Vlad Chituc
@vladchituc.bsky.social
Cognitive scientist studying how morality, happiness, and other subjective magnitudes can be quantified.
Postdoctoral fellow at Yale University
https://www.vladchituc.com/
Postdoctoral fellow at Yale University
https://www.vladchituc.com/
Pinned
Vlad Chituc
@vladchituc.bsky.social
· Nov 2
Hi friends! I'm finally feeling well enough to share some news that I've been very excited about: earlier this week, my kidney was removed through a small cut in my stomach, tucked into a box, flown down to johns hopkins, and implanted into a stranger where its working great
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.
January 20, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Let’s fund the ‘shooting random citizens in the face’ organization at either slightly lower levels, or at somewhat higher levels but they have to sit through some more training before they’re deployed to American cities
January 15, 2026 at 12:43 AM
Let’s fund the ‘shooting random citizens in the face’ organization at either slightly lower levels, or at somewhat higher levels but they have to sit through some more training before they’re deployed to American cities
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Saw an ancestor of this paper as a talk and liked it a lot! Glad to see it’s found a good home. Everything Matthias does is must-read imho
New paper coming out in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: "Consciousness doesn't do that". I explain why I believe that animal sentience research is in large part built on sand. In my opinion, we should be skeptical of many of the claims made in this field. philpapers.org/rec/MICCDD
Matthias Michel, Consciousness doesn't do that - PhilPapers
The question of which mental functions require consciousness has recently come to the forefront because of its relevance for investigating animal consciousness. Finding out that an animal can perform ...
philpapers.org
January 14, 2026 at 11:50 PM
Saw an ancestor of this paper as a talk and liked it a lot! Glad to see it’s found a good home. Everything Matthias does is must-read imho
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Extremely telling that Americans will take to the street to virtue signal over one woman being shot but were mostly silent on the nine month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh aka Artsakh by the authoritarian Aliyevan regime in 2023.
January 12, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Extremely telling that Americans will take to the street to virtue signal over one woman being shot but were mostly silent on the nine month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh aka Artsakh by the authoritarian Aliyevan regime in 2023.
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
⏳Closing in 2 WEEKS!
Nominate an outstanding dissertation in cognitive science for the Glushko Dissertation Prize.
Up to five winners will receive $10,000 each. Self-nominations encouraged.
Deadline for nomination: January 19 🗓️
👉 cognitivesciencesociety.org/glushko-diss...
Nominate an outstanding dissertation in cognitive science for the Glushko Dissertation Prize.
Up to five winners will receive $10,000 each. Self-nominations encouraged.
Deadline for nomination: January 19 🗓️
👉 cognitivesciencesociety.org/glushko-diss...
January 5, 2026 at 8:08 PM
⏳Closing in 2 WEEKS!
Nominate an outstanding dissertation in cognitive science for the Glushko Dissertation Prize.
Up to five winners will receive $10,000 each. Self-nominations encouraged.
Deadline for nomination: January 19 🗓️
👉 cognitivesciencesociety.org/glushko-diss...
Nominate an outstanding dissertation in cognitive science for the Glushko Dissertation Prize.
Up to five winners will receive $10,000 each. Self-nominations encouraged.
Deadline for nomination: January 19 🗓️
👉 cognitivesciencesociety.org/glushko-diss...
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST GRIPE ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY?
January 5, 2026 at 10:45 PM
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST GRIPE ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY?
Saw this on Reddit and it’s still tripping me up: is the horse walking toward you or away?
January 5, 2026 at 10:44 PM
Saw this on Reddit and it’s still tripping me up: is the horse walking toward you or away?
I’m telling you give it a year and students are going to start doing this in their papers.
every time i send an email now i'm like "do i put in typos on purpose to let them know i wrote this myself"
January 5, 2026 at 3:01 PM
I’m telling you give it a year and students are going to start doing this in their papers.
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Yale Psychology is accepting applications for the Susan Nolen-Hoeksema postdoctoral fellowship! Open to a broad range of areas in psychology, and applicants should identify 1 or more potential faculty mentors.
Apply by Feb 1, 2026: apply.interfolio.com/178435
Apply by Feb 1, 2026: apply.interfolio.com/178435
Apply - Interfolio
{{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
December 4, 2025 at 1:26 AM
Yale Psychology is accepting applications for the Susan Nolen-Hoeksema postdoctoral fellowship! Open to a broad range of areas in psychology, and applicants should identify 1 or more potential faculty mentors.
Apply by Feb 1, 2026: apply.interfolio.com/178435
Apply by Feb 1, 2026: apply.interfolio.com/178435
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
2026 PIN number sounding ass year. That's my freaking PIN number
December 27, 2025 at 1:03 AM
2026 PIN number sounding ass year. That's my freaking PIN number
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
A fascinating new paper by Amanda Royka and colleagues explores why monkeys fail false belief tasks.
A natural explanation would be that monkeys wrongly assume that other agents share their own knowledge.
Royka et al. find that this is NOT the case...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A natural explanation would be that monkeys wrongly assume that other agents share their own knowledge.
Royka et al. find that this is NOT the case...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Exploring the evolutionary roots of theory of mind: Primate errors on false belief tasks reveal representational limits
Human adults flexibly reason about others' unobservable mental states, a capacity known as Theory of Mind (ToM). Unfortunately, the roots of this capa…
www.sciencedirect.com
January 2, 2026 at 5:21 PM
A fascinating new paper by Amanda Royka and colleagues explores why monkeys fail false belief tasks.
