Olivier Morin
oliviermorin.bsky.social
Olivier Morin
@oliviermorin.bsky.social

Researcher at Ecole Normale Supérieure / CNRS in Paris. Culture, cognition, things in between. https://linktr.ee/oliviermorin

Psychology 28%
Sociology 19%
Pinned
🚨 New paper! 🚨 by Yoolim Kim, @helenamiton.bsky.social, Marc Allassonnière Tang, & myself, in Journal of Memory and Language. We tried to do for letter shapes what phonologists did for speech sounds. doi.org/10.1016/j.jm... A 🧵 (1/14)

Too bad — and in it makes sense, in hindsight, given the weaknesses of cognitive dissonance reduction as a theory. Still, on literary merits alone, When prophecy fails remains a gem of a book.
Ok, just wow. If the content of this article is right, this is depressing. We're slowly reaching the point where ~100% of what I was taught in Social Psych was either innocently wrong or plainly frauded

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Debunking “When Prophecy Fails”
In 1954, Dorothy Martin predicted an apocalyptic flood and promised her followers rescue by flying saucers. When neither arrived, she recanted, her group dissolved, and efforts to proselytize ceased....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
Excited to see our research highlighted in @psychscience.bsky.social Observer!
With @oliviermorin.bsky.social , @hugoreasoning.bsky.social , and Thomas Dheilly, we explored how people infer others’ knowledge: even from a single answer, they can estimate how much someone knows about a topic!
Unearthing the Nature of Knowing
Research reveals how people process information, how they acquire—and sometimes reject—knowledge, and how that compares to artificial intelligence systems’ abilities to do the same.
www.psychologicalscience.org

Reposted by Olivier Morin

i never saw two trunkless legs
i never hope to see 'em
but i can tell you, anyhow,
i'd rather see than be 'em
Now Ozymandias was from the Himalayas, where a cold wind howls and blows.
Why he left his home in the peaks to roam 'round the sands, God only knows.
His statue fell down, the desert's boundless and completely bare;
Though it's still scrawled on his pedestal that "ye Mighty should despair!"
The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
And the lone, level sands
Stretched far, far away.
Just out - "Art Beyond Cognition: Reframing Neanderthal art through social connectivity and cultural transmission" by Straffon & Tennie
Art Beyond Cognition: Reframing Neanderthal art through social connectivity and cultural transmission | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core
Art Beyond Cognition: Reframing Neanderthal art through social connectivity and cultural transmission
www.cambridge.org

Reposted by Olivier Morin

"Dunbar's Number" is a zombie that lives forever in the science press it seems. Estimates of Dunbar's Number with 95% intervals, for a range of model specifications (from doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... ):

Reposted by Olivier Morin

My favourite book by Mokyr is A Culture of Growth: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb.... Here, Mokyr draws on cultural evolutionary theory to develop some his key ideas about the evolution of science, technology and the origins of modern economic growth. Really accessible and packed with ideas!
A Culture of Growth
Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution
press.princeton.edu

Huge congratulations to @alexeykoshevoy.bsky.social l who defended his PhD thesis today!! with his co-supervisor @sblldtrch.bsky.social and jury members @simonkirby.bsky.social @gboleda.bsky.social Paula Rubio Fernandez & Benjamin Spector.

