Rob Sica
@robsica.bsky.social
Knowledge would have little allure if we did not have to overcome so much shame on the way to acquiring it. -Nietzsche
Reposted by Rob Sica
Malthus had real influence - Marginal REVOLUTION
Malthus had real influence - Marginal REVOLUTION
From a recent paper by Eric Robertson: Public officials often fail to implement government policy as directed, yet the role of economic ideas in shaping these implementation choices is poorly understood. This paper provides causal evidence that exposure to economic ideas can durably influence bureaucrat behavior. I study British colonial bureaucrats in India, exploiting a […]
marginalrevolution.com
February 16, 2026 at 6:35 AM
Malthus had real influence - Marginal REVOLUTION
🔪"Can you say something about what role teachers and professors played in the Holocaust?"
Alex Alvarez and Richard R. Fernandez, "Lethal Elites: The Institutions and Professionals That Made the Holocaust Possible" (Bloomsbury, 2025) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
February 16, 2026 at 2:37 AM
🔪"Can you say something about what role teachers and professors played in the Holocaust?"
"When you have interpretive communities that are simultaneously moral and emotional communities they don't perceive claims made by people outside the tribe as just empirically wrong they perceive them as morally wrong."
Politics Is the Best Predictor of Academic Research — Prof Mark Horowitz
YouTube video by El Podcast
www.youtube.com
February 16, 2026 at 2:03 AM
"When you have interpretive communities that are simultaneously moral and emotional communities they don't perceive claims made by people outside the tribe as just empirically wrong they perceive them as morally wrong."
"Our public discourse about expertise often fails to distinguish empirical and normative questions, with people in effect being encouraged to defer to scientists about *both* kinds of issues (or, by others, about *neither*)."
Authority or autonomy? Philosophical and psychological perspectives on deference to experts
Several decades of work in both philosophy and psychology acutely highlights our limitations as individual inquirers. One way to recognize these limitations is to defer to experts: roughly, to form...
www.tandfonline.com
February 16, 2026 at 12:40 AM
"Our public discourse about expertise often fails to distinguish empirical and normative questions, with people in effect being encouraged to defer to scientists about *both* kinds of issues (or, by others, about *neither*)."
"we argue against the existence of an intrinsic aversion to lying, or an intrinsic preference for truth-telling"
(PDF) Why are lies small?
PDF | Deception is common, yet lies are typically small and not easily spotted. The dominant explanations for why this is the case are psychological in... | Find, read and cite all the research you ne...
www.researchgate.net
February 15, 2026 at 10:20 PM
"we argue against the existence of an intrinsic aversion to lying, or an intrinsic preference for truth-telling"
Looking forward to:
Puts, D. A., Lieberman, D., & Hill, A. (Under contract). Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature. Kendall Hunt Publishing Co.
Puts, D. A., Lieberman, D., & Hill, A. (Under contract). Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature. Kendall Hunt Publishing Co.
Attraction & Disgust: Evolutionary Psychology Explained (Dr. Deb Lieberman)
YouTube video by El Podcast
www.youtube.com
February 15, 2026 at 9:58 PM
Looking forward to:
Puts, D. A., Lieberman, D., & Hill, A. (Under contract). Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature. Kendall Hunt Publishing Co.
Puts, D. A., Lieberman, D., & Hill, A. (Under contract). Sex, Evolution, and Human Nature. Kendall Hunt Publishing Co.
Reposted by Rob Sica
"The current paper argues for a more explicitly interactive, co-adaptive account for trends in communications technology and politics." 👏
academic.oup.com/joc/advance-...
academic.oup.com/joc/advance-...
Political polarization as a co-adaptive process
Abstract. Political polarization is often characterized as a consequence of changes in media content or technology. We argue, in contrast, for an account t
academic.oup.com
February 15, 2026 at 4:35 PM
"The current paper argues for a more explicitly interactive, co-adaptive account for trends in communications technology and politics." 👏
academic.oup.com/joc/advance-...
academic.oup.com/joc/advance-...
"[T]he goal of increasing political diversity is to widen the circle of contestation so that truth has a better chance of emerging and public trust can be rebuilt. It is not to achieve political 'balance' for its own sake or to appease rightwing politicians."
