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
-
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 ( 4880 )
-
Ramble: Lazy Fridays, Peter Gärdenfors, RNA Primer, Arithmetic, About These...
It’s 87˚ in Hoboken today, and I’m feeling lazy. Went out this morning and took 150+ photos. It was a foggy morning, which always makes for some interestin... Read more
Posted on 21 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Exterior Shots of the Malibu Diner
August 23, 2010 November 16, 2010 – 30th Anniversary September 7, 2014 June 14, 2015 August 5, 2020 – Outdoor eating in the days of Covid Read more
Posted on 20 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Revelations About Kim Kardashian's Butt
Blair Sobol, No holds Barred: Butts, Boobs, and Billions, New York Social Diary, May 19, 2022. At the same time, Kim Kardashian finally admitted that the... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Meaning and Semantics, Relationality and Adhesion
For some time now I’ve been making a distinction between meaning and semantics, where I use meaning as a function of intention, in the more-or-less standard... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Raising Sunken Boats from Weehawken Cove
Posted on 19 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
Of Diet Coke, Elon Musk, and Gaming Programmers [Talent Search!]
Conversations with Tyler: Daniel Gross and Tyler Talk Talent (Ep. 150): COWEN: Let’s start with a simple question. Talk us through what is a good interview... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Good Tweet Stream on Modeling Vision in Machines and Humans
The main evidence in support of this claim is that DNNs provide the best predictions on a set of behavioral and neural benchmark datasets. Read more
Posted on 18 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hot Pink, Hot! Hot! Hot!
Posted on 18 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
Where We Are Now [no Such Thing as AGI]?
(1) the research community is making *some* progress towards HLAI(2) scaling up helps. It's necessary but not sufficient, because.... Read more
Posted on 18 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Being in Space for a Long Time Brings About Changes in the Brain
Peter Rogers, How long-term space missions change the brain, Big Think, May 15, 2022. According to the 2015 NASA report, astronauts who spent long periods in... Read more
Posted on 17 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dendritic Predictive Coding: A Theory of Cortical Computation with Spiking...
To achieve this, we show up the close connection between models of hierarchical predictive coding, and models of efficient spiking with balanced membrane... Read more
Posted on 17 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Views of the Top
Posted on 17 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
You Can't Have Too Many Irises
Posted on 17 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
Is GPT-3 a Structuralist? A Brave New World in Which Language Exists Beyond the...
Tobias Rees, Non-Human Words: On GPT-3 as a Philosophical Laboratory, Dædalus, Spring 2020. In [Saussure's] words, “language is a system of signs that... Read more
Posted on 16 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Large Language Models Generate Usable Plans When Aided by a Symbolic Planner
People are flexible, creative thinkers, and we express a lot of those thoughts -- plans, explanations, stories -- in language. So, how much of thinking can be... Read more
Posted on 16 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Photoshop at Night [across the Hudson River]
Posted on 16 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
You CAN Have Intelligent Conversations on Twitter
You need to build a community, which isn’t hard, and you need to be civil. You don’t have to participate in the craziness. Sure, you can’t avoid it, some will... Read more
Posted on 16 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Learning to Control a Computer with Your Mind
Ferris Jabr, The Man Who Controls Computers With His Mind, The NYTimes Magazine, May 13, 2022. Dennis DeGray is paralyzed from the neck down. Read more
Posted on 15 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sunday's a Good Time for Irises, Too
Posted on 15 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
Symbols and Nets: Debriefing
It’s been several days since I’d uploaded my most recent run on “Kubla Khan” to the web: Symbols and Nets: Calculating Meaning in “Kubla Khan.” It feels like I’... Read more
Posted on 15 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY