iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Harin Lee

Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

New special issue on "Cultural evolution of the arts" led by @sobchuk.bsky.social and @masonyoungblood.bsky.social confirms my intuition that this field has taken off in the past two decades, with a particularly strong representation from music! doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Figure 1. A) A co-citation network of papers studying the evolution of the arts. B) The yearly number of publications on the cultural evolution of the arts.

03614

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 06/04/2026

"One test, many tongues: Surveying language proficiency across the globe" out now in @pnasnexus.org A practical challenge in online experiments with global participants is testing language proficiency. We automated the generation of language tests across nearly 2,000 languages.

2103

Reposted by Harin Lee

Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗‍♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM

bit.ly

Simulation-based inference with deep learning suggests speed climbers combine innovation and copying to improve performance

Abstract. In the Olympic sport of speed climbing, athletes compete to reach the top of a 15 m wall as quickly as possible. Since the standardization of the

34318

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 18/07/2025

After few flights and 8hrs of canoe ride up the Maniqui river, we met the Tsimane villagers in Bolivian Amazon to understand what they find appealing to hear and see, and how they compare to other parts of the world. @manuelangladatort.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social

0130

Reposted by Harin Lee

Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

7.5 years after signing the contract, I finally submitted the full manuscript of my book to Oxford University Press!!! Thanks to Keio's Fukuzawa Fund, it will be published open access. You can already read the submitted version as a preprint at osf.io/b36fm I hope you all find it useful!

Comparative Musicology
Evolution, Universals, and the Science of the World’s Music

Patrick E. Savage
Senior Research Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Auckland / Waipapa Taumata Rau
Associate Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University

Contents

Prologue: How to read/teach this book ii

Epigraphs vi

Foreword (Psyche Loui, President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition) x

Foreword (Svanibor Pettan, Past President of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance) xii

Acknowledgments xiv

Ch. 1. Introduction: Aims, chapter structure, and key definitions 1

Ch. 2. Tutorial: Acoustic comparison within and between societies (and species) 12

Ch. 3. History: The rise and fall and rise of comparative musicology 34

Ch. 4. Universals: Absolute, statistical, and non-universal aspects of music beyond the “universal language” metaphor 72

Ch. 5. Evolution: Cultural and biological evolution of music(ality), language, and animal song 94

Ch. 6. Applications: Copyright, music therapy, language acquisition, cultural heritage, social bonding, AI, and beyond 120

Epilogue: “Many Voices” and the future of qualitative comparative musicology 135

Appendix: Companion audio recordings/code availability statement 139

Index 140

1343

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 06/06/2025

Extremely honoured to be the recipient of the Best Student Paper award at the upcoming ICMPC 2025 in São Paulo, the largest international conference on music cognition and perception. All possible through working with the great team and supervisors.

0160

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 04/06/2025

Big cities are vibrant hubs of culture, but why exactly is that? Now out in @natcomms.nature.com, we analysed music listening patterns of over 2.5 million people and demographics to examine mechanisms driving cultural diversity. With @researchdeezer.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social Highlights ⬇

39136

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 19/05/2025

Ready to submit my PhD thesis. After taking this picture I realised that the thesis cover I designed matches the lamp and the sofa in my flat. Definitely some psychological priming going on here!

1220

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 09/05/2025

Excited to share two papers tapping into cross-cultural perception of aesthetics and word associations to music emotion across languages. Accepted to be presented at the upcoming CogSci 2025 conference! @mpicbs.bsky.social

1123

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 25/04/2025

Serving as a co-chair for ISMIR 2025 in Korea, we are excited to announce call for the music-program! If you have MIR integrated creative music performance in mind to be performed at gorgeous KAIST auditorium, do consider applying. Submission: ismir2025.ismir.net/call-for-music Deadline: 30th June

131

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 17/03/2025

Emotional to be returning to Goldsmiths where did my undergrad and masters! @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social

2122

Reposted by Harin Lee

Roope Kaaronen @roopekaaronen.net · 13/03/2025

Pleased to see our work published: The Ties That Bind: Computational, Cross-cultural Analyses of Knots Reveal Their Cultural Evolutionary History and Significance We analysed knots across 12,000 years and 82 societies. Time to tie a thread 🧵 about why knots matter. doi.org/10.1017/S095...

A circular dendrogram (phenetic tree) of knots, made using the ggtree package in R. A text-readable and high-resolution PDF-version of the tree is available as a supplementary material.

420176

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 03/03/2025

Bringing EEG brain science to Berghain club, Berlin 🧠🎛️ Next weekend I’m teaming up with a Berlin-based DJ/producer “Egregore” to integrate brain oscillations to live ambient music. We will control melodic pulses with neural tempo and use different mind states to alter fragments of sounds!

0153

Reposted by Harin Lee

Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 21/02/2025

New cultural evolution modelling paper with @bdecourson.bsky.social on @pnas.org! "Weak individual preferences stabilize culture" A quick 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

38540

Reposted by Harin Lee

Olivier Morin @oliviermorin.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

🚨 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)

15216

Reposted by Harin Lee

Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Andy Whiten and I wrote a @science.org perspective about a cool new study from @inbalarnon.bsky.social @simonkirby.bsky.social @ellengarland.bsky.social et al! They found humpback whale song has language-like statistical structure, using methods inspired by infant language learning 🐋🎶 Links below ⬇️

17220

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 10/02/2025

📢 Incredible postdoc position for early career researchers in cultural evolution with the amazing @oliviermorin.bsky.social at ENS, Paris. Deadline 20th March! @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @eslr.bsky.social

068

Reposted by Harin Lee

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦 @sobchuk.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Change over time is often depicted as a trendline. But what does shape a trendline? Which forces? Our new paper presents a method allowing to “decompose” trendlines into constituent forces. Also, we tackle an old puzzle: Does culture change “one funeral at a time”? 🧵(1/8) doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

a schematic depiction of a trend line and several causal forces that give it its shape

211446

Reposted by Harin Lee

Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Do whales optimize their vocalizations for efficiency, just like human language? 🐋🎶 My latest study in Science Advances (@science.org) suggests they do—following linguistic laws seen in human speech. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Language-like efficiency in whale communication

Whale vocalizations follow efficiency rules seen in human language, revealing striking similarities in communication systems.

520065

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 30/01/2025

Finding your first postdoc job can be daunting and resembles Squid Game. So that others don't go through the same trouble, I'll be sharing my insights on where and when to look, what to prepare etc. Tomorrow 12pm CET and will also stream via zoom (send me DM for a link). Here are some highlights 🦑

4133

Reposted by Harin Lee

Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute #DISI @divintelligence.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

📣📣📣 Applications for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!! Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply! More info: disi.org

15039

Reposted by Harin Lee

COCOCOlab @co3lab.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

We are recruiting PhD students! Our research covers a diverse range of topics, including perception and internal representations, cultural evolution, large-scale online experiments, cross-cultural studies, and computational music cognition. Please spread the word!

1206

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 18/11/2024

Wow the silencing in X is so real. Many of my friends saw the post but couldn't interact and it shadow banned these posts...

261

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 17/11/2024

Attended this last year and was truly an inspiring experience. Great crowd and toulouse is absolutely gorgeous. Highly recommend!

052

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 17/11/2024

Incredible opportunity to work with Mason, the one and only!

010

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 16/11/2024

Great to see the community has become more vibrant over here! I have now made the switch, bye X ✋

070

Reposted by Harin Lee

Roope Kaaronen @roopekaaronen.net · 11/11/2024

Our paper is out in this cool special issue on cognitive technologies. It’s on the topic of traditional and informal measurement systems across cultural traditions. How have people *really* measured their world? with @mamanninen.bsky.social @jussiteronen.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/tops...

doi.org

Measuring Beyond the Standard: Informal Measurement Systems as Cognitive Technologies

This paper examines measurement as a cognitive technology, focusing on the coexistence of formal and informal systems. Through analysis of body-based units and proportional heuristics, it reveals how...

1155

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 08/08/2024

Beginning to scan for postdoc options starting from autumn 2025. Preferably Europe (incl. UK) and independence-focused fellowships with topics in cognition, cultural evolution, large data with ML. Any suggestions would be valuable!

122

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 20/05/2024

Our mega project, jointly led with @manuelangladatort.bsky.social, is out now as preprint! We monitored millions of daily music discoveries across 1,423 cities and use this data to probe worldwide cultural shifts in real-time during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Preprint announcement of paper "Global music discoveries reveal cultural shifts during the war in Ukraine"

12211

Reposted by Harin Lee

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 07/05/2024

This preprint looks pretty cool: The authors use data from Deezer (a music streaming service), to investigate cultural diversity -- between people (how different are people's tastes in a specific region) and within people (how diverse is the music a person listens to?).>

3306

Harin Lee @harinlee.info · 21/08/2023

Hi Bluesky 🔵 Travelling to Tokyo this week for ICMPC 2023 to present a two year long project led by @manuelangladatort.bsky.social and myself, studying how music diffuses around the globe 🎶

2143