iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michael Muthukrishna

Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

🚨 Applied Cultural Evolution Brownbag Series 🚨 Two inaugural discussions: Oct 7 What is (uniquely) applied cultural evolution? Caroline Graf, U. Zurich Dec 9 What can cultural evolution offer climate adaptation practitioners? Christine Lindell, World Vision Australia tinyurl.com/3st6zy79

A black and white image of a tattoo design featuring a human brain with wings pierced by two diagonal arrows over a flying banner that reads "Applied Cultural Evolutionists"

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Many Minds podcast @manymindspod.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

'Culture, innovation, and the collective brain' with @michael.muthukrishna.com Listen: disi.org/culture-inno...

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 25/08/2026

This may be because formal education is a specific cultural download that reflects its Western origins. It's not just content, it teaches patience, delayed gratification (study now for tests later), self-control (sit still & stay quiet), individualism (grades & achievements), & analytic thinking. 5/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 25/08/2026

It's not so much that education makes you American, just more Western. We re-ran the analysis using every country as the reference point & found the same effect for Sweden, the Netherlands, & other Western countries. There's no such correlation w/ non-Western powers such as China, Russia or India 4/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 25/08/2026

Previous studies showed that socioeconomic status can shape people's values & behaviors. Here, we're able to break down SES into education, income & status. Only education seems to make you WEIRDer. 3/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 25/08/2026

A highly educated Russian is as culturally close to the US as the average NZer (CFst=0.086 vs 0.081). Less educated Russians are far more distant (0.358). In 70% of countries, the well-educated are WEIRDer & the widest gaps are on sexuality & group membership. 2/ Paper:

nature.com

Higher education predicts global cultural similarity to WEIRD countries

Nature Communications - Psychology studies are becoming more global, yet often rely on highly educated participants. The authors find, across 95 countries, that higher education predicts cultural...

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 25/08/2026

🚨 New paper in @NatureComms: (annoyingly) using college students to study cross-cultural effects underestimates the size of cultural differences. More education predicts more Westernization. Income & status don't. w/ Cindel White. 1/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 29/07/2026

The local group are people you interact with regularly. They affect your life the most. They should care more that you're a good neighbor, friend, or family member than a climate change activist. Key result: Local cooperation should undermine global cooperation when in conflict. 5/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 29/07/2026

Nepotism, cronyism, and other forms of corruption aren't failures of cooperation - they *are* cooperation, but on a lower scale. Our new model extends P&B (2004) but puts people in 2 groups - a local group (L) & a global group (G), w/ the choice to contribute to either or none. 4/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 29/07/2026

The problem is that the model assumes we belong to one group, w/ one reputation. We don't. The manager hiring his cousin is a bad manager but a useful family member. The official who lets a friend bypass the visa queue is a bad civil servant, but a good friend. 3/ Paper:

pnas.org

Indirect reciprocity undermines indirect reciprocity destabilizing large-scale cooperation | PNAS

Previous models suggest that indirect reciprocity (reputation) can stabilize large-scale human cooperation [K. Panchanathan, R. Boyd, Nature 432, 499–502 (2004)]. The logic behind these models and ...

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 29/07/2026

In a landmark Nature paper, Panchanathan & Boyd (2004) developed an elegant model showing how reputation can sustain large-scale cooperation: we prefer to help those who've contributed to the public good. If I know you're a patriot or support climate action, I'm more likely to help you elsewhere 2/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 29/07/2026

🚨 PNAS paper: "Indirect reciprocity undermines indirect reciprocity destabilizing large-scale cooperation" w/ Eric Schnell How do we achieve global cooperation on climate or conflict reduction? The problem isn't selfishness as much as it is cooperation itself - at a smaller scale. 1/

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SAHASA 🐙🪸 @sculptedreef.com · 14/07/2026

The leading theory for why animals evolve big brains is social: Bigger brains manage bigger, complex groups 👫👬 👊🐙 Octopuses break that rule: mostly solitary, no parenting, and still the smartest invertebrates alive. 🧠 So why the big brain? Taking a look at a new study. 🐙 Thread 🧵(with sources)

