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 ( 7846 )
-
Friday Fotos: (Still) More from Longwood Gardens
Posted on 31 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Richard Hanania in Search of a Way to Make Sense of US Foreign Policy.
US foreign policy is unintelligible because 1) it's irrational, and 2) we're using the wrong intellectual tools to understand it. Read more
Posted on 30 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tyler Cowen Thinks Segregating School Children by Age is a Bad Idea [I Agree]
From the year-end review of Conversations with Tyler: HOLMES: Next question from @gasca. Asked a number of ones. I think the one I’ll pick is, “We talked about... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s the Opposite of Substrate Independence?
I suppose we could call it “substrate dependence” or “substrate linkage,” but this really isn’t about the term, it’s about the substance. Read more
Posted on 29 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Don’t Look Up [Media Notes 65]
Don’t Look Up, as you’ve probably heard, is a weird apocalyptic comedy in which a large comet acts as an allegorical stand-in for climate change. The human... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Twigs in the Wild
Posted on 29 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
The Energetics of Uniquely Human Subsistence Strategies
Humans afford the high energetic costs of life not through energy-saving adaptations—such as bipedalism or sophisticated tool use—but by acquiring energy at a... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Misbehaving Flowers
Posted on 28 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Leroy Jethro Gibbs – Beyond the Edge (#NCIS) [Media Notes 64]
Leroy Jethro Gibbs is the central character of NCIS, one of the longest running and most popular shows on network TV. It premiered in 2003, has just completed... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Berries and Small Cacti at Longwood Gardens
Posted on 28 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
The Rise and Fall of Rationality in Language [based on the Google Ngram Corpus,...
Scientists confirm the demise of rationalityhttps://t.co/woGhW2mpkQ— Sabine Hossenfelder (@skdh) December 28, 2021 Significance of the linked article, The rise... Read more
Posted on 28 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Creatures from Longwood Gardens
Posted on 28 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Did "The Matrix" Depict a More Optimistic Vision of the Future Than We Are Now...
Samuel Earle, "The Timeline We’re on Is Even Darker Than ‘The Matrix’ Envisioned," NYTimes, December 22, 2021. In original Matrix films had an undercurrent of... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Remember the Flowers
Posted on 21 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Complex Systems and AI
Also check out this great position blog post by @risi1979, and read about why self-organization and self-assembly might be important stepping stones required... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Looking up
Posted on 18 December 2021
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Substrate Independence
The notion of substrate independence in is invoked in arguments about whether or not, at least in theory, a digital computer can do anything the human brain... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neuromorphic Chips and Spiking Neurons
"Computational neuroscientists think that spiking neural networks will bring them closer to understanding the brain than is possible with current deep neural... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vision Isn't "solved" [AI]
This reminds me of that anecdote, where some researchers had an amazing model distinguishing animals from non animals. Later turned out that animal pictures wer... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It Shook Me, the Light
Bump! This post is from 2010, but it's been on my mind lately. So I'm bumping it to the head of the queue. During the early 1970s I'd played for two years with ... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
