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 ( 6413 )
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How is an LLM Like a Mechanical Clock?
Let's think about LLMs a little more here, but first let's think about mechanical clocks.A clock movement is an arrangement of gears and springs and levers... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Let's Play in the Park!
Posted on 26 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Take Your Kids to Work Day – to Mt. Kenya [Don't Punish Women Scientists...
Toby Kiers, A Simple Act of Defiance Can Improve Science for Women, NYTimes, April 26, 2024. sci They don’t tell you beforehand that it will be a choice... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Industrial Revolution Started Earlier Than Conventional Wisdom Would Have...
Fred Lewsey, ‘Nation of makers’: Britain industrialised over a century earlier than history books claim, University of Cambridge, 5 April, 2024. Read more
Posted on 25 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
POST BOP JAZZ STYLES (Was 1959 the Most Important Year?)
From the YouTube page:This video introduces a series of episodes focusing on the various styles of jazz that emerged in the 1950s following the bebop era. Read more
Posted on 25 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Construction in the Cove
Posted on 25 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Katja Grace: The First Future and the Best Future [opportunity Costs]
The post:It seems to me worth trying to slow down AI development to steer successfully around the shoals of extinction and out to utopia. Read more
Posted on 25 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
At Last! ChatGPT Does, Shall We Say, Interesting Imitations of “Kubla Khan”
As you may know, I have a long-term interest in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and have written a lot of posts about it. If you scan through those posts you’ll find... Read more
Posted on 24 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pink! Pink! Pink! [Sakura]
Posted on 24 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Basketball GOAT: Jordan Or James?
I've thinking about GOATs – Greatest Of All Time – in response to Tyler Cowen's book, GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter? Read more
Posted on 24 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Irises & ChatGPT@3QD
I’ve posted a new article at 3 Quarks Daily: The Irises Are Blooming Early This Year Yes, it IS about irises, and contains photos of irises, but it manages to... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yellow Tulips, WAM!
Posted on 23 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Current Perspectives on Abstract Concepts and Future Research Directions
Banks, B., Borghi, A. M., Fargier, R., Fini, C., Jonauskaite, D., Mazzuca, C., Montalti, M., Villani, C., Woodin, G. (2023). Consensus Paper: Current... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sex and the City Redux
Claire Moses, As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty, NYTimes, April 13, 2024. Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Innovation Through Prompting: Democratizing Educational Technology
Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick, Instructors as Innovators: A future-focused approach to new AI learning opportunities, with prompts, Social Science Research... Read more
Posted on 22 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Three Contrasting Structures: Hoboken Manhattan Hoboken
Posted on 22 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lex Fridman Talks with Ted Gibson About Language, LLMs, and Other Things [i.e....
This is a long podcast and I’ve not listened to all of it. I’m excerpting part of the conversation – which I’ve taken from this transcript – which speak to two... Read more
Posted on 22 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blossoms
Posted on 21 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emotion Recollected in Tranquility [affective Technology]
I originally published this in The Valve in May of 2009, where it is followed by an interesting conversation. Keith Oatley elaborated at OnFiction, citing... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Literature and Emotion [affective Technology]
I'd originally posted this back in 2011, but I'm bumping it to the top 1) on general principle, and 2) because it's relevant to some of my current thinking abou... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY