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 ( 7828 )
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Pink and White
Posted on 28 April 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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About the Ukraine, the WEIRDEST War I Can Remember [the Bots Are Running the...
I’ve been thinking for some time now that I should post something about the Ukraine war. But what? I know relatively little about Ukraine or its history with... Read more
Posted on 28 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Intervene in the Operations of a Language Model Using an Interactive Debugger
LM-Debugger builds upon our findings from this work https://t.co/fnEBgFe4b8to provide three core capabilities for single-prediction debugging and model... Read more
Posted on 28 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Distinguishing Between Very Similar Musical Lines During Practice Sessions
I’ve been practicing (the melody of) a 12-bar blues that I’ve created, “Skippy’s Blues.” Bars 3, 7, and 11 are identical. Bars 4, 8, and 12 are each almost... Read more
Posted on 27 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI Tutors of the Future
Posted on 27 April 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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I Called It. Adept Intends to Make It So. [Neil Stephenson Was There in ‘95]
Back in July of 2020, I posted my first reactions to GPT-3 in a comment on Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution: Machine learning was the key breakthrough. Read more
Posted on 27 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Newport Mall, Jersey City
Posted on 27 April 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Why is Simple Arithmetic Difficult for Deep Learning Systems?
Marcus points this out at two points in the video: c. 18:25 (multiplication of 2-digit numbers), c. 19:49 (3-digit addition). Why is this so difficult for deep... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Everything Everywhere All at Once [Media Notes 72]
I loved it! But first, I had to go to a theater to see it, a live in person in the round movie theatre. Which was OK. The theater had been revamped with recline... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It Looks Like Things Have Gotten Back to Normal on My Academia Page, Part 2
I'd previously reported that my view-count at Academia.edu was blowing up: What’s going on at my Academia page at the end of March 2022, and It looks like thing... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neural Connectivity During Various Activities [behavioral Mode]
Here's the first two tweets in a stream of 8 tweets: We used factor analysis to derive a measure of intrinsic connectivity that persists across rest and 8... Read more
Posted on 26 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Visit to Popeye's
Posted on 26 April 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Semanticity: Adhesion and Relationality
For some time now I have been puzzled by the (astonishing) success of statistical models, especially artificial neural networks, in language processing,... Read more
Posted on 25 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blues @ 3 Quarks Daily [East Asian Style]
I’ve taken eight examples from my current series on the blues and written an article for 3 Quarks Daily: Tell me about the blues, 3 Quarks Daily, April 25,... Read more
Posted on 25 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Acute Angles [Manhattan, Hoboken]
Posted on 25 April 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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On the Differences Between Artificial and Natural Minds: Another Version of My...
A couple weeks ago Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures announced an interest in funding work in artificial intelligence (AI). I decided to apply. Read more
Posted on 25 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
One Problem with Deep Learning, Overfitting
“How wrong labels can lead to poor generalization”: I think this is the simplest effective visual explanation I have seen. From @fchollet’s Deep Learning with... Read more
Posted on 24 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Spatially Distributed Cortical Circuits
This is conceptually cool stuff Spatially distributed computation in cortical circuits https://t.co/vuVQgrHETa— Martin Vinck (@martin_a_vinck) April 24, 2022... Read more
Posted on 24 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I Tip-toed Among Them, What Are They? [tulips]
Posted on 24 April 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Tell Me About the Blues: Trane, Ornette, Hannibal
Where have we been? We started with Old School jazz, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Henry Allen. Then we zipped ahead a couple decades to hear the very... Read more
Posted on 23 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
