The Power of Empirical Data

Why do we, humans, communicate? And how? And isn’t that a problem that to study communication we have to… communicate?

Did you ever ask yourself that? Because J.P. de Ruiter did — and does everyday. But he’s got good reasons: JP is a cognitive scientist whose primary research focus is on the cognitive foundations of human communication. He aims to improve our understanding of how humans and artificial agents use language, gesture and other types of signals to effectively communicate with each other.

Currently he has one of the two Bridge Professorship at Tufts University, and has been appointed in both the Computer Science and Psychology departments.

In this episode, we’ll look at why Bayes is helpful in dialogue research, what the future of the field looks like to JP, and how he uses PyMC in his own teaching.

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, Adam Bartonicek, William Benton, Alan O'Donnell, Mark Ormsby, James Ahloy, Robin Taylor, Thomas Wiecki, Chad Scherrer, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Elea McDonnell Feit, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Joshua Duncan, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, George Ho, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Raul Maldonado, Marcin Elantkowski, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin, Philippe Labonde, Matthew McAnear, Michael Hankin, Cameron Smith, Luis Iberico, Tomáš Frýda, Ryan Wesslen, Andreas Netti, Riley King, Aaron Jones, Yoshiyuki Hamajima, Sven De Maeyer, Michael DeCrescenzo, Fergal M, Mason Yahr, Naoya Kanai, Steven Rowland and Aubrey Clayton.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Links from the show:

• JP’s page: https://sites.tufts.edu/hilab/people/
• Projecting the End of a Speaker's Turn – A Cognitive Cornerstone of Conversation: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236787756_Projecting_the_End_of_a_Speaker's_Turn_A_Cognitive_Cornerstone_of_Conversation
• Cognitive and social delays in the initiation of conversational repair: https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/dad/article/view/11388
• Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking: http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/HC/HC_Readings/Clark_Fox.pdf
• Status of Frustrator as an Inhibitor of Horn-Honking Responses: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1968.9933615
• A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation: https://www.jstor.org/stable/412243
• Richard McElreath, Science Before Statistics – Intro to Causal Inference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNPYUVmY3NM
• The Prosecutor's fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy
• The Monty Hall problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
• LBS #50, Ta(l)king Risks & Embracing Uncertainty, with David Spiegelhalter: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/50-talking-risks-embracing-uncertainty-david-spiegelhalter
• LBS #51, Bernoulli’s Fallacy & the Crisis of Modern Science, with Aubrey Clayton: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/51-bernoullis-fallacy-crisis-modern-science-aubrey-clayton
• PyMC port of Lee and Wagenmakers' Bayesian Cognitive Modeling: https://github.com/pymc-devs/pymc-resources/tree/main/BCM
• ArviZ documentation: https://arviz-devs.github.io/arviz/