Shannon Vallor, Mark Bray, Richard Hall, Paul E. Smaldino, David Webster, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Dan Immergluck

Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 16d

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

A neat paper I worked on, begun over 2 years ago when our concerns were more myopic, was just published today. It came out an excellent set of workshops at the Santa Fe Institute, led by the indefatigable Joshua Garland. The gist: sometimes inefficiency is good for you www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The case against efficiency: friction in social media - npj Complexity

npj Complexity - The case against efficiency: friction in social media

www.nature.com

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 17d

New paper from myself and many fantastic collaborators on the value of friction online social networks. A fun blend of principles from complexity science and social media design.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

I promise you that there is already far more action being taken than you realize, but I am in agreement that more is needed.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

Dude, the US is literally in the early stages of a civil war RIGHT NOW. Also, there are a zillion differences between the US and Czechoslovakia. And Brazil. I think you're falsely assuming all people have equal affordances, but sorry we're not going to war fast enough for you.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

That's fair. I suspect this rationale is rare and I doubt most people who voice it are being honest about their reasons, but I agree that it doesn't punish Trump if that's what they really think.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

I disagree with Kevin too, but this is a stupid response. The US is monstrously larger and more diverse than the Netherlands, and lacks both the infrastructure and institutions to easily change course. People here are working for change every day, and it is wrong and insulting to suggest otherwise.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

I understand the sentiment, but it feels a bit futile. The US is in the midst of a cold civil war that is teetering on the verge of turning hot, while our captured federal government and its tech collaborators disrupt the world. I hope my international friends visit, but I understand if they won't.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 17d

Will these be recorded?

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Jan W. Mueller, Mor Naaman , and 10 more Joanna Bryson, Jan W. Mueller, Mor Naaman, Steve Peers, Rosemary A. Joyce, Charlie Beckett, Paul E. Smaldino, Michael Kevane, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Laurent Pech, Wolfgang Huber, Manisha Sinha, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 19d

One court decision, two different headlines.

Guardian on the left, NY Times on the right. Which one more directly conveys information and the stakes to the reader?

US court allows ICE to arrest and pepper-spray peaceful protestors in Minnesota

Appeals Court Stays Restrictions on Federal Tactics in Minnesota
The Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request to block, at least for now, a lower court’s injunction limiting how federal agents interact with protesters in the state.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 19d

It's easy to see why Salvador Allende was so enamored with cybernetics. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...

Project Cybersyn - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 19d

Looking through Norbert Wiener's 1950 book "The Human Use of Human Beings," just now, this 2-paragraph passage jumped out at me from the first chapter. Extremely relevant to our troubling times.

It is my thesis that the operation of the living individual
and the operation of some of the newer communication
machines are precisely parallel. Both of them have sensory
receptors as one stage in their cycle of operation: that is, in
both of them there exists a special apparatus for collecting
information from the outer world at low energy levels, and
for making it available in the operation of the individual or
of the machine. In both cases these external messages are
not taken neat, but through the internal transforming powers
of the apparatus, whether it be alive or dead. The information is then turned into a new form available for the further
stages of performance. In both the animal and the machine
this performance is made to be effective on the outer world.
In both of them, their performed action on the outer world,
and not merely their intended action, is reported back to the
central regulatory apparatus. This complex of behavior is
ignored by the average man, and in particular does not play
the role that it should in our habitual analysis of society.

This is true whether we consider human beings alone, or
in conjunction with types of automata which participate in a
two-way relation with the world about them. In this, our
view of society differs from the ideal of society which is held
by many Fascists, Strong Men in Business, and Government. Similar men of ambition for power are not entirely unknown in scientific and educational institutions. Such people prefer an organization in which all orders come from

$above, and none return. The human beings under them have been reduced to the level of effectors for a supposedly higher nervous organism. I wish to devote this book to a protest against this inhuman use of human beings; for in my mind, any use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status is a degradation and a waste. It is a degradation to a human being to chain him to an oar and use him as a source of power; but it is an almost equal degradation to assign him a purely repetitive task in a factory, which demands less than a millionth of his brain capacity. It is simpler to organize a factory or galley which uses individual human beings for a trivial fraction of their worth than it is to provide a world in which they can grow to their full stature. Those who suffer from a power complex find the mechanization of man a simple way to realize their ambitions. I say, that this easy path to power is in fact not only a rejection of everything that I consider to be of moral worth in the human race, but also a rejection of our now very tenuous opportunities for a considerable period of human survival.$

Reposted by Paul E. Smaldino

JoeyJoJoShabadoo @joeyjojo-shabadoo.bsky.social · 20d

Everyone in his inner circle would be insider trading trading on his death on Kalshi before turning the plane around

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