Truth, Trust, and the Case for Viewpoint Diversity
Misplaced arguments against intellectual pluralism
unsafescience.substack.com
February 15, 2026 at 6:18 PM
"[T]he goal of increasing political diversity is to widen the circle of contestation so that truth has a better chance of emerging and public trust can be rebuilt. It is not to achieve political 'balance' for its own sake or to appease rightwing politicians."
🔪"If humans are constantly seeking to conceal their motives and signaling strategies from one another, and even from themselves, then any science that relies on self-reported agreement with overly abstract statements is bound to be misleading."
(PDF) The Evolution of Social Paradoxes
PDF | Human behavior is often paradoxical. We show humility to prove we’re better than other people, we bravely defy social norms so that people will... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...
www.researchgate.net
February 15, 2026 at 2:07 PM
🔪"If humans are constantly seeking to conceal their motives and signaling strategies from one another, and even from themselves, then any science that relies on self-reported agreement with overly abstract statements is bound to be misleading."
"We do not fault students for perpetuating a climate that is hostile to intellectual integrity. We fault the faculty, administrators, and institutional leaders who built a system that rewards moral theater while punishing inquiry."
thehill.com/opinion/educ...
thehill.com/opinion/educ...
February 15, 2026 at 5:54 AM
"We do not fault students for perpetuating a climate that is hostile to intellectual integrity. We fault the faculty, administrators, and institutional leaders who built a system that rewards moral theater while punishing inquiry."
thehill.com/opinion/educ...
thehill.com/opinion/educ...
"I only knew a kind and caring man."
Gisèle Pelicot Opens Up About Surviving Years of Secret Abuse | The Interview
YouTube video by The Interview
www.youtube.com
February 15, 2026 at 5:20 AM
"I only knew a kind and caring man."
"It is easy to theorize, from a safe remove, about the evolution of betrayal and passion — of both heart and body. But this particular suffering is anything but abstract. You know it, no doubt; so do I."
Infidélité : la guerre secrète des couples
CHRONIQUE. Trompés et trompeurs jouent à cache-cache depuis des millénaires. Une étude révèle l’arsenal cognitif mobilisé des deux côtés.
www.lepoint.fr
February 14, 2026 at 9:33 PM
"It is easy to theorize, from a safe remove, about the evolution of betrayal and passion — of both heart and body. But this particular suffering is anything but abstract. You know it, no doubt; so do I."
"Evolutionary Psychology [...] unquestionably has enormous scope for increasing our understanding of our own species’ psychology and behaviour."
Evolutionary Approaches to Beauty
In Evolutionary Psychology, it is sometimes claimed that certain traits are universally considered as beautiful. In both sexes, these alleged universals have included having symmetrical facial and bod...
link.springer.com
February 14, 2026 at 9:32 PM
"Evolutionary Psychology [...] unquestionably has enormous scope for increasing our understanding of our own species’ psychology and behaviour."
“Far from ‘drowning in evidence’, real researchers – not pop psychologists – are scouring a great desert looking for puddles. The majority of studies have found either no relationship between social media usage and mental illness, or effects so small that they are practically meaningless.”
There is no evidence that social media harms children’s mental health
Far from ‘drowning in evidence’, real researchers – not pop psychologists – are scouring a great desert looking for puddles
spectator.com
February 14, 2026 at 8:33 PM
“Far from ‘drowning in evidence’, real researchers – not pop psychologists – are scouring a great desert looking for puddles. The majority of studies have found either no relationship between social media usage and mental illness, or effects so small that they are practically meaningless.”
Response from someone with whom I shared Michael Tracey's Compact piece on Chomsky & Epstein:
"Huh, that's pretty interesting. I admit, I am on the mob mentality train, so this was a good read."
"Huh, that's pretty interesting. I admit, I am on the mob mentality train, so this was a good read."
February 14, 2026 at 6:08 PM
Response from someone with whom I shared Michael Tracey's Compact piece on Chomsky & Epstein:
"Huh, that's pretty interesting. I admit, I am on the mob mentality train, so this was a good read."
"Huh, that's pretty interesting. I admit, I am on the mob mentality train, so this was a good read."
Reposted by Rob Sica
New @aeon.co essay just out! On how institutions let us scale trust and cooperation - and when things start to unravel.
Big thanks to editor Sam Dresser.
For the more technical version, see thread & paper below👇
Big thanks to editor Sam Dresser.
