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Max Puelma Touzel

@mptouzel.bsky.social

280 followers 800 following 150 posts

Data scientist of human individual and collective behaviour. Statistical inference and decision theory. Web: mptouzel.github.io Fields: AI/ML/(MA)RL/psych/soc/pol/econ/energy.

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Oct 23

2 years ago I asked myself what work I could do that might have impact as the climate crisis deepens.

Social/economic phenomena seems central to solutions. So, I started a move from NeuroAI/RL to AI-powered social science.

I want to share a bit of my trajectory since. 🚀🧵

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 25m

Especially because a single sample tells you so much. We use single samples in effective Bayesianish heuristics all the time in everyday decision making. To deny their benefit is anti-scientific.

ngle.samples.effectively.in

Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel

Christoph Riedl @criedl.bsky.social · 1d

How does behavior spread? New insights on complex contagion in social networks with causal evidence from a country-scale field experiment @davidlazer.bsky.social sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 6d

Had an amazing time at #COLM2025 It was vibrant, high level, and seemed a healthy balance of LLM critique and solution focussed. I am so happy with how our social simulation workshop went. Chairing and panel moderating was a pleasure thanks to the many that participated. Stay tuned for recordings!

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 10d

Excited to be at #COLM2025 and to be organizing one of (perhaps the?) first workshop on social modelling with LLMs! Looking forward to this community-wide stocktake on the state of the field, main challenges, and promising applications!
sites.google.com/view/social-...

Social Simulation with LLMs

Important Information Workshop Date: October 10, 2025 Workshop Room: 523AB Workshop Time Zone: Montreal (UTC -4) Contact Email: [email protected]

sites.google.com

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 17d

Looks like I missed the publication of another stochastic thermodynamics text in June. Seifert is arguably better positioned, but let's see about his exposition style. The other text is Politi & Pigolotti, which was nice, but light on the info side.
www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...

Stochastic Thermodynamics

Cambridge Core - Statistical Physics - Stochastic Thermodynamics

www.cambridge.org

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 18d

Another model is to project a pragmatic view that attracts more options, but build in structure to your incentives to keep you from selling out. Tony Wilson shows us the way: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwkz...

24 Hour Party People (2002) - Tony Doesn't Sell Out Scene (10/12) | Movieclips

YouTube video by Movieclips

www.youtube.com

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 18d

trying to parse this. What does the "without focusing on intervening on particular nodes." mean? You mean other system level interventions other than structure?

Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel

Malcolm Campbell @malcolmgcampbell.bsky.social · 28d

🚨Our preprint is online!🚨

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?

Read on to find out more! 🧵

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · 28d

This is it

Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 29d

What is to prevent Brendan Carr from canceling the licenses of affiliates who accurately report election results unfavorable to Trump? Or a scandal involving a Trump associate? Or bad economic numbers. Unbridled authoritarianism.

Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel

Nina Wang @ninawang.bsky.social · Sep 15

I am recruiting (Canadian🇨🇦) graduate students at York University for Fall 2026 in Social and Personality Psychology! If you are interested in misinformation, political polarization, and/or computational social science, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out with any questions.

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Sep 15

The counterview I find compelling is optimality as a crucial feature of methodology: you carefully pick as objects of study behaviours that are very likely to have strong selection pressure, thereby taking on forms that you can produce as solutions. How else could you make predictions?

Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel

Amy Zhang @axz.bsky.social · Apr 15

It seems obvious that we should prioritize addressing misinformation that is more harmful. But what makes something more likely to be harmful? Can we can reason about it before the harm has occurred?

📣 In an upcoming #CSCW2024 paper, we present a taxonomy of *Misinformation as a Harm* ➡️

First page of the paper. Title: "Misinformation as a Harm: Structured Approaches for Fact-Checking Prioritization"

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Sep 7

Similar experience. I moved into more ML where I saw (at least locally) this approach (e.g. the CRediT system). True they don't have a "culture cultivation" contribution, but something like that could added pretty simply I think. I like how it's an explicit, versatile expression of values

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Sep 6

Not AWS specifically, but There is the argument that dual use (with clear pathway to beneficial impact) is justifiable when there is relatively little beneficial use relative to harmful use, but I think its validity has to be case by case. Weird that technical success is the signal to harmful dev.

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Sep 6

If there is anything worse than "economist brain", it's economist brain arguments about how inefficient the state is.

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Sep 4

this is somehow is a subtweet

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Sep 4

Too bad people didn't take Bard Ermentrout seriously when he proposed synchronizing intervention experiments in stadium bathroom systems.

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Reposted by Max Puelma Touzel

Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social · Aug 16

1800 block of South Western Avenue in Chicago

Three images of street art in Pilsen.
First shows Superman punching an ICE agent in paramilitary uniform.
Second shows that somebody covered over Superman with black paint
Third shows the artist went back and, in place of Superman, he painted Superman's dog Krypto pissing on the ICE agent.

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Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 20

Ironic how that last sentance in the image (as a belief) is a deeply held fiction for certain individuals ('deep state is after me') who voted for a govmnt that's doing just that to other people whose idealistic notion of govmnt presumably made them not believe it could happen, least of all to them.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Aug 20

One trademark of an authoritarian regime is the use of the legal system to target political opponents. Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has been using his position to concoct accusations of mortgage fraud against Letitia James, Adam Schiff and now Cook.

One wonders how much digging into Cook’s financial records, and those of other Federal Reserve members, was made to come up with the charges. Pulte is also the source of the complaints against Schiff and James. His primary activities appear to be to use weaponize public power to lead harassment and intimidation campaigns against public officials. Greg Sargent has been writing about how unusual and dubious Pulte’s practices have been in targeting Schiff.

Even if the accused are ultimately absolved of any wrongdoing, the legal threats of investigation by the DOJ are potentially ruinous. Adam Schiff started a legal defense fund to deal with the accusations. Guilt or innocence matters less than the inherent vulnerability that comes from an unethical government doing all it can to destroy you.

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 17

Interesting analysis that reminds me that political discourse is a technology of control in democracy that is used to stabilize ideologies.

Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · Aug 17

Okay, so:

The European democracies under study almost all use PR, and in PR, the median voter is not a useful or meaningful concept: there are many parties, not two, & they chase their own & ideologically proximate voters, not the median (unless they're centrist, but then it's incidental)

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 17

Does the model you are describing here that includes discursive constructions have a name/has been studied?

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 17

Or caused by strategic manoeuvring in some abstract space of ideological competition. Individuals espousing the view may well believe it as a core value, just unaware or ambivalent that it is strategic.

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 7

Partisan sorting claims another victim

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 6

I don't like where this is going...the distinction is nuance and the modern media bit just isn't equipped for nuance.

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · Aug 6

See, right to the “jail scientists” take.

Max Puelma Touzel @mptouzel.bsky.social · Aug 6

He's not playing to succeed as a career politician. He's playing another game, the rewards of which are correlated with his destructive picks/approach to governance. It's probably not productive to understand what he's doing as strategic with respect to governance either. It's another game.