Fred Hasselman

New paper: Hasselman, F., den Uil, L., Koordeman, R., De Looff, P., & Otten, R. (2023). The geometry of synchronization: quantifying the coupling direction of physiological signals of stress between individuals using inter-system recurrence networks frontiersin.org/articles/10.33… 1/5

Theory matters in psychological science — but where does theory in psychology currently stand? We’re inviting psychological researchers for our survey to share their views on the state of theory. Overview: doi.org/10.31234/osf.i… Survey: forms.gle/Ct4qq4a4raun9L…

@drmichaellevin @Yang_Supertramp Learning & developing with(in) a growing body, exploiting redundancies of reality through a limited sensory array, emergent coordination of multi-scale interactions, these seem to be overlooked as properties of intelligent agents pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15811218/ direct.mit.edu/books/monograp…

@Yang_Supertramp The last part of my talk discusses this: youtu.be/ot-pmnqyBbU?si…

Super cool! What if we connect OpenClaw to @drmichaellevin ’s Xenobots？ Let the AI shape the bio-electric landscape to “manifest” its own body via the collective behavior of such agentic living material. And their collective behavior reshapes the AI itself?

A massive discovery in neuroscience: fMRI signals don't always match true neural activity. In ~40% of cases, signals increased where activity actually decreased. This challenges the core assumptions of tens of thousands of studies. #Neuroscience #fMRI #BrainResearch #CognitiveScience #MedicalResearch neurosciencenews.com/fmri-neural-ac… via @neurosciencenew

New paper with Rineke Bossenbroek: Lifelines of young people with a history in residential care: A qualitative investigation from a complex systems perspective sciencedirect.com/science/articl… In which we identify patterns of change in life histories of adolescents in residential care.

@skdh @leecronin Meaningful (semantic) information is created through the reproduction of similarity by analogy.

@leecronin how do you think knowledge is created?

Probabilistic slop engines cannot do science, drug discovery, materials discovery, or magic. Anyone who thinks AI can autonomously do science simply doesn’t understand how knowledge is created.

Quantum mechanics has gone from a theory in test to becoming the foundation of new technologies. Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective that looks at the last 100 years of #QuantumMechanics: scim.ag/4aCrl6a

Interested in studying the individual dynamics of fatigue? Apply below before January 6th! linkedin.com/posts/phdscann…

@warrenmansell @IntuitMachine Interesting,, in what way is this different from direct perception, tau guidance as explanations for coordination by perception?