For the more technical version, see thread & paper below👇
Institutions are the social technologies that power our world, allowing us to rely on complete strangers every day of our lives. But how do we ensure that this trust isn’t misplaced? In this Essay, the game theorist Julien Lie-Panis explores what makes institutions function @jliep.bsky.social
Institutions are how we scale up cooperation among millions | Aeon Essays
Good institutions are social technologies that scale trust from personal relations to entire nations. How do they work?
buff.ly
February 13, 2026 at 3:33 PM
New @aeon.co essay just out! On how institutions let us scale trust and cooperation - and when things start to unravel.
Big thanks to editor Sam Dresser.
For the more technical version, see thread & paper below👇
Big thanks to editor Sam Dresser.
For the more technical version, see thread & paper below👇
🔪"The competition complaint, in this light, may be less a condemnation of markets than a reflection of the human condition."
When community is self-defeating: status competition in a communal economy
Critics of the market sometimes argue that market competition damages our relations with one another. We should care about this, on one telling, because of how this undermines community that underg...
www.tandfonline.com
February 14, 2026 at 2:03 AM
🔪"The competition complaint, in this light, may be less a condemnation of markets than a reflection of the human condition."
🔪"the misery in the world is not all there because of pathologies easy to understand or proximate causes easy to remedy; nor is it all owing to those 'other' kinds of people whose motivations, unlike our own, are pernicious and self-serving"
February 13, 2026 at 10:58 PM
🔪"the misery in the world is not all there because of pathologies easy to understand or proximate causes easy to remedy; nor is it all owing to those 'other' kinds of people whose motivations, unlike our own, are pernicious and self-serving"
"In other words, my subconscious asked the question, but as if I were joking."
‘They All Tried to Break Me’: Gisèle Pelicot Shares Her Story
www.nytimes.com
February 13, 2026 at 10:21 PM
"In other words, my subconscious asked the question, but as if I were joking."
Reposted by Rob Sica
@evoroseman.bsky.social and Auerbach nail the fatal flaw in the ESS: organisms somehow adapt to completely novel situations without natural selection. It's basically Intelligent Design, imo, but with the organism as the intelligent designer instead of God 🧪 #BioAnth 1/2
February 13, 2026 at 2:40 PM
@evoroseman.bsky.social and Auerbach nail the fatal flaw in the ESS: organisms somehow adapt to completely novel situations without natural selection. It's basically Intelligent Design, imo, but with the organism as the intelligent designer instead of God 🧪 #BioAnth 1/2
Reposted by Rob Sica
Ideologically captured, Nature uses "pregnant people" instead of "pregnant women" in a new article. 40 usages of "pregnant people," 5 of "pregnant women," with all but one of the latter in quotes from other people. An example:
whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/02/13/n...
whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/02/13/n...
February 13, 2026 at 3:37 PM
Ideologically captured, Nature uses "pregnant people" instead of "pregnant women" in a new article. 40 usages of "pregnant people," 5 of "pregnant women," with all but one of the latter in quotes from other people. An example:
whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/02/13/n...
whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/02/13/n...
"Emphasizing a priori theorizing over post-hoc analysis can potentially lead to sharper, more robust historical narratives and help to strengthen the inferential power of interpretations or theories regarding causes of past events."
Predicting the Past: Testing Expert Historical Judgement
Absences pervade the historical record. The loss or destruction of material, redaction of documents, silence of participants, data embargoes, and poor reco
academic.oup.com
February 13, 2026 at 12:32 PM
"Emphasizing a priori theorizing over post-hoc analysis can potentially lead to sharper, more robust historical narratives and help to strengthen the inferential power of interpretations or theories regarding causes of past events."
Reposted by Rob Sica
The tautology of “you don’t need specialization, just a bigger brain” is being called out: “accounts of brain size tend to be post hoc adaptationist accounts that try to relate the increase in brain size…to the evolution of certain cultural practices thought to necessitate…brain expansion…” 🔥🔥🔥
A much-needed critique of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) as applied to human evolution, by @evoroseman.bsky.social and Ben Auerbach (2026).
Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires? 🧪 #BioAnth
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires? 🧪 #BioAnth
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
February 12, 2026 at 11:32 PM
The tautology of “you don’t need specialization, just a bigger brain” is being called out: “accounts of brain size tend to be post hoc adaptationist accounts that try to relate the increase in brain size…to the evolution of certain cultural practices thought to necessitate…brain expansion…” 🔥🔥🔥