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
-
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 ( 7824 )
-
Time out of Time: The Eternal Return of the Rhythm People [Bang on a Drum!]
Jochen Szangolies has an interesting post at 3 Quarks Today, Dinner For Nietzsche: Rhythms, Rituals, And Eternal Return, Jan. 9. 2023. It speaks to some of my... Read more
Posted on 09 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Kimono Mom Rising
Her name is Moe (pronounced with two syllables). Her daughter is Sutan and her husband is Moto. She posted her first video on February 21, 2020. She now has 1.4... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Sunday Assortment of Photos
Posted on 08 January 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
The Structuralist Aesthetics of ChatGPT
In my earlier post, ChatGPT, stories, and ring-composition, I’d reached a point where I introduced a parenthetical remark: “Lévi-Strauss would love that.” This... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT Botches an Attempt to Summarize Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
To the extent that this performance is characteristic of how ChatGPT summarizes long texts, those summaries cannot be trusted. Yes, this is only one case, and,... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Those Three Guys
Posted on 07 January 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Toward a Manifesto for the Naturalistic Analysis of Large Language Models
Here's a comment I just posted in response to a post by Tyler Cowan, GPT and my own career trajectory: I too have spent a great deal of time using ChatGPT,... Read more
Posted on 07 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT, Stories, and Ring-composition
A lot of my interaction with ChatGPT has involved stories, simple stories, but stories nonetheless. Those stories deserve attention in themselves, as opposed... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Global Parameters in a Neural Net: ChatGPT Talks to Kids
In my post on ChatGPT as a tutor I asked it to explain digestion to a three-year-old. It did so, rather well I thought. I subsequently added an addendum about... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: More Fog on the River
Posted on 06 January 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
The Evolution of Peace
Luke Glowacki, The Evolution of Peace, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Accepted manuscript , pp. 1 - 100 DOI: https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 05 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Discursive Competence in ChatGPT, Part 1: Talking with Dragons
Version 1, January 5, 2022 Title above, URLs, abstract, contents, and introduction below: Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 05 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Here We Go Again, Scott Alexander Hoists Another Bay Area House Party
Scott Alexander, Even More Bay Area House Party, Astral Codex Ten, Jan. 3, 2022. “I know this kind of socialism isn’t popular, here in the Bay,” she tells you. Read more
Posted on 05 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Incremental Research Has Been on the Rise Between 1945 and 2010
Park, M., Leahey, E. Funk, R.J. Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time. Nature 613, 138–144 (2023). https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 05 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: AI for the Next Era [the Middle Layer]
The whole interview is interesting, but I was particularly struck by Altman’s comments about a “middle layer” model, between the so-called Foundation models... Read more
Posted on 04 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Let's Take a Walk on the Beach
Posted on 04 January 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
From Simon’s Ant to Machine Learning, a Parable
Simon’s ant is a well-known thought experiment from Chapter 3, “The Psychology of Thinking: Embedding Artifice in Nature,” in Herbert A. Simon (1981), The... Read more
Posted on 04 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Remember the Sabbath...[a Different World]
Ezra Klein, Sabbath and the Art of Rest, NYTimes, December 3, 2022. From the introduction: Do we know how to truly rest? Who would we be if we did? Read more
Posted on 03 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Mondrian" House Along the River in Hoboken
Posted on 03 January 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
On the Naturalistic Study of the Linguistic Behavior of Artificial Intelligence
This is draft material from the introduction of a working paper I’m about to finish: Discursive Competence in ChatGPT, Part 1: Talking with Dragons. Read more
Posted on 03 January 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
