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 ( 7628 )
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No, I Haven't Forgotten About the Blue-green Mug [Friday Fotos on Saturday]
Posted on 04 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Some Miscellaneous Thoughts on ChatGPT, Stories, and Mechanical Interpretability
I started playing with ChatGPT on December 1, 2023 and made my first post on December 3. Including this post, I’ve made 54 posts about ChatGPT. Read more
Posted on 04 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Weight of History [path Dependence]
me, when anyone asks about why US/English spelling, grammar, law, measurements, voting systems, etc, aren't updated from archaic 18th c (and earlier) forms... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can Physics Be Too Speculative? An Honest Opinion [Sabine Hossenfelder]
From the YouTube description: I was asked to write an article addressing the question whether some research in physics has become too speculative. Read more
Posted on 04 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Down by the Water
Posted on 03 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Literary Criticism is for Just What Exactly? On the Occasion of His Retirement, ...
Jennifer Schuessler, What Is Literary Criticism For?, NYTimes, Feb. 3, 2023. This is a consideration – not a review, exactly – of John Guillory's new book,... Read more
Posted on 03 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is This the Real Thing, Or is It Dr. Pepper? I Can't Tell from the Photo and I...
You know what they say, a sip is worth a 1000 words plus 3 photographs. Read more
Posted on 03 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Take a Break, It's Good for the Mind [naps!]
A.C. Shilton, How to Tell If Your Brain Needs a Break, NYTimes, Feb. 3, 2022. It’s 1:02 p.m. Do you know what your brain is doing? Read more
Posted on 03 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Proposal to Extend Manhattan into NY Harbor with 1790 Acres of Landfill
If Mayor Adams succeeds in expanding Manhattan with this proposal, he will single handedly disprove the notion of American stagnation also go down in... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT: Tantalizing Afterthoughts in Search of Story Trajectories [induction...
Several times During my undergraduate years I would finish a paper, turn it in, the then Wham! it hit me. That should have been my theme. Read more
Posted on 02 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's Time for Some Visual Jazz
Posted on 02 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Training Costs of Deep Learning Systems, Including the Human Mind
Note that that graph is training cost, NOT inference cost. Training is a single fixed cost used to create ChatGPT, running it in practice is much, much... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT, Stories, and a Surprising Case of In-context Learning
Some weeks ago David Chapman pointed me to some work that researchers at Anthropic have done on something called induction heads (where “induction” refers to a... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Just What We Need, More Fog
Posted on 01 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Empire State Building in the Background of Three Shots Taken from the Same...
Posted on 01 February 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Kimono Mom Philosophy @ 3QD
Here’s the link: A day in the life of Kimono Mom and Sutan https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-kimono-mom-and-sutan.html I just... Read more
Posted on 31 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Percent of Large-scale AI Results Coming from Academia
(From @jackclarkSF presentation to ~100 people in Congress yesterday.) pic.twitter.com/0RoG78nqwV— John Nay (@johnjnay) January 26, 2023I'm not sure what to mak... Read more
Posted on 31 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Shots of Hoboken
Posted on 30 January 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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ChatGPT About Jack, a Pumpkin, Aurora, Merlin, a Cat, Magic Mushrooms, and...
Here I start ChatGPT with a basic story and then have it elaborate on it in stages. Tell me a story about a hero. Once upon a time, there was a young man named... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Peter Thiel’s Second Thoughts About Funding Eliezer Yudkowsky and Friends
That’s my speculative and somewhat polemical framing of a middle passage in this video, which presents a talk Peter Thiel recently gave before the Oxford... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
