Aarhus University

Do sea lions fall silent when fish have something to say?

Abstract Coastal soundscapes are complex systems composed of many biological sounds, among which fish often play a central role. Marine mammal vocalizations can also contribute substantially, either when animals pass through an area or because their loud calls can be heard from o...

Logic as Reactance: Truth-Judgment as Substrate Mechanics, and Why 'Merely Statistical' Fails to Distinguish Minds from Models

Feed a fine-tuned language model an input that contradicts what it has just learned and its log-probability collapses at the first content-token, a sharp cliff-event rather than a smooth shading-off. This philosophy-of-AI position paper argues that judging something true or false...

Estimating the Expected Social Welfare and Cost of Random Serial Dictatorship

We consider the assignment problem, where n agents have to be matched to n items. Each agent has a preference order over the items. In the serial dictatorship (SD) mechanism the agents act in a particular order and pick their most preferred available item when it is their turn to...

A \({(2+\varepsilon )}\)-Approximation Algorithm for Metric \({k}\)-Median

Abstract. In the classical NP-hard (metric) [Formula: see text]-median problem, we are given a set of [Formula: see text] clients and centers with metric distances between them, along with an integer parameter [Formula: see text]. The objective is to select a subset of [Formula:...

An Effort Made for Whom? Exploring Ministers’ Public Approval and Name Recognition in Relation to Their Media Activity

In many democracies, cabinet ministers find themselves in a difficult situation, juggling a demanding administrative job with political responsibilities and the need to communicate and campaign to secure reelection. With the rise of social media, this balance is becoming increasi...

Forward-modelling in bounded race substrates: agency, self-modelling, and theory of mind as substrate-mechanical phenomena

A theoretical paper defending three substrate-mechanical claims: self-modelling, theory of mind, and free will as structural consequences of forward-modelling under bounded race-architecture. Abstract. Three threads of cognitive science, behavioural economics, and philosophy of m...

Forward-modelling in bounded race substrates: agency, self-modelling, and theory of mind as substrate-mechanical phenomena

A theoretical paper defending three substrate-mechanical claims: self-modelling, theory of mind, and free will as structural consequences of forward-modelling under bounded race-architecture. Abstract. Three threads of cognitive science, behavioural economics, and philosophy of m...

Substrates Encode Experience, Not Information: An Encoding-through-Loading Framework with Cross-Substrate Tests in Language Models

Why does the same instructional support that helps a novice harm an expert? The expertise reversal effect is well established in instructional psychology but lacks a process-level mechanism. This paper proposes a recursive strategy-choice race account and tests it in language mod...

Two Candidate Readouts of a Proposed Common Race: Effort-Value Attribution and Commit-Position as Substrate Signatures of Race-Architecture

Six effort-value biases — the IKEA effect, the endowment effect, the sunk-cost fallacy, the generation effect, effort justification, and the effort heuristic — and the widening of a language model’s commit-position under instruction-tuning are proposed here as two readouts of one...

A Field-Theoretic Taxonomy of Emotions

Fear is easy to put into words; saudade is not. This paper proposes that emotions are not fixed categories but paths through a few moving parts of one system: six moving parts that generate about 45 distinct feelings, each with its own substrate-path. Abstract. Existing emotion-t...

A Field-Theoretic Taxonomy of Emotions

Fear is easy to put into words; saudade is not. This paper proposes that emotions are not fixed categories but paths through a few moving parts of one system: six moving parts that generate about 45 distinct feelings, each with its own substrate-path. Abstract. Existing emotion-t...

The Lost Futures of Gender Diversity in STEM: Developing a diffractive methodology to study acts of disappearance

Gender segregation in STEM labour markets remains a problem despite the immense attention to the issue in recent years. This article studies diversity initiatives aiming to amend the lack of women in STEM by helping girls and young women to develop STEM career aspirations. Inspir...

The Physics of Learning: How Race-Architecture Constraints Explain What We Know About Teaching, Communication, and Understanding

Three of learning science's most robust traditions, cognitive load theory, desirable difficulties, and psychological safety, are each empirically excellent and mechanically thin. This paper argues they are local consequences of one substrate-universal constraint, bounded-capacity...

Patient preferences for the multidisciplinary management of endometriosis and adenomyosis: a mixed-methods survey-based study

Background: Endometriosis and adenomyosis are common, debilitating conditions frequently associated with delayed diagnosis and fragmented care-based pathways. In Denmark, two highly specialized centres provide advanced endometriosis treatment. However, it remains unclear whether...

Optimal, Not Perfect: A Test-Bed Architecture for Rule-Governed, Automatically-Auditable AI Advisory Systems, with Counselling as the Leading Case

Can two separate evidence streams be composed into a rule-governed AI advisory system — with counselling as the leading case — that is, on specifiable axes, more consistent and more verifiable than either stream alone could specify? The question is narrower than whether a machine...

Optimal, Not Perfect: A Test-Bed Architecture for Rule-Governed, Automatically-Auditable AI Advisory Systems, with Counselling as the Leading Case

Can two separate evidence streams be composed into a rule-governed AI advisory system — with counselling as the leading case — that is, on specifiable axes, more consistent and more verifiable than either stream alone could specify? The question is narrower than whether a machine...

Governance Irony: Why Information-Heavy Compliance Directives Mechanically Fail in Large Language Models

Pour the complete rule-set into a system “to be covered” and adherence can collapse: with the relevant rule buried among competing directives, one language model’s compliance fell from 100% to 0% (another from 100% to 60–88%), while a short positive recipe held near 100% — length...

Observers exhibit greater caution and faster evidence accumulation when identifying joint versus individual actions

Coordination requires anticipating and adapting to others' actions in real time. While research has shown that observers predict observed solo actions, little is known about how predictive processes change when observing joint actions. We tested whether, for joint actions, observ...

Persistent influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on Late Holocene hydroclimate in southwestern Greenland

Abstract Understanding how global climate forcing shapes regional hydroclimate on decadal to millennial timescales is critical for predicting the response of continental ice sheets to future warming. Because instrumental observations capture only a short interval, longer-term per...

Exploring teacher retention in Denmark as an entangled phenomenon: unpacking variations within and across municipalities

Drawing on agential realism and critical cultural geography, this article sets out to explore teacher retention in Denmark as an entangled phenomenon with particular focus on unpacking variations in retention rates within and across municipalities and on gaining insights into tem...