Hard to say. I linked to a couple in what I wrote, but you’re right there’s not enough direct references.
I read science publications as an obsessive hobby. If I had to put a finger on it, it’s a summary of my understanding of Frans de Waal, Robert Sapolsky, and Temple Grandin’s collective works, with a strong bias on studies done on rhesus macaques (mostly from stuff coming out of duke university because they have a strong vision/attention testing lab). My main focus is on collective forms of cognition and emergent behavior, so I indirectly ended up reading all the same things that Ed yong’s looking at in “I Contain Multitudes”. I spidered out from those along with a lot of stuff rooted in trying to understand what might an evolutionary source of cognitive biases, and attention / motivation theories (specifically within the context of Iain Couzin’s research on swarm behavior in monkey foraging patterns), and trying to incorporate Daniel Dennett’s views on cognition. I also have a long-standing interest in game theory and sociobiology (E.o Wilson) and a fascination of economic theory.
I’ve been working on my writing skills and have been collecting the stuff I’ve shared on twitter together to try and make a more cohesive claim. Until then: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