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Thank you to my co-authors - PhD / postdoc leads Kiran Basava & Theiss Bendixen; lead RA Alexander Leonhard; fab RA team Nicole Lauren George, Zoé Vanhersecke, Joshua Omotosho, & my co-PI and cephalopod expert Jennifer Mather. Data & code: github.com/kcbasava/... 13/13

github.com

GitHub - kcbasava/ceph-brain-evolution

Contribute to kcbasava/ceph-brain-evolution development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

What next? More data are needed. Higher-resolution measures of calories & complexity: temperature, latitude, oxygen, predators, prey, competition and measures of brains beyond size. Data here: cephdata.com 12/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Brain data also only exists for 79 of ~820 living cephalopod species, and whole brain size misses lobe structure/neuron counts. The available species do span a wide range of sizes, habitats, & phylogeny, and sensitivity checks were consistent, but even so we don't have data for 90% of ceph. 11/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Important caveats: data and phylogenetically controlled models alone don't tell you the causal mechanism. That's why formal theory is useful - you can model assumptions and logic for possible mechanisms. A lot of the paper explains the role of theory in helping us interpret non-causal analyses. 10/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Sociality is the main difference b/w the ABH and SBH. SBH predicts more social species should have larger brains. Sociality was not reliably associated w/ larger brains - in fact perhaps the opposite. 9/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Depth also indicates shallower-living species tended to have larger brains. This fits the idea that shallower habitats are generally more calorie-rich, biodiverse, & more cognitively demanding than open-water habitats. Again, consistent w/ the ABH. 8/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Results: consistent w/ ABH, ecology predicted brain size. Sociality didn't. The strongest predictor was habitat: cephalopods living on or near the shallow seafloors had larger brains than open water species. The relationship was enormous, ~2/3 as large as the body-brain size relationship. 7/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

We preregistered the ABH predictions against the Social Brain & compiled the largest comparative brain dataset for cephalopods yet: 5 years 79 species 3,933 papers 115 variables coded a new phylogeny brain size, body size, ecology, sociality, & behavior 6/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

The Asocial Brain Hypothesis says that while trial and error learning is less efficient than social learning, bigger brains can be favored when the environment is rich and complex enough that intelligence unlocks more calories & avoid predators. 5/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Sociality can't explain cephalopod brain size, so what does? First, it's worth knowing that evolution favors the smallest brain that let's you survive and thrive, because brain tissue is expensive (about 20x as expensive as muscles in humans). So it has to be worth paying the energy bill 4/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Prior to the CBH, the dominant theory for the evolution of large brains was the social brain hypothesis - brains evolved to cope w/ the demands of group living. Cephalopods are smart - use tools, solve problems, deceive - but they're short-lived, die after reproducing, & even cannibalistic. 3/

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

Here we got around to testing this "Asocial Brain Hypothesis" in cephalopods - octopuses, squids, & cuttlefish - by spending half a decade building the most comprehensive database & test of their brain evolution yet. 2/ Paper: www.sciencedirect.co... Press release: www.lse.ac.uk/news/e...

sciencedirect.com

Ecological not social factors explain brain size in cephalopods

Social factors have been argued to be the main selection pressure for the evolution of large brains and complex behavior, but many cephalopods live la…

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 15/07/2026

🚨 New paper in iScience: "Ecological not social factors explain brain size in cephalopods" In 2017, we published the Cultural Brain Hypothesis, a model of human brain evolution. It made an unexpected prediction: non-social animals could evolve big brains too, if their ecology was rich enough. 1/

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Theiss Bendixen @theissbendixen.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

New research! 📚 We built the largest database to date of cephalopod species - octopuses, squids and cuttlefish - and their brains, habitats and behaviors 🐙🧠📈 What did we find?👇 Press release: www.lse.ac.uk/news/ecologi... Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Reposted by Michael Muthukrishna

LSE Department of Psychological & Behavioural Science @lsepbs.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

🐙 Ecological factors, not social behaviour, explain brain size in cephalopods. New research by @michael.muthukrishna.com & co-authors challenges the 'social brain hypothesis', which suggests that intelligence evolved primarily to support complex social interactions.

lse.ac.uk

Research News | Octopuses, squid and cuttlefish | Evolution

The findings challenge one of the most influential explanations for the evolution of intelligence: the ‘social brain hypothesis’, which argues that larger brains evolved primarily to manage complex so...

