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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A Strange and Interesting Podcast on AI, AI Doom, and the Future
I've seen one prior episode of this podcast, Bankless, and episode in which Eliezer Yudkowsky scared the daylights out of the hosts when he laid out his standar... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Charlie Wilson’s War [Media Notes 91] Looking for the Irony?
I’m pretty sure that I saw Charlie Wilson’s War when it came out in 2007. But I have no idea what I thought about it. I still don’t, though I watched it the... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Where's It From? Where's It Go?
Posted on 17 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Competition Between Google and Microsoft in Search
I’ve got doubts about competition between Google and Microsoft on artificial intelligence. Setting aside my doubts about competition as a universal economic... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More on the Streets Where I Live [flowers]
Posted on 16 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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GPT-4 Considers the Cartesian Cogito, Its Implications for LLMs, and the Ethnica...
On April 16 I queried GPT-4 (March 23 version) on Descartes and related matters. I began by asking it the meaning of “cogito, ergo sum.” Then I asked it about... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Revisiting the Concept of the ‘Neolithic Founder Crops’ in Southwest Asia
What did the first farmers actually farm? Eight 'founder crops'—emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, lentil, pea, chickpea, bitter vetch, and flax—have long... Read more
Posted on 15 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT as CCP Apparatchik [& Other Remarks About ChatGPT and China]
Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes has just been to Beijing. Among other things he reports: Indeed, a story making the rounds in Beijing is that many Chinese have... Read more
Posted on 15 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Insanity That is the World of Neural Nets These Days {$$$$$}
Top NN (neural net) engineers are getting paid $5-20M annual compensation packages. I've now heard this from 4 different extremely reputable sources but I... Read more
Posted on 14 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Life Cycle of a Waffle
Posted on 14 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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LLMs and Hallucination, Like White on Rice?
It’s a matter of history, I suppose. We know that LLMs confabulate. They make stuff up. That’s what’s known as hallucination. Here’s the introductory section... Read more
Posted on 14 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blossoms
Posted on 13 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Academic Peer Review Has Been a Failure
That’s the substance of a pair of articles by Adam Mastroianni at Experimental History. From the first article, The Rise and Fall of Peer Review, December 13,... Read more
Posted on 13 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Turning Point, Oblique Views
Posted on 13 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Was Homer a Stochastic Parrot? Meaning in Literary Texts and LLMs
The phrase “stochastic parrot” was coined, I believe, by Emily Bender, a computational linguist and one of the coauthors of the paper, On the Dangers of... Read more
Posted on 13 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More Flowers {I Couldn't Resist}
Posted on 12 April 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Constructing ‘Agent’ AIs, Natural Language Computers
Caveat: This is mostly a note to myself, but you’re welcome to look over my shoulder. Let’s start with a tweet stream. Here’s the first two tweets: Ok so what... Read more
Posted on 12 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
Here's an example of the multi-AI simulation at work. You can watch the whole thing here, and switch between AI characters by clicking on them:... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Comments on “intelligence” for Jinzo Ninge (Japanese for “artificial...
Back in mid-March Scott Aaronson made a post entitled: On overexcitable children. The post begins: Wilbur and Orville are circumnavigating the Ohio cornfield... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hot Ones [Media Notes 90] {We Are One in Wings.}
A recent article by Maya Salam in The New York Times alerted me to the show: “Hot Ones” — a breakthrough pop-culture phenomenon in which stars eat 10... Read more
Posted on 11 April 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
