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 ( 7846 )
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Friday Fotos: "F" is for Frog and "T" is for Toad
Posted on 11 September 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Corrosiveness of Credentialism in American Life
Michael Sandel, Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice, NYTimes, Sept. 2, 2020. Building a politics around the idea that a college degre... Read more
Posted on 11 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Neural Code Meets Sydney Lamb’s Daughter
Back in 2004 science journalist John Horgan did a survey of thinking about the neural code: Decode the Human Brain? Discover Magazine, October 29, 2004,... Read more
Posted on 10 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Themo × 3 [old]
Posted on 09 September 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Silly Talk About the Brain & Pleasure Centers
I'm bumping this to the top of the queue because Lamb's story about his daughter assumes new relevance in the context of fantasies about direct brain-to-brain... Read more
Posted on 09 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Georgia O'Keeffe Online
Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Georgia O’Keeffe: They’re Now Digitized and Free to View Online @openculture https://t.co/KDM0V0XjAw pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 08 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Authoritarian Leaders Thrive on Crisis, No? So Why Are They So Poor at Dealing...
Ivan Krastev, The Pandemic Was Supposed to Be Great for Strongmen. What Happened? NYTimes, Sept. 8, 2020. Some fear that more than any other crisis, a public... Read more
Posted on 08 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Facebook Or Freedom, Part 2: Interlude, If I Were Facebook, I’d Be Thinking…you...
https://t.co/kOTEiSHZuQ — SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN🗽🤘🏽 (@sivavaid) September 7, 2020 Thanks! Yes! — Shannon Mattern (@shannonmattern)... Read more
Posted on 07 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hey, Sparkychan, What's an Interface?
Posted on 06 September 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Rambling into Fall: Facebook & the Interface, Brain-to-brain Communication, AI...
A lot’s happened since my last ramble (August 22). I’ve changed my attitude toward AI; Elon Music and Christof Koch have triggered one of my hobby horses, direc... Read more
Posted on 06 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Technology Surges So Far. When's the 6th?
We're on or rapidly approaching the informatic plateau. Next surge requires a gestalt switch in how we think about and implement computation. (Note: numbers in... Read more
Posted on 06 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“White Privilege” – It’s More About How Language is Used Than About How Race...
The good people over at Crooked Timber are having a long and complex discussion about white privilege that is spread out over four posts: Chris Bertram, On an... Read more
Posted on 06 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Poetry, Prediction, Prose Fiction, and the Problem of Language More Generally...
I’ve been thinking about the problems that GPT-3 has in dealing with poetry [1,2,3,4]. That led me to a variety of thoughts, about statistical semantics and... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Back-up Circuits in the Brain
Are there "backup circuits" in the human brain that can provide failsafe connections for the primary ones? We found three, and they are substantially reduced... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
We Need Decentralized Social Networks and AI Tools to Give Users More Control...
Ben Goertzel thinks large centrally controlled social networks, like, e.g. Facebook, are a bad idea. I agree. He thinks that "explainable AI" is one of the... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emophilia Leads to Attraction Toward Individuals with Dark Triad Traits...
Individuals with a proclivity to fall in love fast and often are particularly attracted to partners high in dark personality traits. https://t.co/Q9AvZNXU6h... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Training Language Models for Summarization
We've used reinforcement learning from human feedback to train language models for summarization. The resulting models produce better summaries than 10x larger... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Facebook Or Freedom, Part 1: Who Gave You Permission to Mess with My Mind?
No, I’m not talking about the issues Facebook is having with hate speech and political posts, though those issues are certainly deep and important ones. Read more
Posted on 04 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Photos of Photos
Posted on 04 September 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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On Ethical Criticism [in the 21st Century?]
This appears to be a group of scholars reflecting on Toril Moi, Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell (Chicago:... Read more
Posted on 04 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