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Reposted by Michael Muthukrishna

Alex Mesoudi @alexmesoudi.com · 13/05/2026

Rob Boyd reflects on his and Pete Richerson's early work on cultural evolution

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Reposted by Michael Muthukrishna

Julia Penndorf @julia-penndorf.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

🎉🦜NEW PAPER ALERT 🦜🎉 Which social learning biases underly the acquisition of novel food in wild parrots ? We (@lucymaplin.bsky.social, @bjjbarrett.bsky.social, @sonjawild.bsky.social, @drjohnmartin.bsky.social) presented >700 cockies with a novel, artificial food (🧵1/6)

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

The role is based in New York, starting this summer. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/183820 Please share with your networks!

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

You don’t need all of these disciplinary backgrounds, but you should be someone who finds it natural to move between individual cognition, population dynamics, and engineered systems.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

evolutionary game theory & the evolution of cooperation; mechanism design and institutional design; cooperative AI and multi-agent systems; the study and development of large language models; cross-cultural psychology and large-scale behavioral data; philosophy of morality or social contract theory.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

We’re especially excited about candidates with backgrounds or serious interest in one or more of: computational modeling of social learning, norms, or moral cognition; cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution;

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

We are looking for someone with a PhD (or are close to completion) in computer science, computational cognitive science, or any quantitative science, and a genuine interest in working across disciplinary boundaries.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

These synchronic models of moral cognition will be complemented by diachronic models of how moral consensus emergence and expands over cultural evolutionary time. The diversity of human values are themselves continually evolving - how might they coevolve with AI agents?

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

and designing and testing methods for aligning individual AI agents to user values in ways that reflect how humans transmit those values and align to one another.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

You would answer this question by building & testing models, developing multi-agent simulations where agents, aligned to different users’ values, must coordinate, negotiate, and resolve conflicts,

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

To offer a glimpse of the kind of questions and approaches you would be working on, consider the question of how the mechanisms of cooperation operate at scale, how are they made concrete in moral norms, and can analogous mechanisms be engineered into multi-agent AI systems?

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

As a postdoc, you will work with us and our networks to use ideas from cultural evolution and moral cognition to think more clearly about AI alignment, cooperation, norm formation, negotiation, and value conflict in multi-agent systems.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

Now we are building AI systems that face many of the same problems, only faster, stranger, and with fewer inherited constraints.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

Human societies solved an tough version of the multi-agent alignment problem: getting millions, eventually billions, of people to cooperate, coordinate, & enforce shared norms. Those solutions were built over generations through culture, institutions, moral systems, and the cognitive machinery.

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Michael Muthukrishna @michael.muthukrishna.com · 14/04/2026

How do you align AI in a world of plural, conflicting, and evolving human values? A starting point is human society itself. @sydneylevine.bsky.social and I are hiring a postdoc at NYU to combine insights from cultural evolution, computational moral cognition, and AI safety. Please share widely!1/

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Sydney Levine @sydneylevine.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

@michael.muthukrishna.com and I are hiring a postdoc to join our labs at NYU! We're looking for someone excited to work on one of society's newly emerging and potentially generation-shaping challenges: the multi-agent alignment problem.

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koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Highly educated people from non-WEIRD countries are culturally similar to WEIRDos, research by White & @michael.muthukrishna.com suggests (and this is not the case for high income or subjective social status individuals): buff.ly/V8JYs52

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LSE Department of Psychological & Behavioural Science @lsepbs.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

📚️ Does education make you WEIRD? New research co-authored by @michael.muthukrishna.com suggests that, around the world, higher levels of education are linked to cultural values commonly found in the US, the UK, other Anglo‑industrialised countries, and Western Europe.

buff.ly

Higher education linked to Western cultural values worldwide

Higher education is linked to Western cultural values worldwide, according to new research co-authored by LSE analysing data from 95 countries.

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