Bbenzon
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 ( 6433 )
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Friday Fotos: After 13 Years Jersey City Has Its Own Poured Concrete Skate...
Shredding the bowl. Photographing the SK8er. The park measures 12,000 square feet. The bowl at the Berry Lane SK8 park. Street style layout at the Berry Lane SK... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hudson's "common Glad Impulse"
This dance deserves to go viral. pic.twitter.com/8thlvdH2Sq — Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) August 7, 2020 From W. H. Hudson, The Naturalist in La Plata, D. Appleton an... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Street Art in the NYTimes – "these Works Point Beyond the Self"
Seph Rodney, New York’s Sidewalk Prophets Are Heirs of the Lascaux Cave Artisans, NYTimes,Aug. 6, 2020. Those early artisans [Lascaux, France] drew these... Read more
Posted on 06 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gonna' Fly Now [one of Those Old Time Good Ones, as Pops Used to Say]
FDR in Philadelphia DIY in Jersey City, no longer there DIY in Jersey City, no longer there Read more
Posted on 06 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GPT-3: Waterloo Or Rubicon? Here Be Dragons
I've published a new working paper. Title above, download links, abstract, table of contents, and introduction below. Download at: academia:... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once More into the Chinese Room
I’ve been crashing on my GPT-3 working paper and I had a new thought about Searle’s infamous Chinese room [1]. Yet if you would believe John Searle, no matter... Read more
Posted on 04 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can We Adapt to Climate Change?
Ashutosh Jogalekar reviews Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet, in 3 Quarks... Read more
Posted on 03 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
August 2, July in Review: Poetry, GPT-3 and a Couple Other Things
It’s been an exciting, and exhausting two weeks. I’ve been wanting to ramble on for a week now, but kept putting it off because my series on GPT-3 kept calling. Read more
Posted on 03 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Like a Miyazaki Movie (Mononoke)
静寂と緑#写真好きな人と繋がりたい... Read more
Posted on 02 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
And Now the Machines Recognize Emotion Categories Embedded in the Visual System
A neural network could recognize which #emotions, out of 20 different categories, a human would feel in response to an image, challenging the prevailing view... Read more
Posted on 01 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Louis Milic Saw Back in 1966 [digital Humanities]
Willard McCarty just reminded me of an article Louis Milic published in the first issue of Computers and the Humanities: Milic, L. (1966). The next step.... Read more
Posted on 01 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
3. Interlude: GPT-3 as a Model of the Mind
Here are the key paragraphs from the previous post: Let us notice, first of all, that language exists as strings of signifiers in the external world. Read more
Posted on 31 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Nature of Academic Literary Criticism as an Intellectual Discipline: Text...
Since the late 1950s and early 1960s the discipline has made interpretation its central focus. The discipline’s job is to determine or at least comment on and... Read more
Posted on 31 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Some Flowers [hot Zone]
Posted on 31 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GPT-3 Does Philosophy
The prompt contained the essays themselves, plus a blurb explaining that GPT-3 had to respond to them. Full disclosure: I produced a few outputs and... Read more
Posted on 31 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Collective Decision Making Among Spider Monkeys
"Instead of assuming the strategies that govern #monkey decision making, as [in] traditional #gametheory, researchers amassed a list of possible... Read more
Posted on 30 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Language Learning in Children
Super excited to talk tomorrow (July 30th, 3pm pacific) at Abralin ao Vivo about joint with Yuan Yang. I'll be presenting a long-running project on language... Read more
Posted on 30 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
2. The Brain, the Mind, and GPT-3, Part 1: Dimensions and Conceptual Spaces
The purpose of this post is to sketch a conceptual framework in which we can understand the success of language models such as GPT-3 despite the fact that they... Read more
Posted on 29 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Danger, Will Robinson [Covid-19, Social Distancing on the Hudson]
Posted on 29 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Japanese Fishermen's Coats
Behold 19th-Century Japanese Firemen’s Coats, Richly Decorated with Mythical Heroes Symbols https://t.co/wktZvvoxnd pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 29 July 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY