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 ( 6721 )
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In the Beginning: OpenAI Email Archives (from Musk v. Altman)
Habryka over at LessWrong: As part of the court case between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, a substantial number of emails between Elon, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever,... Read more
Posted on 17 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hossenfelder on Stagnation: “Science is in Trouble and It Worries Me”
Show notes: Innovation is slowing, research productivity is declining, scientific work is becoming more [less] disruptive. In this video I summarize what we kno... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rez Ball: Community, Alcoholism, and Basketball [Media Notes 141]
A week or three ago I watched Rez Ball streaming on Netflix. It’s about basketball on the Navajo reservation (the rez), where basketball is close to a civic... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yudkowsky + Wolfram on AI Risk [Machine Learning Street Talk]
This is a long, rambling, conversation (4 hours), so I have a hard time recommending the whole thing. I’d say that Wolfram and Yudkowsky do manage to find one... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tom Dietrich on the Current Evolution of AI
Posted in a Substack conversation here: An alternative view of what is happening is that we have been passing through three different phases of LLM-based... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Shakespeare to Trump @3QD
My latest post at 3 Quarks Daily: Shakespeare, the Starry Welkin, and Donald Trump. I’m playing around with the idea that, while we (whoever “we” are) regard... Read more
Posted on 07 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This Election is Different
Ezra Klein, There’s Something Very Different About Harris vs. Trump, NYTimes, Nov. 3, 2024. To Democrats, the institutions that govern American life, though... Read more
Posted on 03 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Life Inside a Japanese Prison
Witness 91.7 K subscribers What's Life Like Inside A Japanese Prison? | Witness | HD Japan Jail Crime Documentary From the YouTube page: We gained... Read more
Posted on 02 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Girardian Note About Spartacus [Media Notes 140]
I saw Spartacus when it came out in 1960. The movie led me to the book, which I read quickly. I believe I stayed up reading it most of a night, but I don’t... Read more
Posted on 01 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A.I. in Hollywood, Wait and See
Devin Gordon, What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood? NYTimes Magazine, Nov. 1, 2024. From the middle of the article: Over several months of talking to... Read more
Posted on 01 November 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
China Viewed from China | Robert Wright & Peter Hessler [US More Militaristic...
Timestamps: 0:00 Peter’s new book, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education 3:00 Have Chinese people become less hostile to America? 12:48 What Americans get wrong... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Watching Film Increases Empathic Understanding of Formerly Incarcerated People
Rebecca Keegan, Can Watching Movies Rewire Your Brain? Hollywood Reporter, October 23, 2024. Five years later, people are climbing into an MRI machine in the... Read more
Posted on 28 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Prospects for Using LLMs in Content Moderation for Social Media
From the YouTube page: Wherein I am joined by the estimable Dave Willner, who helped build the content moderation system at Meta, who talks me through how and... Read more
Posted on 28 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hossenfelder: Wolfram's Research Program Seems Healthy (after All). Perhaps It...
From the webpage: Mathematician and Computer Scientist Stephen Wolfram wants to do no less than revolutionizing physics. He wants to do it with computer code... Read more
Posted on 26 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Douthat: Real AI is Not Like the AI of the Movies [bewitched by Language]
Ross Douthat, Our Robot Stories Haven’t Prepared Us for A.I., NYTimes, Oct. 26, 2024. Data the android experiences existential angst because he is obviously a... Read more
Posted on 26 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Saudi Arabia's Plans 15 Soccer Stadiums for the 2034 World Cup
11 stadiums are slated to be built from scratch while 4 existing stadiums will be renovated. 0:00 Kick-off 1:05 King Salman International Stadium 1:48 King... Read more
Posted on 24 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Assembly Theory and the Nature and Origins of Life [Star Talk]
From the webpage: What is life? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice tackle assembly theory, artificial life, and the origin of lifeforms in the universe... Read more
Posted on 23 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stray Thoughts About Girard: Mimesis, Being, Parsons, Scapegoating +
Being Girard’s interest in mimesis goes beyond the obvious fact of imitation. It’s not simply that we imitate others, but that mimesis is about Being, a desire... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Shakespeare on the Wane? What Does That Portend?
Drew Lichtenberg, Who’s Afraid of William Shakespeare? NYTimes, Oct. 21, 2024. How real is this Shakespeare shrinkage? American Theatre magazine, which... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Hath Woke Wrought?
Tyler Cowen interviews Musa al-Gharbi, author of We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite. AL-GHARBI: I have published an essay... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY