Bbenzon
Description
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 ( 7626 )
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Do AI Companies Have the Right to Harvest Anything Anyone Uploads to the Web...
Sheera Frenkel and Stuart A. Thompson, ‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I., NYTimes, July 15, 2023. From the article: Ms.... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Breathing in Waves: Understanding Respiratory-brain Coupling as a Gradient of...
đĽđ˛đđ˝đśđżđ... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Neural Basis of Color Perception
As an aspiring brain scientist, my project was to discover the brain implementation of Opponent Colors Theory, the accepted explanation of color appearance. Read more
Posted on 09 July 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rethinking Covid: A COVID Dissenter Speaks Out
Glenn Loury Jay Bhattacharya | The Glenn Show 0:00 The problem with scientific consensus 6:36 Why Jay and his colleagues were branded “fringe... Read more
Posted on 07 July 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Insect Conscsiousness
In “What insects can tell us about the origins of consciousness”, the authors argued that even insects (like the fruit fly), has a capacity for subjective... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fruit-fly Connectome
Not only have they mapped out the fruit fly brain, but they actually boot it up in a computer and made it “eat” and “groom” đ¤Ż... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Network Structure Shapes Decision-making for Bio-inspired Computing
Schirner, M., Deco, G. Ritter, P. Learning how network structure shapes decision-making for bio-inspired computing. Nat Commun 14, 2963 (2023).... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neural Networks and the Chomsky Hierarchy
Grégoire Delétang, Anian Ruoss, Jordi Grau-Moya, Tim Genewein, Li Kevin Wenliang, Elliot Catt, Chris Cundy, Marcus Hutter, Shane Legg, Joel Veness, Pedro A.... Read more
Posted on 03 June 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The New World Disorder | Robert Wright & Thomas Friedman
1:31 China’s role in Saudi-Iran rapprochement 7:10 The legacy of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal 12:25 Does Israel have a Palestine plan? Read more
Posted on 03 June 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why AI Can't Be Conscious
The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of biologyWe raise three arguments (neural complexity, Umwelt 'skin in the game') to suggest... Read more
Posted on 02 June 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Processes Mediated by Consciousness
I don't believe these are functions of consciousness, but rather functions of cognition that one can be conscious of.I'm not sure if consciousness can even be... Read more
Posted on 30 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bullet Train [Media Notes 92] – Whitewashing
Bullet Train is a 2022 action comedy starring Brad Pitt and a supporting ensemble. Pitt plays a hitman who takes a job to steal a briefcase full of cash that... Read more
Posted on 28 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neil Gershenfeld: Self-Replicating Robots and the Future of Fabrication
0:00 - Introduction 1:29 - What Turing got wrong 6:53 - MIT Center for Bits and Atoms 20:00 - Digital logic 26:36 - Self-assembling robots 37:04 - Digital... Read more
Posted on 28 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI Decisions for This Year
Some large-scale decisions we can make about #AI in 2023:https://t.co/Kp4UcGUio5 pic.twitter.com/HAyNlB6Fxa— Bryan Alexander (@BryanAlexander) May 23, Read more
Posted on 23 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Question and Answer [flowers]
Posted on 21 May 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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A Phylogenetic Approach to the Neural Basis of Behavior
It provides a much better way to think about all this than simplistic shorthand notions like the "lizard brain" pic.twitter.com/ixVspsdCHZ— Kevin Mitchell... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Medieval Nature of Arguments About AGI, Etc.
Anselm in particular: 1: God, by definition, is the greatest thing imaginable (OK)2: Something that exists is greater than something that does not (sounds... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Large Language Models Recall Factual Associations
We prompt GPT-{2|J} with subject-relation queries (“Beats Music is owned by”) from CounterFact (@mengk20 @davidbau) and intervene on attention edges (similar... Read more
Posted on 03 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Looking out the Windows Orf My Breakfast Joint
Posted on 01 May 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Using an LLM to Decode fMRI Images of Continuous Speech
Oliver Whang, "A.I. Is Getting Better at Mind-Reading," NYTimes, May 1, 2023. The study centered on three participants, who came to Dr. Read more
Posted on 01 May 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
