Petter Holme

one season follows another . . my mix-tape for the spring 2026. 90 minutes, to fit your BASF:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02nFLie97RG6qc0ryEFpCY?si=7fb9efc402474a13

It's been a while since the last blog post, but here is a new one. Maybe the most ambitious ever 😄

We feel that we understand things when certain patterns of explanations are in place. If reality doesn't follow those patterns, our understanding suffers. On to the third such eureka fallacy I've blogged about: explanation by optimization.

https://petterhol.me/2025/12/10/the-eureka-fallacy-of-optimization/

Time for another mixtape to get you into that wintery mood. 🎶 A cassette-friendly 90 min, of course.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/15sfyIxRV5S67ZJFvxwZKb?si=23264f8c58804014

arXiv alert 📄🚨
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05743
This was such a fun paper to write! The development leading up to today’s social/behavioral science with AI agents. The history itself is a roller-coaster ride connecting many of the big themes of 20/21 century human-centric science, namechecking heroes from Margaret Mead to Marvin Minsky, from Kenneth Colby to Kathleen Carley, along the way.

New paper in NHB 📄🚨

We ran extensive experiments to show that making the rules of some canonical economic games looser makes people more cooperative

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02289-0

A bit early, but who could wait? A C90 mixtape for the best of seasons. 🎶

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1rSUHMyticZVygVsIEGsdM?si=71bb8c9b303741b2

(a bit late, but) this is a preprint/project I really have enjoyed! They might talk like us, but they surely don't learn like us. 📄🚨
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16163

The Nordic trick—without two-digit temperatures (C) in the forecast, let's define summer as a state of mind. Which, of course, needs a mixtape: 🎶

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6CgTIoJhQTkHaFiqFZt1vL?si=9d3dfbdd29fd42ae

New blog post! 📯⭐

About how our love for symmetry can stop us from seeing the truth.

https://petterhol.me/2025/05/07/symmetric-orderly-wrong/

As we say in the north: Just because it's snowing doesn't mean it's not spring. So here's a playlist to set your mood for the season. Cassette-long, of course. 🎵

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5v65T3KjmIQuLSWWE3qtJa?si=d28a8a495f724fa6

I channeled my inner Marvin Minsky to give a different perspective on AI science than the usual (hmm, shortsighted) stuff. It ended up being about how our lazy attitude toward our language stops science from its (utopian-level) full potential … and many other musings on language, technology, and human knowledge.

https://petterhol.me/2025/02/09/essay-time-ai-and-sciences-happy-ending/

New blog post:
Six fantastic science books and their spirit animals in the zoo of music
https://petterhol.me/2025/01/23/book-music-parings-vol-1/

Preprint alert 📄🚨 w Manuel Cebrian & Niccolo Pescetelli

. . about how we can use "Where's Waldo?" images as a testbed for evaluating AI-supported social mobilization

https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14210

(For the 11th consecutive year) a cassette-length playlist for the winter ❄️🎶
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3VmHOUkMrTEdFb2BPnkWnP?si=9132ff3501e44c30

New paper in PNAS 📰🚨
Beyond a binary theorizing of prosociality
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2412195121

New preprint alert 📄🚨 Static network structure cannot stabilize cooperation among Large Language Model agents

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10294

A brand new blog post about the joy of reading scientific papers from faraway disciplines 🇫🇴

https://petterhol.me/2024/11/08/science-is-fun-isnt-it/

Science of science preprint alert :)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.03938
Where postdoctoral journeys lead.

Our data-driven study postdocs & academic careers.

Key findings:

1. Those who publish less as a postdoc than during their PhD training are more likely to leave academia.

2. Those who happen to get a hit paper during their postdoc are more likely to stay.

3. Of those who stay in academia, those who change their topic a bit (but not too much) perform better as early-year faculty.