We've become obsessed with the idea that the brain is a "Prediction Machine." The dominant theory in neuroscience says we're constantly simulating the future, calculating probabilities to guess what happens next. A new paper argues this is a complete illusion. The reality is simpler, and strangely, much more powerful. Here is the argument for Perceptual Control: The "Prediction Illusion" starts with a mistake in observation. When we see someone successfully handle a chaotic environment (like catching a flyball), it *looks* like they predicted the future trajectory of the ball. But observing prediction isn't the same as implementing it. The authors use the perfect analogy: The Watt’s Steam Governor. In the 19th century, this device kept steam engines running at a constant speed. If pressure surged, it slowed the engine. If load increased, it sped up. To an observer, it looked like the machine was "predicting" pressure surges and pre-empting them. But the Governor has no brain. It has no model of the future. It’s a mechanical negative feedback loop. [cite_start]It measures the *current* speed, compares it to the *desired* speed, and adjusts the valve immediately[cite: 80]. It doesn't predict; it controls. This brings us to the "Hello" experiment, which broke my brain a little. Researchers asked people to keep a computer cursor on a target. The computer applied a "disturbance" (forces pushing the cursor away) that the person had to fight against with their mouse. Here's the twist: The disturbance wasn't random. [cite_start]It was an invisible force field shaped like the word "hello" (written upside down and mirrored)[cite: 166]. The participants fought the force, keeping the cursor steady. When researchers looked at the participants' hand movements, they had perfectly written the word "hello". Crucially, the participants had NO idea they were writing words. If the brain were a "prediction machine," it would have needed to model the force to predict the hand movement. But the participants wrote a legible word purely by reacting to immediate error signals—instantaneously correcting the cursor's position. This is **Perceptual Control Theory (PCT)**. The theory suggests the nervous system isn't a linear pipeline (Input → Compute → Output). It’s a closed loop. We act to keep our *perception* of the world matching our internal *reference value*. [Image of Perceptual Control Theory negative feedback loop diagram] Think about catching a baseball. If you were a "prediction machine," you’d calculate the ball's trajectory, wind speed, and gravity, then run to where the ball *will* be. But that’s computationally expensive and error-prone. In reality, fielders just run in a way that keeps the "optical velocity" of the ball constant in their vision. If the ball looks like it's rising too fast, they move back. Dropping? They move forward. No physics calculus required. Just maintaining a visual constant. This solves the "Noise" problem. In predictive models, small jitters in your movement are considered "noise" or errors to be filtered out. It’s the system "feeling out" the environment to maintain control. This has huge implications for AI and robotics. We are currently building robots with massive compute power to "predict" stability. But robots built on PCT principles—like inverted pendulums that just react to maintain verticality—are often more robust and stable than the predictive ones. Why does this matter for you? It changes how we view "agency." We often think we need to predict the outcome of our actions to be effective. [cite_start]But the most efficient systems don't predict the outcome—they specify the goal and let the feedback loop handle the rest[cite: 39]. The "Prediction Illusion" suggests we aren't prophets simulating the future. We are controllers, surfing the present. We don't need to know what the wave will do in 10 seconds. We just need to keep the board steady right now. If you want to dig into the paper, it’s "The prediction illusion: perceptual control mechanisms that fool the observer" by Mansell, Gulrez, and Landman (2025). It’s a dense read, but it completely reframes the "Bayesian Brain" debate. One final thought: Next time you're doing something skilled—driving, typing, sports—notice the difference. Are you calculating what comes next? Or are you just managing the gap between *what you see* and *what you want*? You might find you're doing a lot less "thinking" than you assumed.

Happy to share the last preprint for my PhD project! Analyzing Formal Dynamic Models in Psychology: A Tutorial Using Graphical Tools with Dieta Wagenmakers, G. Sander van Doorn, @FredHasselman & @AnnaLichtwarck doi.org/10.31234/osf.i…

Self-organizing systems: what, how, and why? sco.lt/6nBUQa

Philosophers who use Gödel's incompleteness theorem to make claims about "fundamental limits of human knowledge" have made a category error. It's about axiomatization, not epistemology. 1/

New paper (lead by @CUI_Jingmeng) out now! bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11… A plea for more rigorous theoretical guidance in clinical Early WS studies: 1) must depart from a point attractor 2) EWSs appear before the critical transition 3) EWS variables align with system destabilization

It must be some kind of holliday, another paper (also lead by @CUI_Jingmeng) out now! This one is all bout the kind(s) of tipping we could be observing in clinical time series data! doi.org/10.1037/abn000…

My colleague has a post-doc position available on Adolescent Socio-Emotional Development & Well-Being (analysis of longitudinal and EMA data): ru.nl/en/working-at/…

Ik weet niet precies welke wanden @MichaWertheim gisteren heeft doorbroken in Nijmegen, maar ik werd vanochtend dus zwetend wakker op de tribune in cultuurhuis De Lindenberg.

Thanks for all the magnificently lucid confusion @DAVID_LYNCH !!

Mathematical modeling of social dynamics. The topic is exciting but also hard to publish in. Here's an opportunity to showcase some your work, mdpi.com/journal/entrop…. I'm sure there will be interesting papers in this issue.

Now published online in Qualitative Psychology!🎉 Our argument for #qualitative and #mixedmethods research as powerful means to validate the meaningfulness of idiographic assessment aimed at personalized care. psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi… Full text here 👇 researchgate.net/publication/38…