Bbenzon
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 6402 )
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Some Irises for a Saturday Morning
Posted on 15 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain Understands Tools as Extensions of the Body [Merleau-Ponty, Right?]
If you're using a tool you're familiar with, and using the tool properly (i.e. not grabbing a fork by the prongs), your brain will only say"hey, you're using... Read more
Posted on 15 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Making Sense of Raw Sensory Input
Work by @LittleBimble with @pfau, @pushmeet, Matko Bosnjak, Lars Buesing, Kevin Ellis, and Marek Sergot. (2/)— DeepMind (@DeepMind) May 14, 2021 The ability to... Read more
Posted on 15 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Dreaming a Process That Keeps Us Open to New Experience?
dreams are there to keep you from becoming too fitted to the model of the world https://t.co/C4GIMgCWjN— v (@pyroboyee) May 14, 2021 From the article: Hoel got... Read more
Posted on 14 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
American Art and Thought During the Cold War
George Scilabba, Free and Worldly, The Baffler, May 2021, reviewing Louis Menand, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. Read more
Posted on 14 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: A Reuben at the Malibu, with Purple Fries [Hallucinated City]
Posted on 14 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Geoffrey Hinton Says Deep Learning Will Do Everything. I’m Not Sure What He...
Late last year Geoffrey Hinton had an interview with Karen Hao [1] in which he said “I do believe deep learning is going to be able to do everything,” with the... Read more
Posted on 14 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Give Nina Money ($$$$) So She Can Create More MysticSymbolic AWESOMENESS!...
MysticSymbolic is my current project, and I’m raising money to (hopefully) get my genius collaborator @toolness enough time away from his day job to make it muc... Read more
Posted on 14 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Street Irises [11th Street Flower Beds, Hoboken, NJ]
Posted on 13 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
UK Rainfall Data Digitized by Volunteers [Citizen Science]
Thanks to @metoffice archives, these sheets were scanned made openly available, but how could the observations be extracted?The answer? Ask for help:... Read more
Posted on 13 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain is Like a...
Google books survey: nouns following the phrase ‘the brain is like a’Palimpsest (1869)Magnetic compass (1877)Laboratory (1883)Church organ (1906)Receiving set... Read more
Posted on 13 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Word Illusion
This is something I’ve been thinking about for awhile. What you’re looking at as you’re reading this is a string of words, right? Well, yes, but if you want to... Read more
Posted on 12 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Authentic High Tech Computer Blues
I was rummaging around on my hard-drive when I spotted and old crumpled up piece of paper over there in the corner. For some reason it triggered a memory.... Read more
Posted on 12 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Animal Culture, a Review
Andrew Whiten, The Psychological Reach of Culture in Animals’ Lives, Current Directions in Psychological Science, April 27, 2021, https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 11 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Mathematical Theory of Semantic Development in Deep Neural Networks
Andrew M. Saxea, James L. McClelland, and Surya Gangulic, A mathematical theory of semantic development in deep neural networks. PNAS, June 4, 2019, Vol. 116,... Read more
Posted on 11 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Graph Neural Networks
is one of the most interesting topics in machine learning.Two exceptional recent resources to learn about GNNs: 📘 Geometric Deep Learning - https://t. Read more
Posted on 11 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Improving Prediction Accuracy and Interpretability of Deep Neural Netowrk Models
SurvNet: A Backward Procedure for Neural Networks. #BigData #Analytics #DataScience #AI #MachineLearning #IoT #IIoT #Python #RStats #TensorFlow #Java #JavaScrip... Read more
Posted on 11 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Curious About Group Theory? Visual is the Way to Go
After hearing my podcast with Amie Wilkinson, someone asked me about books they could use to teach themselves group theory or abstract algebra. Read more
Posted on 10 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blue Green Yellow Orange Red
Posted on 10 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Paganini Caprice No. 24 Performed on Various Instruments [what a Glorious...
It’s not something I set out to investigate, Caprice No. 24 for violin by Niccolò Paganini. Paganini was an Italian violinist whose life straddled the... Read more
Posted on 10 May 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY