Elizabeth Bonawitz

Human cognition functions most effectively when individuals intentionally curate their own information intake rather than passively absorbing… Active Learning by Azzurra Ruggeri https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/go1i5g7i #CognitiveScience

This is bonkers. Like as bonkers as it gets.

Ok fine I'll take the bait.... I'm a constructivist which I think makes me a cop-out on this question, but here goes anyway. The Nat/Emp distinction connects with but is not equal to: 1. The nature-nurture debate 2. Presence at birth 3. Universality 4. Domain-specificity 5. And oh, so much more.

Using research funding to kill babies in one of the poorest countries “The study would deny hepatitis B vaccines to 7,000 newborns in the first 6 weeks of life, in a country where 1 in 5 adults have the virus. Hepatitis B kills 15%-25% of people with chronic infections, & newborns are vulnerable”

RIP Margaret Hamilton, the brilliant computer scientist whose contributions to software for the Apollo Guidance Computer were absolutely crucial to the Apollo Moon landings. She also helped shape the discipline of computer engineering while at MIT's Instrumentation Lab: news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

Agency-wide, NSF made far fewer new grants (~6,200, down from an average of ~11,000) and underspent its buget by 1.4 billion. See previous coverage:

89% of SBE NSF grants were never awarded!! My field (Cognitive Neuroscience) is included in this gutting, as are so many others. Plenty of horror stories in the same space are also coming from NIH. It’s not just delaying research; it’s labs shutting down and a next gen that won’t be trained.

I don’t think everyone realizes how bad things are for US science: For the fiscal year that just ended, the Trump regime withheld $1.4 billion from the National Science Foundation’s research budget, which is about 1/5 of its primary research budget.

Amazing!! Huge congratulations @felipedebrigard.bsky.social on the MacArthur Foundation 'Genius Grant' 🥳🎉 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/a...

"No aphorism is more frequently repeated [...] than that we must ask nature fewer questions, or, ideally, one question at a time. The writer is convinced that this view is wholly mistaken." — Ronald A. Fisher, 1926 1/4 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

thinking of sending funding agencies Letters of Disinterest, see if negging works any better "Your foundation is really close to being the kind of place I'd want to work with"

new preprint: "Directing large language models to follow the letter or spirit of the law" arxiv.org/pdf/2609.23083 (by Qian , Li, Chen, Murthy @soniakmurthy.bsky.social , Belinkov, and me) this is particularly cool/important, and I'm allowed to say it because it was headed by @pqian.bsky.social

new paper out: *~*~*~*~ "Revisiting the 5- to 7-Y ear Shift: The Age of Metacognitive Control?" (by Brod @garvinbrod.bsky.social , McAuliffe @katiemcauliffe.bsky.social , Ullman) *~*~*~*~ sharable paper link: bit.ly/5to7_2026 free pdf draft: www.tomerullman.org/papers/5to7s...

Do read the report from MIT on AI in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training. aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/

Soooo... any confirmation on whether this happened 12 hours ago? youtube.com/shorts/6PbM9... (please don't engage with any seriousness about llms being "self aware")

In school, American children are taught to use "HOMES" to remember the Great lakes, but we will have to switch the acronym to SHAME, If Lake Ontario is changed to Lake America.

I hope everyone caught this Lancet study confirming that Elon Musk & DOGE are responsible for genocidal levels of suffering & death.

Come work with me at Google! We have an open 6-month temp role on my team - it’s a great opportunity for someone with a cog neuro or psych background interested in exploring big tech. Looking for comp modeling experience (e.g. RL, DDMs) and Python/JS. Reach out to learn more or pass along any names!

We need to show rightwing newspapers that actions have consequences. Add your name: goodlawproject.org/s/abb8a1

regular reminder that most of the millions of projected deaths from USAID's destruction HAVE NOT HAPPENED YET—which means they can still be prevented. but this is only possible if we demand that democrats prioritize it once in power. it is a moral imperative that we actually act on these numbers

COS is announcing important changes to the Open Science Framework (OSF). OSF Projects—used for project collaboration, file mgmt, & storage—is being phased out as an active workspace over the next 6 months. This change does not affect persistence & accessibility of existing public projects. (🧵1/2)

new preprint: "The Humorous Hill: A U-shaped Relationship Between Humor and Quality" (by Bhattacharya, Hu, and me) link: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Children’s Representations of Possibility: Uncertainty About “What” Is Easier Than Uncertainty About “Where”

Right! Furthermore, the OMB has to read & respond to all new comments (this slows them down, forces them to engage with the potential impact of these policies). And additionally, a strong showing by the public tells politicians we care about this and so they pay attention and care more too.

There's an OMB rule change that would require political oversight of scientific grants, and could pull any that don't "reflect presidential priorities" Another country has tried this before! It was the USSR and it was called Lysenkoism. By @thsaey.bsky.social www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-...

I see this often among my grantees. Uncertainty about maintaining funding on a grant (even thought it has been found meritorious in peer review, high priority in programmatic review, and was already awarded) makes conducting the science extremely challenging. substack.com/@27unihted/n...

What's more nonsensical: smashing a pumpkin using a number, or growing flowers inside a sneeze? Our paper on graded inconceivability is out now in Cognition! Come for the cognitive science 🧠🔍, stay for the whimsy 🌼🧚! 🔗Journal link: bit.ly/gradedInconCog

Now out (for realz) in Cognition: "People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable" (by Hu, Sosa, & me) Free preprint: www.tomerullman.org/papers/grade... Journal link: bit.ly/gradedInconCog @jennhu.bsky.social @cognitionjournal.bsky.social