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 ( 7356 )
-
Will Jacob Collier Win the Grammy for Best Album? [Oh Those Kids]
I surely don’t know. He’s already won four Grammies, all for arranging (Wikipedia). Here’s what he has to say about the nomination, from his Facebook page: The... Read more
Posted on 29 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Dissolution of a Comprehensive Epistemic Regime in America and the World [th...
David Brooks has an interesting opinion piece, The Rotting of the Republican Mind, NYTimes, Nov. 26, 20. He declines to blame the internet, for "Why would the... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tribalism in the Current AI Wars, a Tweet Stream
I've been witnessing the "battles" both around advancements in #AI and of the #AI silos since I entered into the field more than 30 years ago.It has never been... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Population, Pandemics, Malthus, and Progress
Roser points out and documents something I've often said, but with much less data: Malthus was right! That is, until roughly a century before he wrote, the... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Has European Politics Been Asleep at the Wheel Since WWII?
Leopost Aschenbrenner, Europe's Political Stupor, For Our Posterity, 23 Nov. 2020:After WWII, the political was banished from the European Continent. It had... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The End of Physics as We Have Come to Know? [And the New Physics?]
Posted at Not Even Wrong, Nov. 24, 2020:In a remarkable article entitled Contemplating the End of Physics posted today at Quanta magazine, Robbert Dijkgraaf (th... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tool Innovation and Childhood
In our @TrendsCognSci paper, @bruce_rawlings and I address a question that has long puzzled scientists: How is it that humans have such sophisticated technology... Read more
Posted on 22 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump, Reality-free Politics, and the Reinvention of America [?]
Bruno Maçães, How Trump Almost Broke the Bounds of Reality, NYTimes, Nov. 12, 2020. What Mr. Trump promised was the power to create imaginary worlds and the... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Compositionality [language Notes]
If that parenthetical was surprising to you, and you want to learn more about semantics, Alex Lascarides and I wrote a book for you (university-affiliated folks... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
35 Years of Moore's Law [chip Design]
Here are the two dies at the same scale. The M1 is over twice as large physically as the ARM1. It has 16 billion transistors vs 25,000 for the ARM1. Read more
Posted on 16 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rasta Drums Meet Roma Brass in Belgrade in 2009
I've now turned this into a PDF file which you can download here: https://www.academia.edu/37815917/Mind-Culture_Coevolution_Major_Trans... In the early 1970s... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Trump Administration's Refusal to Recognize the Vote is an Attack on...
Writing in Lawfare, Nov. 11, 2020, Benjamin Wittes asks, How Hard is it to Overturn an American Election? He explains that, while the vote count seems secure an... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Artefacts of a Lost Civilization
Posted on 11 November 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Pennsylvania Politics and Culture [Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020]
James Carville once remarked that “Between Paoli and Penn Hills, Pennsylvania is Alabama.” I grew up in Alabama part, Johnstown to be specific. Read more
Posted on 10 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Gig Economy is a Disaster [California's Prop 22]
✊ @amnesty + @hrw "This evisceration of wage labor protections in the gig economy is a grave threat to workers’ rights to earn a decent living safe ... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Value of Literary Fiction
New research suggests that reading literary fiction rather than popular fiction can make you better at analysing other people and their behaviours, reports... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Alexander Graham Bell's Fractal Kite
Alexander Graham Bell created physical fractals, years before the term "fractal" was coined. (Fractal kite, 1909) https://t.co/9YCLQku5Io pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 07 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Hope Lies in *understanding* Reality" [Zeynep Tufekci]
There'll be a push to make this appear as a big triumph, some version of "our national nightmare is over" because the tweeter-in-chief is gone. Read more
Posted on 06 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Does the Brain Easily Become Over-fitted to Reality and Fiction a Way of Making...
While *extremely* speculative, I think this is a really important takeaway that I want people to be intrigued by from the Overfitted Brain Hypothesis. Read more
Posted on 06 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Longwood Gardes
Posted on 06 November 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
