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Daniel Conroy-Beam Profile
Daniel Conroy-Beam

@dconroybeam

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Associate professor at UCSB. Evolutionary and computational perspective on human mating.

www.danconroybeam.com
Joined November 2019
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
@SpeciesTypical Eh, you know I love and respect Joe. And I hope he has a happy and productive retirement. But this has strong Principal Skinner energy for me. E.g., a professor selling predictive models to the police strikes me as an extremely reasonable thing for students to be concerned about.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
5 months
I wrote a piece, out today in the @BostonGlobe , on how EP research gets appropriated to support harmful ideologies in the manosphere:
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
Nah, man. Sort out your nazi followers and I'll consider engaging
@sentientist
Diana S. Fleischman
3 months
Hey @dconroybeam - last month you said that evolutionary psychology causes murder and I explained why you are wrong. Any response?
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
New paper out in EHB! What even is a mate preference, anyway? You might think the answer is obvious. But read the literature carefully and you'll see all kinds of ideas. Preferences are thresholds, or ranges, or slopes, or reference values, or orderings over choice sets (1/4)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Incredibly honored to be named a rising star. HBES was my first conference and it has always been my home. Many years later, it is deeply meaningful to me to be recognized by this society
@HumBehEvoSoc
HBES
1 year
HBES congratulates its amazing Rising Stars: Khandis Blake, Daniel Conroy-Beam, Jaimie Krems, Michael Muthukrishna, & Patrick Savage. And its new HBES Fellows: David Puts, Josh Tybur, Daniel Sznycer. Amazing work from all!
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
My first PhD student, @katyvwalter graduated today. It's been such a privilege watching her grow a scholar, educator, and mentor. I've learned as much as I taught.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Alright, I'll fall on the grenade. Some of this is a little off base. But we in the EP community *do* need to be better about calling this shit out. These authors are people I know many of us dislike but have been content to politely ignore as fringe weirdos. 1/
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
5 months
Incels claim their ideology is grounded in evolutionary psychology. But their read of the literature is motivated, selective, and inaccurate. We need to do a better job of combatting this misuse of our science because it has real consequences.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
What major theories in psychology have outlived their proposers? What proportion of currently influential theories come from people still alive to teach/defend them?
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Just a quick reminder for the many that seem to need it: Diana and Geoffrey are not elected representatives of Evolutionary Psychology. We don't vote on their tweets.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
I fear some context for my tweet is getting lost. Let me clarify how things look from my perspective.
@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
Nah, man. Sort out your nazi followers and I'll consider engaging
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Why do people believe in races if they aren't biologically real? @ghezae_isaias , @DavePietrasz , and I propose coalitional psychology can provide an answer. Stop by our #HBES2021 talk tomorrow (6/24) at 1:30p EDT to hear more!
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 month
Our lab is recruiting a new PhD student for Fall 2025. Please share! If you're interested in adaptationist/computational approaches to human social reasoning, esp. mate choice, I'd love to see your application. More information here:
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
How do you type the words "Whether there's a superior race" and not think "Hm, somewhere I've taken a wrong turn in my life"?
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Oh yeah, I'm giving a talk tomorrow. You should drop by
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Do not give your children hyphenated last names. You are dooming them to a lifetime of minor inconvenience.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
This is a thoughtful thread with some genuinely good points. But fwiw here's a list of words I tend to see in critiques of EP at frequencies >=100x what I see in actual EP literature: "Module" "EEA" "Standard Social Science Model" "Innate" "Pleistocene" "Alpha male"
@Helenreflects
Helen De Cruz
2 years
Strong evolutionary psychology googling energy in philosophy twitter today. I read a lot of EP in the late 1990s-early 2000s (Geoffrey Miller, Pinker, Cosmides&Tooby, Thornhill, Daly, etc) as an undergrad (long story). Took me a while to figure out what's wrong with it.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
We just finished the roll of Costco aluminum foil we bought when we moved to Santa Barbara ~6 years ago. I have surprisingly complicated feelings about this.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
In *every single one* of these conversations what gets lost is that the aim of EP is not to label adaptation vs not-adaptation but to use adaptation hypothesis to generate predictions about *how the mind works*. It's insane how predictable this wrong turn is.
@kohn_gregory
Gregory Kohn (@kohngregory.bsky.social)
2 years
@ed_hagen @SpeciesTypical @thebirdmaniac @EvoRoseman @TsMcHale @JaimieKrems Your hypotheses should be falsifiable. You can’t falsify the assumption that something is an adaptation with the methods of social psychology. Could I propose quantum entanglement hypotheses for navigation for birds? Sure. Could I test that given the constraints of my field? No.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Now published: the results of one of the best dissertations I've read. People make near-optimal inferences w.r.t. how other people value them. Truly elegant stuff. Adaptationism par excellence.
@TadegQuillien
Tadeg Quillien
2 years
When someone has the opportunity to help or hurt you, what they end up deciding contains information about how much they value you. Here I find that people spontaneously ask to observe the decisions that contain the highest expected amount of information.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
I've been thinking about sharing some of my bird photos more. To that end, here's a bushtit I saw today.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Damn, this thread describes my work better than I do
@DatingDarwin
Darwin Does Dating
3 years
A few weeks ago, I gave you 4 different models of mate choice and asked you to pick which one you felt best reflected how humans pick their partners. Today on Darwin Does Dating - Can computers emulate real mate choice? [1/12]
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Bummer on the sound issues in my HBES talk today. But in case you're interested, you can view the full talk in all its "glory" here: In a nutshell: coalitional psychology can cause the perception of phenotypic categories even in a population that has none
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
In 2022-23, I received UCSB's Plous Award. One of the perks of this award is giving a talk on your research to your colleagues. If you missed it, here's the recording of my talk about my lab's work on computational modeling of human mate choice:
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
One of the things that's fun about photography vs. academia is getting really clear signals of improvement over time (first whale watching photos vs. yesterday's)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
8 months
Suppose you were teaching a 10-week graduate course on controversies and debates in evolution and human behavior. What kinds of topics would be 'must-cover's?
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
(Co-)taught the first day of a new birdwatching class today and the impact it's had on my mood has really surprised me. I didn't realize how many things I've been missing: riding my bike; interacting with bright-eyed, curious students; nice birds + views on the campus lagoon.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Now *officially* out in PSPR. Here I introduce "couple simulation," a method for comparing models of mate choice that reproduces real participants' relationships inside simulated mating markets (think Black Mirror S4E4):
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
Nonetheless, this is Diana's audience because of the content she produces. And if this is who you associate with, you don't deserve the limited and time and attention of serious academics. You don't get to shit in your hand and demand we arm wrestle you.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Our field has a lot to offer to the study of the mind. If we have any serious ambitions, we need to be more careful about not even giving shit like this oxygen.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 month
New paper out in Open Mind! Mate choice poses a dilemma: how do you find a good partner when time spent investigating one option could have been spent pursuing another? Here I show this problem can be solved by adapting reinforcement learning algorithms to model mate choice
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
8 months
Okay Twitter, I give up, I'm back. Just not enough content in the other place. Here's a bird.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Finally got to see the island fox
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
But in the meantime they've built up real followings. And these people may be a small minority *in* the field, but they are a large majority of what people see from *outside* the field. I increasingly worry this is an existential threat for EP. 2/
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Been trying for years to get a decent lazuli bunting shot. Getting closer...
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
I have established an alliance with the neighborhood hummingbirds. Cross me if you dare.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
5 months
H/t to @LBachaud and @datepsych for opening my eyes to some of these things
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
I wrote an op-ed about something I think is a problem: evolutionary psychological research being appropriated by the manosphere.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
I love my discipline. I think we're the most elegant and exciting area of psychology. And we have the capacity to do a lot of good. That's why I do it. I also think we have plenty of theoretical and ethical debates ahead that I'm excited to engage with many of you on.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
One of the most stunning birds I've ever seen: the turquoise-browed motmot
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
@psmaldino @SpeciesTypical Agreed, complaining about "woke capture" doesn't exactly come off to me as concern about due process (which may be legitimate) as much as personal distaste for which direction the political winds are blowing.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Hey Twitter, you should visit Cappadocia.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
In it, I argued that we scientists have some responsibility to correct the record given that our work is being used to legitimize ideologies that are hateful and have been used to justify mass violence.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
What a profoundly weird question, especially as a Black American
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
In the meantime, a friend and colleague published a nice op-ed about talking to your kids about race. I RT'd it. Diana then tweeted about it, triggering a flood of antisemitic hate so severe my friend had to private her profile. This is repugnant.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
6 months
Yesterday a Vermillion Flycatcher in my yard. Today this handsome feller
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Reviewer 1: This is great, but I found a typo. Reviewer 2:
@lastpositivist
Liam Bright
3 years
It has come to my attention that a number of people think I have nothing but contempt for your vile little opinions, that I loathe you typing them out filling the air with a vile snickertty pitter-patter like a thousand rodents fleeing the sinking barge that passes for your mind.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
@primalpoly @sentientist Start by considering why they find your content so attractive. Your early work was so inspiring, Geoffrey. You could do a lot of good. And I don't recall accusing you of anything. But I dunno...let's start with a 50% reduction and then we'll check back in?
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
7 months
So excited for this program! Students: are you interested in evolution and human behavior but haven't been able to get involved in research? Apply for ADAPT! Get $, get community, get mentorship, get research experience, come to HBES. Apply by June 1st!
@HumBehEvoSoc
HBES
7 months
Calling all students seeking research experience in evolutionary social science! In  @HumBehEvoSoc 's new ADAPT Program, you'll work w a mentor on a research project in 2024-25. Get $1.2k stipend + up to $3k to attend/present at HBES2025! Apply  by 6/1!
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
I can't wait to see what I talk about!
@OCEAN_OKState
Oklahoma Center for Evolutionary Analysis (OCEAN)
2 years
Want to know about love? Interested in computational psychology + agent-based models? Join us for the Fall 2022 OCEAN Speaker Series! @dconroybeam will give an *IN-PERSON* talk Th, Sept 15th, 3:30pm @okstate . More info (+registration to join by Zoom👇)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
@sentientist did not like my piece. She penned a rebuttal. I read it and didn't find it warranted a response. I don't think Diana argues in good faith. Her appraisal was uncharitable. It was seemingly motivated more by hurt feelings than a desire for genuine dialogue.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
I also asked: why is the manosphere so attracted to our field (as opposed to, say social psychologists who study similar things)? I speculated that the public bad behavior of some of our proponents gives our field a reputation as a haven for rabble rousing.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
@CathrynTownsend Sigh... it's worth saying that these views are not reflective of the scientific principles of evolutionary psychology nor are they shared by the majority of evolutionary psychologists (or, at least the ones i know)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
I live in the ugliest place in America
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Snowy plover mom sending her chick off to bird school (bird school is the ocean)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
This is no lie one of the reasons I find birdwatching so relaxing. It's peacefully humbling to be reminded there's whole worlds even in your backyard that have (virtually) nothing to do with you and your problems.
@FalseKnees
False Knees
3 years
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Part bird, part building, all sex appeal.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Haven't tweeted a bird photo in a minute. Here's a blue-gray gnatcatcher from the other day.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
But people like @sentientist aren't moving our field forward. They are selling us out. So we need to leave them behind.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Getting increasingly worried that no one has noticed the giant typo on the new classroom building
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Check it out! I really enjoyed this conversation. Hopefully I didn't say anything too embarrassing...
@NaturedNurture
The Nature & Nurture Podcast
2 years
New episode with @dconroybeam discussing evolutionary and computational perspectives on mating psychology!
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Least spoiled dog
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
@TadegQuillien This stuff still in the year of our lord 2023
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
Always appreciate the thoughtful, sober perspective of @ed_hagen . I agree down the board
@ed_hagen
Ed Hagen
3 months
1. Ethical research in evolutionary psychology (EP) and human genetics (HG): A view from a cynical sociobiologist (me). 🧵
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
4 years
Me: asks Spotify to shuffle my playlist literally called "Good Songs" Also me (surprised): “Oh wow, this is a good song.” Every. Time.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
To be fair, Diana's tweet was snarky but inoffensive. She asked people to back off and received some hate herself (which is also wrong).
