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 ( 7460 )
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Dancing is Fun, and Good for You, Too.
Danielle Friedman, Yes, Even You Can Dance, NYTimes. For many people, dance feels more like play than exercise, which helps to explain its enduring appeal as a... Read more
Posted on 26 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Paradox of Contemporary AI: Intellectual Success and Institutional Failure
We’re faced with a paradox: On the one hand the last 15 years of work in machine learning has to be seen as a profound INTELLECTUAL SUCCESS. Read more
Posted on 25 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Three Tablescapes
Posted on 25 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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“Wuthering Heights” as Initiation
Ross Douthat, Whatever Happened to Grown-Up Movies for Kids? NYTimes, Feb. 24, 2026. What Douthat has in mind is “telling grown-up stories in a fashion suited t... Read more
Posted on 25 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Snow World
Posted on 25 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Three Principles of Intelligence (That Aren't Principles of Computation)
Note: Claude 4.5 drafted this article after a long series of dialogs over several days. This is a continuation of the thinking in my current article in 3... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Window Shots on Snow Day
Posted on 24 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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An Economic Analysis of Epstein's Role as an Intermediator [Glenn Loury]
Loury has written an article about this: Jeffrey Epstein as Middleman: An Economic Analysis, February 10, 2026. From the opening: Economic theory has always bee... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Street Where I Live
Posted on 24 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Transformer Has Put Us on the Shore of a New World
I note, however, that it is not at all obvious to me that the transformer architecture will remain. We probably need something that does what it does; but... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
When AI Does Math and Code: The Limits of Pattern Matching
Here's how Claude summarizes a discussion we had last evening. * * * * * Recently, chatbots have been performing impressively on mathematics benchmarks and... Read more
Posted on 23 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This Too is Breakfast
Posted on 23 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Chess, Language, and AI @3QD
I’ve got a new article at 3 Quarks Daily: Chess and Language as Paradigmatic Cases for Artificial Intelligence Chess has been a central concern of AI from the... Read more
Posted on 23 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Return to Waffles
Posted on 22 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Listeners Systematically Integrate Hierarchical Tonal Context of Music
Cassano-Coleman, R. Y., Izen, S. C., Piazza, E. A. (2025). Listeners Systematically Integrate Hierarchical Tonal Context, Regardless of Musical Training.... Read more
Posted on 21 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Molecular Structure of Thought
Bytedance just dropped a paper that might change how AI thinks.Literally.They figured out why LLMs fail at long reasoning — and framed it as chemistry.The... Read more
Posted on 21 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Entry-level Jobs at Big Tech Are Disappearing
Big Tech just quietly repriced the value of a college degree to near zero.The Magnificent Seven (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Tesla) went... Read more
Posted on 20 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: A (strange) Variety
Posted on 20 February 2026
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Using AI to Improve Our Institutional Infrastructure
Three things that legal and policy wonks should be exploring are how to use AI to improve state capacity, fix liberal democracy, and bust regulatory/legal bloat. Read more
Posted on 19 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mark Twain on New England Weather, Illustrations by ChatGPT
New England Weather was anthologized in The Literary World Seventh Reader, John Calvin Metcalf, editor (1919). Twain's essay is accompanied by James Russell... Read more
Posted on 19 February 2026 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
