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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Thoughts Are an Emergent Property of Brain Activity. [working Memory]
From the YouTube page: Earl Miller runs the Miller Lab at MIT, where he studies how our brains carry out our executive functions, like working memory, attention... Read more
Posted on 30 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Teaching a Humanoid Robot to Move Around in the World is Difficult and...
From the YouTube page: Robert Playter is CEO of Boston Dynamics, a legendary robotics company that over 30 years has created some of the most elegant,... Read more
Posted on 29 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ellie Pavlick: The Mind of a Language Model {good Stuff!}
From the YouTube page: Ellie Pavlick runs her Language Understanding and Representation Lab at Brown University, where she studies lots of topics related to... Read more
Posted on 25 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Metaphysics and Large Language Models @ 3 Quarks Daily
I’ve got another article at 3 Quarks Daily: World, Mind, Learnability, Large Language Models, and the Metaphysical Structure of the Cosmos I take another crack... Read more
Posted on 25 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From the Poetics: Beginning, Middle, End
Posted on 25 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How Not To Destroy the World With AI - Stuart Russell
From the YouTube page: About Talk: It is reasonable to expect that artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities will eventually exceed those of humans across a... Read more
Posted on 24 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Michael Jordan: How AI Fails Us, and How Economics Can Help
Jordan argues that AI, which is mostly machine learning these days, remains dominated by the Dr. Frankenstein notion of creating an artificial human. He... Read more
Posted on 24 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Crazy/interesting Video About AGI and the Future [Goertzel]
I've been aware of Ben Goertzel since, I believe, the 1980s or 1990s, when I read and article he published in The Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, a... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Interesting Video About the Implications of Current AI (GPT) [Vervaeke]
I'm only thirty minutes into the this, but I'm posting it, though I've got doubts. The doubts? The language and the framing, including the fact that the guy... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Orthogonal Views in Hoboken
Posted on 23 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Are We Poisoning Ourselves with Microplastics?
That's what Mark O'Connel argues in a recent op-ed in the NYTimes, Our Way of Life Is Poisoning Us (April 20, 2023). The article opens: There is plastic in our... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Varieties of the Empire State Building
Posted on 22 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is AI Doom as an Attempt to Hijack Reality?
For some reason I can’t stop thinking about the phenomenon of belief in AI Doom. It’s not that I fear it, not at all. While AI certainly presents challenges,... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"The Fox Settlement Reeks of Justice Without Accountability"
David French, Did Fox News Just Pay for the Privilege of Continued Corruption? NYTimes, April 20 2023. The legal system can achieve justice when an aggrieved... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
キスメット [kisumetto] – Some Japanese Connections in the Internet Age
When I visited my sister over the most recent Christmas holiday, she gave me a book, Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan, by Alex Kerr. As the title... Read more
Posted on 19 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This is Crazy Talk About AI Risk
Is AI an Existential Threat? A Debate. | Robert Wright, Roko Mijic, and Alexander Campbell From the program notes: 0:00 How Roko and Alex wound up debating on... Read more
Posted on 19 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Plutocracy in America, Liminality in the World
Two opinion pieces in the NYTimes caught my attention. One is about the paradox of plutocracy in America the other is about the future. Read more
Posted on 18 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Five-year-old's Response to AI X-risk {dum De Dum-dum Doom!]
I give my highest epistemic admiration to five-year-olds who just laugh at me when I bring it up, and say “That’s silly!” They’re engaging in the way I... Read more
Posted on 18 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coffee, Bacon, Waffle, Condiments
Posted on 18 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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GPT-4 on Doomsday Cults
On April 17 I queried GPT-4 (March 23 version) about doomsday cults. It’s not that I have a particular interest in doomsday cults, but that I think that... Read more
Posted on 18 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
