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
"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…” 🔥🔥🔥
"Why is there not something disloyal about ceasing to grieve?" archive.ph/tkujU#select...
Thomas Nagel · Now and Then: Living in Time
Our lives don’t just play out over time: we lead them over the course of that time, shaping them as an extended whole...
www.lrb.co.uk
February 12, 2026 at 11:48 PM
"Why is there not something disloyal about ceasing to grieve?" archive.ph/tkujU#select...
"a cynic is someone who, because he can recognize what's really going on, can – perhaps better than most others -- muster the vision to change it in the direction of what ought to be"
rdalexander.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/b...
rdalexander.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/b...
February 12, 2026 at 10:02 PM
"a cynic is someone who, because he can recognize what's really going on, can – perhaps better than most others -- muster the vision to change it in the direction of what ought to be"
rdalexander.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/b...
rdalexander.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-content/b...
"it appears that the reason why AI debunking is effective is because the AI is very good at providing strong counterevidence"
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
February 12, 2026 at 9:38 PM
"it appears that the reason why AI debunking is effective is because the AI is very good at providing strong counterevidence"
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
🎯"Progressive anti-intellectualism is more perverse and more pernicious than conservative anti-intellectualism because it took place within intellectual institutions, in the guise of intellectualism" x.com/olivertraldi...
February 12, 2026 at 9:11 PM
🎯"Progressive anti-intellectualism is more perverse and more pernicious than conservative anti-intellectualism because it took place within intellectual institutions, in the guise of intellectualism" x.com/olivertraldi...
🔪"I interviewed 20 senior admins and profs for this story. They painted a similar picture: under Alexander, Mellon became monomaniacally obsessed with social justice, almost exclusively funding work advancing political causes at the expense of more traditional humanities work."
Thread by @Tyler_A_Harper on Thread Reader App
@Tyler_A_Harper: I’ve spent the last year working on a story about the Mellon Foundation, the mega-wealthy private nonprofit that has a monopoly on humanities funding in America. The article, about ho...
threadreaderapp.com
February 12, 2026 at 4:52 PM
🔪"I interviewed 20 senior admins and profs for this story. They painted a similar picture: under Alexander, Mellon became monomaniacally obsessed with social justice, almost exclusively funding work advancing political causes at the expense of more traditional humanities work."
🔪"Acerbi cautions that in our eagerness to combat misinformation, we may unintentionally increase public distrust even toward accurate information, thus exacerbating a broader climate of epistemic uncertainty."
Thank you to @nicolebizzotto.bsky.social for this great review (in English!) of Tecnopanico
www.hope.uzh.ch/scoms/articl...
www.hope.uzh.ch/scoms/articl...
View of Alberto Acerbi. Tecnopanico: Media digitali, tra ragionevoli cautele e paure ingiustificate [Technopanic: Digital media, between reasonable precautions and unjustified fears]. Il Mulino, 2025....
www.hope.uzh.ch
February 12, 2026 at 4:27 PM
🔪"Acerbi cautions that in our eagerness to combat misinformation, we may unintentionally increase public distrust even toward accurate information, thus exacerbating a broader climate of epistemic uncertainty."
Reposted by Rob Sica
TL/DR and to quote the authors, “together, these findings show that LLM-based fact-checking is rapidly scaling, is generally informative although far from perfect, while also becoming entangled with polarisation and partisanship.”
February 12, 2026 at 11:15 AM
TL/DR and to quote the authors, “together, these findings show that LLM-based fact-checking is rapidly scaling, is generally informative although far from perfect, while also becoming entangled with polarisation and partisanship.”
Reposted by Rob Sica
🔪"if Nietzsche’s philosophy is to be taken seriously, theorists must resist the temptation to regard genealogical critique as an unproblematic vehicle of emancipation or empowerment"
James S. Pearson, Nietzsche and the Limits of Genealogical Critique - PhilPapers
Nietzsche presents genealogical critique as a tool for promoting human flourishing, which might suggest that he regarded it as unconditionally beneficial. However, I argue that Nietzsche at times sugg...
philpapers.org
February 9, 2026 at 5:15 PM
🔪"if Nietzsche’s philosophy is to be taken seriously, theorists must resist the temptation to regard genealogical critique as an unproblematic vehicle of emancipation or empowerment"
"In fact, it is often when and because certain novel technologies (including those that enable computer-mediated communication) mitigate the negative effects of other evolutionary mismatches that they are appealing and become cross-culturally ubiquitous."
This + Eli's other piece (Where do the children play) coincides with my PsychReview paper's point - anthropology sheds new insights into the social media-mental health debate: tinyurl.com/yn3h6mky
My paper is long + Eli's writing is vivid, so better to check his Substack out for the value of anthro
My paper is long + Eli's writing is vivid, so better to check his Substack out for the value of anthro
February 12, 2026 at 9:40 AM
"In fact, it is often when and because certain novel technologies (including those that enable computer-mediated communication) mitigate the negative effects of other evolutionary mismatches that they are appealing and become cross-culturally ubiquitous."