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 ( 7831 )
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Sean Carroll Interviews Gary Marcus About AI and Common Sense
As you may know, Marcus is skeptical about the ability of (deep) learning approaches to go all the way. Here's one bit of the conversation: 0:11:58. Read more
Posted on 17 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Problems with Angus Fletcher’s Account of Neurons, Logic, and Narrative
A week or so ago a conversation on Twitter led me to this article: Angus Fletcher, Why Computers Will Never Read (or Write) Literature: A Logical Proof and a... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A General Comment Concerning Arguments About Computers and Brains
Arguments about whether or not computers will ever match the powers of the human mind have been around for a long time. As far as I can recall the first such... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Who's Your Favorite Billionaire?
Billionaires that majority of Democrats approve of: an entertainment celebrity, founder of the company that was found to engage in anticompetitive practices, an... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Japanese Jazz in Historical Perspective
@bbenzon see this?https://t.co/5S6NE2rylS— Citizen of Somewhere Else (@CitizenSE) February 14, 2022 The first three paragraphs of the linked article (which I... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Park in Maplewood, New Jersey
Posted on 14 February 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Literature as Affective Technology
I was hanging out in the Twitterverse last week and became drawn into a discussion, as sometimes happens. The discussion was about computers and narrative... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miles, Cannonball, Trane
Miles Davis ,Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley and John Coltrane #jazz#jazzgiants #trumpet #altosax #tenorsax pic.twitter.com/oHxJSrgdjx—... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of Factish Gods and Modes of Existence
Angus Fletcher's odd argumentation on computers and reading (see my recent post, Can computers do narrative?) has gotten me thinking about Latour's notion of... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Iris Variations in a Narrow Range
Posted on 12 February 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Quint and Ahab, Jaws and Moby Dick – Getting ‘religious’
I have decided to revise my Jaws essay for republication in 3 Quarks Daily. As I won’t be publishing it for two more weeks or so, the rewrite isn’t urgent.... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can Computers Do Narrative?
The question has been debated in three recent articles in Narrative: Angus Fletcher, Why Computers Will Never Read (or Write) Literature: A Logical Proof and a... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
God, the Devil, and Evolution in the 1975 Jaws Trailer
Here’s the opening voice-over on the trailer: There is a creature alive today, who has survived millions of years of evolution, without change, without... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music as a Domain of Cumulative Cultural Evolution
🎶🤔🐋 We bring together perspectives from philosophy, musicology and biology. @_SMRU_ @CentreBioDiv @RCStweets @SchoolofBiology... Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Crisis in Shark City: A Girardian Reading of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws
Though I am hardly a Girardian, I recently found myself exploring Girardian themes, mimetic crisis and sacrifice, in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws [1]. Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Classical Music Goes to the Movies: John Williams at 90
Javier C. Hernández, John Williams, Hollywood’s Maestro, Looks Beyond the Movies, NYTimes, Feb. 8, 2022. The pandemic gave him relief from film composing,... Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Debate on Whether Or Not the Brain is a Computer is "just a Semantic...
1/ A new paper on the “brain-computer metaphor debate” by myself and Tim Lillicrap is now out in Frontiers in Computer Science:https://t. Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Representational Transformations Linked to Adaptive Behavior
Lab’s latest at Nature Communications: "Constructing neural network models from brain data reveals representational transformations linked to adaptive behavior"... Read more
Posted on 05 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Skeptical Review of Chalmers’ Reality+
David Bentley Hart, Reality Minus, The New Atlantis, February 4, 2022. Hart’s central move: But the real problem is that the book breaks down into two broad... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Quick Reaction: David Chalmers Talks About His New Book, Reality+
Here’s an online talk Chalmers gave for the NYC Media Lab. 1. I believe Chalmers made his name for posing the so-called hard problem of consciousness. Read more
Posted on 02 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