Looking forward to be in Paris for the launch of the CultureLab!
We're officially launching the new PSL CultureLab in 10 days !
If you're interested in the research of a collective bridging Computational Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Evolution, you can check our programme (and come to our event, if you're in Paris 22 September):
psl.eu/agenda/collo...
Looking forward to be in Paris for the launch of the CultureLab!
We're officially launching the new PSL CultureLab in 10 days !
If you're interested in the research of a collective bridging Computational Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Evolution, you can check our programme (and come to our event, if you're in Paris 22 September):
psl.eu/agenda/collo...
Colloque inaugural du Grand programme de recherche CultureLab | PSL
Recherche, CultureLab inaugure ses travaux le 22 septembre 2025 au Campus Condorcet avec une journée consacrée aux sciences humaines et sociales computationnelles et à l’évolution culturelle. , Le Gra...
psl.eu
We're officially launching the new PSL CultureLab in 10 days !
If you're interested in the research of a collective bridging Computational Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Evolution, you can check our programme (and come to our event, if you're in Paris 22 September):
psl.eu/agenda/collo...
Colloque inaugural du Grand programme de recherche CultureLab | PSL
Recherche, CultureLab inaugure ses travaux le 22 septembre 2025 au Campus Condorcet avec une journée consacrée aux sciences humaines et sociales computationnelles et à l’évolution culturelle. , Le Gra...
psl.eu

Amazing Oleg!

Reposted by Olivier Morin

Great news from the @erc.europa.eu today: I received an ERC Starting Grant to study the cultural evolution of literature 🔥

www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...
Charting the evolution of European literature
Oleg Sobchuk has received an ERC Starting Grant to study 200 years of European literary evolution
www.eva.mpg.de

Reposted by Olivier Morin

Reposted by Olivier Morin

🚨🚨 New preprint 📜 with Mathieu Charbonneau (@matcharbonneau.bsky.social‬): Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution (arxiv.org/abs/2508.04828). Feedback welcomed! #Evolution #Technology #Culture #OpenEnded #TechnologicalEvolution #CulturalEvolution 🧵: 1/29
Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution
Humans stand alone in terms of their potential to collectively and cumulatively improve technologies in an open-ended manner. This open-endedness provides societies with the ability to continually exp...
arxiv.org

I'd join the class action if I were US-based.
"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details:

LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...

(This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
www.theatlantic.com
"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details:

LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...

(This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI
Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.
www.theatlantic.com

Reposted by Olivier Morin

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

Reposted by Olivier Morin

Rohan Kapitany launches a fun pop sci podcast: about games & behavioral sciences. In one of the later episodes @oliviermorin.bsky.social & myself will be discussing our recent paper on monsters 👹

Really cool idea – and very well executed! Great work for our community and beyond
Excited to announce Mind Games. A podcast where insufferable D&D/TTRPG fandom intersects with psychological and behavioral science. Please subscribe to get our episodes as they drop.

www.mindgamespodcast.com

iTunes: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/7I5F3qu...
We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...
Adding AI watermark to latest paper...

one of my favorite science stories got debunked...
We have a lovely new paper out, showing that even ignorant people can be very good at recognising who's knowledgeable based on minimal cues
We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...

Reposted by Olivier Morin

PUBLICATION I 🐻 Les ours en peluche ont-ils évolué culturellement pour devenir plus mignons ? Un projet étudiant @psl-univ.bsky.social @normalesup.bsky.social explore l'impact de la perception de la mignonnerie sur l'évolution des artefacts culturels et débouche sur une publication 👉 bit.ly/3YUZnw5
Actualités: Les ours en peluche ont-ils évolué culturellement pour devenir plus mignons ? Quand un projet étudiant débouche sur une publication. | DEC Département d'études cognitives
Recherche: Une étude menée sous forme de projet collectif impliquant des étudiantes et des étudiants du Master de sciences cognitives de PSL a débouché sur la publication d’un article dans Journal of ...
bit.ly

Reposted by Olivier Morin

My therapist: Don’t worry, Merovingian cursive is not real, it can’t hurt you

Merovingian cursive:
$500 million is… less than 1.25% of the NIH’s 2024 budget.

When I say there is no capacity to absorb the shock, I mean it.
We will put forward a 500 million package for 2025-2027 to make Europe a magnet for researchers.

As well as ambitious proposals for R&I in the next EU budget.

We will also offer the best and brightest the right incentives to come to Europe ↓
We will put forward a 500 million package for 2025-2027 to make Europe a magnet for researchers.

As well as ambitious proposals for R&I in the next EU budget.

We will also offer the best and brightest the right incentives to come to Europe ↓