Maybe a good time to share my favorite critique of When Prophecy Fails (from 1965!)

If rationality implies that people’s beliefs must be consistent, the fact that we manifestly deviate from this would require explanation.

But @bayesandbounds et al argue inconsistency is the default, and it is *consistency* that requires explanation:

buff.ly/9WIcGsp

"Explaining belief in the wide variety of supernatural entities across cultures by suggesting they are supported by evidence might seem odd. However, evidence is perfectly capable of supporting false beliefs."

100% agree. IMO, there are 2 mutually reinforcing clusters:

1. Everything is unconscious reinforcement learning; no introspective access; the mind is just (an emergent property of) many conditioned neurons; LLMs (therefore) work like people; behavior/metrics are the only important thing...

New Substack post

It's very personal: my story of a 20-year academic career, and the many challenges of theoretical and cross-disciplinary work

As I put it in the subtitle: There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending

thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

"cognitive scientists should *expect* low belief-behavior correlations: after all, beliefs may be maps by which we steer, but steering takes much more than just a map"

• Moè: intentions vs. reality
• Osman: mis/disinfo impacts @osman
• Pierre: consistency puzzles
• Sommer & Oktar: expecting low links @keremoktar.bsky.social @bayesandbounds.bsky.social
• Westaby et al.: behavioral reasoning

The Venn diagram of the target demographic for this beer and me might be a circle

Well, the bar seems clear

Last new year's, I hung out with my friend Joseph @bayesandbounds.bsky.social to talk about the 100 most influential works in cognitive science. All the big names are here: Turing, Fodor, Marr, Miller, (Joseph's favorite) Herb Simon, and of course - Noam Chomsky!

youtu.be/Zu6ZoZsRGG0

Psychoanalysis has concepts of a plan

I regularly invite my students to ponder the puzzle of how humans often violate Bayes theorem and yet tiny bumblebee brains are capable of optimal Bayesian foraging. This paper might offer the solution: psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-... @bayesandbounds.bsky.social

This was a very interesting summary and commentary on a book I haven’t read yet (Religion as Make-Believe). I think the question “what are beliefs even?” may be one of the most consequential in psychology/philosophy of mind.

philpapers.org/rec/SOMRAB

Consider two beliefs:

1. Believing that the bathroom is down the hall

2. Believing that the Democratic Party is a threat to our whole society

It seems like there’s some deep difference between these two beliefs. But what is the difference? Our studies explore that question

Cosign: "Herbert Simon ftw"

"An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed" (Mermin, 1990)

3. @bayesandbounds.bsky.social reported progress on identifying the mechanism(s) of a phenomena reported in [...checks notes...] the 1960s!

Further confirmation may involve think-aloud protocols — one of my favorites! 🤓

#Bayes #probability #cogSci #epistemology #xPhi #psychology #logic #history