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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What Nuts Roasting Over What Fire?
“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” became a massive hit for Nat King Cole in 1946. It was composed by Bob Wells and Mel Tormé: According to Tormé, the song wa... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lunch at Mickey D's
Posted on 17 December 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Margaret Masterman, Pioneering Computational Linguist [+ Haiku]
Margaret Masterman was one of the pioneers of computational linguistics, though it was called machine translation when she first worked in the field. She had... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Views of a Ceramic Cup
Posted on 16 December 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Abstract Concepts and Metalingual Definition: Does ChatGPT Understand Justice an...
Our conceptual worlds are filled with abstract concepts, such as truth, love, beauty, and justice. Such concepts cannot be defined in physical terms. You can’t... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Christmas Magic
Posted on 15 December 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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We’ve Stepped Over the Threshold into the Fourth Arena, but Don’t Recognize It
First there was the world of inanimate matter, the First Arena. Life arose from that, the Second Arena. Only 100s of thousands of years ago humans evolved from... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hanging There
Posted on 14 December 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Does AI Remain in the Grip of Chess-thinking?
I don’t know. These are some thoughts I found in notes I made about two years ago. * * * * * Much of the AI world remains captive to its original concerns and... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fusion, We Have Achieved Ignition! But Why So Long, and When Will It Be...
Kenneth Chang, Scientists Achieve Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough With Blast of 192 Lasers, NYTimes, Dec. 13, 2022. “This is such a wonderful example of a... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Current State of AI: ChatGPT and Beyond [Ramble]
I’ve been spending A LOT of time with ChatGPT; my MSWord doc containing a record of that interaction is currently 116 pages and 38K words long. I don’t know... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Language Models and Future Progress in Biology
Sam Rodriques, Why is progress in biology so slow? He's particularly interested in research leading to therapeutic uses. Three topics: Speed (the slow pace of... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Personal Robot Companion, a Quick Take [ramble]
These ideas reflect the intersection of two thought streams: 1) the desire for an operating system that keeps my computer updated, automatically handles all... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fabric
Posted on 12 December 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Let’s Go Meta: Grammatical Knowledge and Self-referential Sentences [ChatGPT]
Language is a medium that humans use for sharing thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. In order to do so it has to be embedded in some physical medium, whether... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Robots, Rice, and Kami in Japan [animism]
Here’s a passage about industrial robots in Japan from Frederik L. Schodt, Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia (JAI. Read more
Posted on 11 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Longwood Gardens, December 2021
Posted on 11 December 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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ChatGPT Goes Through a Wormhole Hole in Our Shandyesque Universe [virtual Wacky...
Sometime last week I decided to see if I could provoke ChatGPT to produce something in the style of Tristram Shandy. Little did I know... Let’s have some fun.... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
High Level Discourse Structure in ChatGPT: Part 2 [Quasi-symbolic?]
In my previous post I examined a simple pattern of alternation in ChatGPT’s text output, Of pumpkins, the Falcon Heavy, and Groucho Marx. I’ve decided to... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
He’s Baack! And He Wants Your Eyes and Ears, This Trump Guy.
And he wants them more than your money, though he'll take that too. Thank you very much. From Katherine Miller, No One Knows What to Do About Trump’s 2024... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