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Beautiful, important thread from the always-lucid and insightful @ed_hagen
@ed_hagen
Ed Hagen
2 years
1. Santa Barbara Evolutionary Psychology (SBEP) argues that a universal human psychology evolved in Pleistocene Africa. But there has been surprising pushback from evo scholars arguing for recent behavioral evolution in the Holocene. What's the connection w/ race science? 🧵
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Butterflies are returning to the butterfly preserve!
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
She didn't seem to like that I ignored her. She tweeted her piece in its entirety. She also tweeted directly at me to try to get my attention.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
Snowy plover or toasted marshmallow?
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
Fwiw my tears don't taste very good
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Me contemplating why I agreed to be on so many DEI committees
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Great news! C-WESS gets stronger by the day!
@JaimieKrems
Jaimie Arona Krems
2 years
Big personal news: I’m thrilled to be joining the Department of Psychology at @UCLA this Fall!! Go Bruins! All LA advice welcome!👇
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
This cybersecurity training is such a waste of my time I want to fall for a phishing scam just out of spite
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
I saw Lawrence's Goldfinch for the first time today. That's a good thing.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
I had a ton of fun talking about the history and state of mate choice research for this. You should take a listen!
@B_resnick
Brian Resnick
3 years
People say they know what they’re looking for in a partner. Relationship experts say otherwise.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
It's kind of astonishing how few diversity statements mention racism at all
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
@amy_boddy I look like Chancellor Yang just said some fighting words
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Our super secret world domination meetings are deeply boring and mostly about how much we envy vision science.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
I nearly went to A&M for undergrad. They offered me a really generous scholarship as far as I recall. I declined because I worried it would be too racist. I have yet to see cause to question this decision...
@mwkraus
Michael W. Kraus
1 year
I hate this. It reminds me of a job I was very recently offered: full prof to help fix dei at a college 🙂; became a full prof job to fix dei on $0 budget 🙃; and then became an untenured job to fix dei on $0 budget 🫠 Lucky, I guess, to be earlier in the process. 🤡🤡
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
@Tangl3dBank 99%? There's plenty of shit work, but I think consuming EP exclusively through Twitter outrage gives people a deeply warped perception of what EP is.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
@rasmansa If Iran made it illegal to be above 5'10, criminality would instantly become heritable without there being a gene "for" law breaking.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Wtf Modern Times is better than my job
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
@M_B_Petersen @JaimieKrems Needs a longer title
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
What a lovely write-up of our work! Clearer than I describe it even.
@DatingDarwin
Darwin Does Dating
2 years
In my latest blog post, I highlight some of @dconroybeam 's amazing work looking at which models of relationship formation can actually recreate real-life couples (1/4)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
@mwkraus Oh yeah, sounds like me. My papers are always best in low O2 environments.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
E.g., I think (hope?) most would consider me a successful, card-carrying evolutionary psychologist and I'm not sure you'd find any of those words in context in any of my papers (certainly not written willingly by my hand)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 months
@mongreloutsider Let's not forget it wasn't my followers who brigaded my friend and colleague with a flood of antisemitism
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
6 months
@datepsych Fwiw, this is probably a better cite of ours (with the same data) wrt assortative mating. Also illustrates how preferences track own mate value, which seems to me to get overlooked in "hypergamy" conversations
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
1 year
@JaimieKrems I was hoping for KRAB lab: Krems Relationships and Behavior Lab
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
@NicoleBarbaro Well, in regards to 'whether or not', you need the extra words in order to convey your meaning more specifically
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
Good.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
3 years
A proposal: college sports coaches should be ordinary faculty, with normal research and teaching loads. Coaching can count as service. I wanna see math professors coaching the football team just like in middle school. I want coach teaching HIST 101 in a visor.
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
What do you think are the most useful tools for specifying what "good design" would look like in a putative psychological adaptation? (I'm thinking tools on the order of things like game theory, signal detection theory, etc.)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
A particularly charming painted redstart
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
2 years
Paywall link: Not paywall version available on my website: (4/4)
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@dconroybeam
Daniel Conroy-Beam
5 years
@SpeciesTypical I am so scared.
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