Michael Collins PhD

PhD in experimental evolutionary psychology. Cognitive Science, Psychology, Language, Evolution, Social Cognition, Cognitive Archaeology

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

Seeing as everyone else is doing this: Types of language evolution papers.

[UoL EvoAnth Seminar Series @LivUni_EvoAnth]

Still time to register for our first talk of the semester! Join us tomorrow at 1-2pm BST
Register here:

https://t.co/lU5Kasgj0b

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@fcummins I literally made a fake podcast with this yesterday based on the pdf's I used in our visual gaze Masters project from 2015 - it was crazy. I'm kind of afraid to put my phd research in there...

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

New evidence that the hunter-gatherer peoples of central Africa have been a distinct genetic and cultural group for a long time, 120kya.

[Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias @padillaccc]

A little piece on our @NatureHumBehav paper looking at the relationship between the structure of cultural and genetic diversity in Central Africa is now out in @natAfrica1 https://t.co/eCa9u0rFbJ 😍 Thanks a lot @dannoOkoth for writing about it!

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@Abebab I don't know Abeba, @ChatGPTapp recently did a pretty good first draft of merging my existing CV with a job description. It can be pretty good at helping with all sorts of technical issues too. Like any tool it can be used for positive or negative purposes.

[Daniël Lakens @lakens]

It has been very funny to see people respond to my recent argument that some research practices logically follow from a philosophy of science.

Imagine how these people would feel if they read Popper, who wrote a whole book about the 'logic of scientific discovery'.

[Kevin Mitchell @WiringTheBrain]

Understanding understanding – could an A.I. cook meth? https://t.co/dwj2OHqZaN - in which I try to tease apart what makes Walter White's understanding "deeper" than Jesse Pinkman's...

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@JoeAtikian @WiringTheBrain I'm looking forward to seeing a theory of human evolution that doesn't use the concepts of species or sex. Most multicellular life is overrated anyhow.

[Kevin Mitchell @WiringTheBrain]

The history of sex research: Is “sex” a useful category? https://t.co/KFf2rqJQhX - this is doing my head in...

[Dr. Trish Holch @TrishHolch]

Hi everyone I'm marching the month for prostate cancer (Razzie is coming too)https://t.co/xdNbAR2dzm

[Blake Richards @tyrell_turing]

1/4) Several people I admire immensely have signed this, but respectfully, I'm afraid I just don't agree with the claim that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority".

I think this statement is naive and a mistake.

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@ZeroStateReflex @KevinAFischer As experimental "success" is often measured by p values, suggesting experiments that have a greater chance of such a value is called p-hacking and is one of the types of problems in applying LLM's without a deep understanding of experimental design oneself.

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@seymiotics @PsychScientists Doom us to a world full of mediocre copy-paste images, badly written clickbait articles and threats of nuclear annihilation? .... Hang on a minute ...

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@WiringTheBrain Reductionism is still a major part of scientific thinking, and this is amplified in popular culture. So it's still a useful phrase, even just as a starting point for alternative ways of understanding complex systems.

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@Abebab Most population genetics research is on non-human species. Of the research that deal with humans, only a tiny proportion of research could be considered racist, mostly historical. E.g. some of the latest research here: https://t.co/sGR6nLuPhf

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@CoachZachElder @PsychScientists The classic paper on the evolution of human physiology involved in throwing is here: https://t.co/OQVUqAdX1M The paper itself is compact, but note there is another 50 pages of material in the supplementary notes if you really want to get into it.

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@animegirl12182 @owillis @jessesingal @nytimes There is indeed disagreement among experts and other stakeholders on causes and treatment of gender dysphoria, as this @bmj_latest investigation describes: https://t.co/4Vofk2PtWy

[Michael Collins PhD @Homoloquax1]

@mike10010100 @owillis @jessesingal @nytimes Sorry, I'm not going to engage with someone who throws abusive epithets at me. Blocked.