[I’ve always really liked Slime Mold Time Mold and their brand of Extremely Online also meshes with the sort of fun creativity I quite like and that has often been found in the better sort of systems | complexity | cybernetics spaces – a pseudonymous collective blog written by ’20 mice in a trenchcoat’ taking ideas seriously.
Their ‘new paradigm’ for psychology research is… a cybernetic paradigm! Though I can’t help feeling that ‘entities and rules’ is more of a transitional object paradigm myself…]
CLEARER THINKING
with Spencer Greenberg
the podcast about ideas that matter
Episode 281: A new paradigm for psychology research (with Slime Mold Time Mold)
00:00:00 / 01:27:01
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September 25, 2025View transcript →
What changes when psychology stops naming traits and starts naming parts – can “entities and rules” turn fuzzy labels into testable mechanisms? If the mind is a web of governors with set points, what exactly is being controlled – and how do error signals become feelings? Are hunger, fear, and status-seeking all negative-feedback problems, and where do outliers like anger or awe fit? What would count as disconfirming evidence for a cybernetic view – useful constraint or unfalsifiable epicycle? Could a “parliament of drives” explain why identical situations yield different choices? And how would we measure the votes? Do abstractions like the Big Five help, or do they hide the machine under the hood? How many rules do we need before prediction beats metaphor? And could a new paradigm help make psychology a more mature and cumulative science?
SLIME MOLD TIME MOLD is a mad science hive mind with a blog. If you believe the rumors, it’s run by 20 rats in a trenchcoat. You can reach them at slimemoldtimemold@gmail.com, follow them on twitter at @mold_time, and read their blog at slimemoldtimemold.com
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