A natural explanation would be that monkeys wrongly assume that other agents share their own knowledge.
Royka et al. find that this is NOT the case...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A natural explanation would be that monkeys wrongly assume that other agents share their own knowledge.
Royka et al. find that this is NOT the case...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.
December 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM
The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Shaggy the singer's real name is Orville and Shaggy off Scooby-Doo's real name is Norville
Ok folks: what is your favorite fact that you share with people (maybe a bit too) eagerly?
December 31, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Shaggy the singer's real name is Orville and Shaggy off Scooby-Doo's real name is Norville
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Why did so many previous studies report low dimensionality? 1. High-quality neural datasets are finally large enough to probe representations beyond just tens of dimensions! 2. Standard methods in cognitive neuroscience are insensitive to low-variance—but meaningful—dimensions.
December 11, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Why did so many previous studies report low dimensionality? 1. High-quality neural datasets are finally large enough to probe representations beyond just tens of dimensions! 2. Standard methods in cognitive neuroscience are insensitive to low-variance—but meaningful—dimensions.
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
now out in Decision! 🎉 awspntest.apa.org/manuscript/2...
December 29, 2025 at 6:16 PM
now out in Decision! 🎉 awspntest.apa.org/manuscript/2...
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
It’s a great study, and I’m excited to see this entering public awareness! But there’s still much more to cover, as BOLD coincides with other metabolic changes, including anaerobic metabolism and lactic acid production. In fact, others have proposed ↑CBF may help regulate local pH homeostasis.
December 29, 2025 at 3:08 PM
It’s a great study, and I’m excited to see this entering public awareness! But there’s still much more to cover, as BOLD coincides with other metabolic changes, including anaerobic metabolism and lactic acid production. In fact, others have proposed ↑CBF may help regulate local pH homeostasis.
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
December 29, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Mass Effect style dialogue wheel except the only dialogue options ever offered are "No, yeah, for sure." and "Damn, that's crazy"
December 28, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Mass Effect style dialogue wheel except the only dialogue options ever offered are "No, yeah, for sure." and "Damn, that's crazy"
Congratulations on your career success, but have you stopped to considered how that would affect me, the main character of the universe?
I think it’s okay for people to post about their lives actually. If something good happens to me, I’m probably gonna post about it. I don’t think that’s cruel
December 28, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Congratulations on your career success, but have you stopped to considered how that would affect me, the main character of the universe?
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Invited speaker lineup is out for SPP 2026! More information on the meeting here: www.socphilpsych.org/meetings.html
Submissions accepted until Jan 16! Come hang in Baltimore; conference is at Johns Hopkins from June 17-20, 2026!
@socphilpsych.bsky.social
@joshrottman.bsky.social
#SPP2026
Submissions accepted until Jan 16! Come hang in Baltimore; conference is at Johns Hopkins from June 17-20, 2026!
@socphilpsych.bsky.social
@joshrottman.bsky.social
#SPP2026
December 27, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Invited speaker lineup is out for SPP 2026! More information on the meeting here: www.socphilpsych.org/meetings.html
Submissions accepted until Jan 16! Come hang in Baltimore; conference is at Johns Hopkins from June 17-20, 2026!
@socphilpsych.bsky.social
@joshrottman.bsky.social
#SPP2026
Submissions accepted until Jan 16! Come hang in Baltimore; conference is at Johns Hopkins from June 17-20, 2026!
@socphilpsych.bsky.social
@joshrottman.bsky.social
#SPP2026
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
@xphilosopher.bsky.social and I tried to study what beliefs do (or at least, what people think they do).
Across hundreds of participant generated beliefs and first/third party ratings, we found they express identity and/or represent facts, in the pattern described in this post.
1/
Across hundreds of participant generated beliefs and first/third party ratings, we found they express identity and/or represent facts, in the pattern described in this post.
1/
Maybe there are two distinct kinds of belief: they either represent facts (It's rainy) or express identity (My son is the best). We find instead that many beliefs simultaneously represent facts and express identity (but few beliefs do neither).
December 26, 2025 at 6:29 PM
@xphilosopher.bsky.social and I tried to study what beliefs do (or at least, what people think they do).
Across hundreds of participant generated beliefs and first/third party ratings, we found they express identity and/or represent facts, in the pattern described in this post.
1/
Across hundreds of participant generated beliefs and first/third party ratings, we found they express identity and/or represent facts, in the pattern described in this post.
1/
Call me crazy, but “people feel and perceive and experience things the same way” should be the very strong default position. This isnt universally true—I think aphantasia and supertasters are two good examples of big differences—but the bar should be very, very high.
A common assumption is that throughout history, people have experienced the same basic range of emotions. A radical field of history now challenges this assumption, Gal Beckerman reports. theatln.tc/KD2QRX9Y
🎨: Nicolás Ortega
🎨: Nicolás Ortega
December 26, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Call me crazy, but “people feel and perceive and experience things the same way” should be the very strong default position. This isnt universally true—I think aphantasia and supertasters are two good examples of big differences—but the bar should be very, very high.
I was once the only male TA for an intro psych course, and the rest of the TAs were genuinely flabbergasted when I offhandedly mentioned how I’d never had a student try to argue with me about a grade I’d given them for any assignment in that class—a regular occurrence for every one of them!!
Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name.
"These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."
"These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."
December 25, 2025 at 5:35 PM
I was once the only male TA for an intro psych course, and the rest of the TAs were genuinely flabbergasted when I offhandedly mentioned how I’d never had a student try to argue with me about a grade I’d given them for any assignment in that class—a regular occurrence for every one of them!!