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 ( 7356 )
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Frankie Morales
Posted on 05 May 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Cohort Succession and Literary Change [ --> Macroanalysis]
It's out, open-access: "Cohort Succession Explains Most Change in Literary Culture"—by me, @kkiley, @ShangWenyi, and @vaiseys. This image gives you the general... Read more
Posted on 05 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
You're Looking for Theory? I'll Give You Theory. [What Cultural Analytics Can...
Overheard near the water cooler on the Web Tubes: reading some great grad student papers which review existing studies in #DH and #culturalanalytics and they ar... Read more
Posted on 05 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
TemporalWiki, Updating Language Models 'on the Fly'
How can we update LMs *whenever* we want on up-to-date knowledge with *minimal* cost? Furthermore, how can we evaluate if each update was successful or not? Read more
Posted on 04 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Predicting High-level Textual Phenomena from Low-level Feartures
One little detail here that idk if readers for NHB will grasp: the XYZ model is not actually implausible! People who haven't worked with text don't often realiz... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Oh! Those Crazy Kids! What’s It Like to Be a Pilot Whale? [With Apologies to...
Scott Alexander imagines Every Bay Area House Party, Astral Codex Ten, May 2022. Here's a passage pulled not-quite-at-random from the text: The discussion is... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DeepMinds is into Relational Reasoning
And that interests me because I am to, and have been for years, nay, decades – see, for example, this post from yesterday: Gestalt Switch: From Artificial... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Let's Dance [Born to Groove]
Posted on 03 May 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Gestalt Switch: From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Minds
For many, both pro AI and con, the difference between the two terms – artificial intelligence and artificial minds – is of relatively little consequence, a... Read more
Posted on 03 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bay Area Meme Space
Mapping out the ideas that shaped #SiliconValley. Hippie counter culture, the startup scene, hackers and libertarians share a dislike of government in my... Read more
Posted on 03 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tulip Pyramid
Posted on 03 May 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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In Words and Images, a Tweet Stream Explaining Transformers
What is attention? Say you want to classify the sentiment of “attention is not too shabby.“ “shabby” suggests 😞 but “not” actually means it's 😀. Read more
Posted on 02 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is a Conceptual Ontology?
From Wikipedia: In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories,... Read more
Posted on 02 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hoboken Arts and Music Festival, May 1, 2022 [coming out of Covid?]
Posted on 02 May 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Artistic Artificial Intelligence and Literary Writing
The short story in #lrt is beautiful economical, but the dilemmas it anticipates can be weighed against this reminder that autonomous agency isn’t always unde... Read more
Posted on 02 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cherry Blossom Variations
Click photo to embiggen. The top image may surprise you. Read more
Posted on 01 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Storytelling to Facebook: Content Biases When Retelling Or Sharing a Story
Studies show that specific content (e.g., negative, emotional, out-group detraction) is successful in social media. But: is this content successful *because*... Read more
Posted on 01 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Florescence, Flowering
Posted on 01 May 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What I've Been up to in the Last Two Weeks, Across the Continental Divide and...
Here's the most recent two entries from my intellectual diary, which is mostly just short notations. The second entry is unusually long. * * * * * Emergent... Read more
Posted on 01 May 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Feed-forward Layers in Transformer Models
If you (like me) have wondered what the feed-forward layers in transformer models are actually doing, this is a pretty interesting paper on that... Read more
Posted on 30 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
