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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Border Patrol: Arguments Against the Idea That the Mind is (somehow)...
I’ve been through this before, the idea that arguments such as those by Dreyfus and Searle seem curious and empty to me. Eye-hand coordination But before I get... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Do We Define Success for Humans [and Progress?]
Robert Pollack, evolutionary biologist at Columbia, at Edge: "Rethinking our Vision of Success". From Darwin: Inherited novelty may be a sufficient source of... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
BAPC Camping Trip 3: In Which Plants Turn out to Be Communication Systems, a...
When we left for our camping trip we expected it to be just that, a camping trip. We hang out, tromp around in the woods and along the lake, build a campfire,... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Impressive Manual Dexterity and Visual Perception in Robot That Solves Rubik's...
somewhat misleading but wildly retweeted characterization of new @OpenAI result. the system is (very impressively) trained to do the perception and manual... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It’s BAPC Week at New Savanna! Exclusive Photos of the seKrET Camping Trip to...
I’ve already shown you photos of the campfire. Now let’s go back to the beginning. What very few people know is that there is a secret portal deep in the... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI Can't Do Common Sense [I Intersperse Links to My Own Work Where It's Relevant]
Sean Carroll interviews Melanie Mitchell: 0:08:34 SC [Sean Carroll]: Well, I’ve noticed this, and there are people who are not professional AI researchers, but... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Time-traveling Detective @3QD
My latest is up at 3 Quarks Daily, “Time travelers we are, each and all”,... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fire in Life and Animation
The board of the Bergen Arches Preservation Coalition (BPAC) when on a camping trip over the weekend and, of course, we had a campfire. Since I had my camera... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading the Human Swarm 4: Summer Camp and Beyond – Another Digression [F2F Grou...
I went camping with some friends over the weekend, and got thinking about summer camp, which is not quite the same thing as camping. Read more
Posted on 14 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Princes (and Two Dogs) of Serendip Were Sitting on the Shore of a Campsite...
...when along comes a Spotted Lanternfly that lands on the thumb of Prince Adam: Prince Bill (that's me) then took a photograph of it, several in fact. Why? Read more
Posted on 13 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sleep on It! [problem Solving]
Kristin E. G. Sanders, Samuel Osburn, Ken A. Paller, Mark Beeman, Targeted Memory Reactivation During Sleep Improves Next-Day Problem Solving, Psychological... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trajectories in Story-telling Space [#DH, #Macroanalysis]
This is an explanatory supplement to On the direction of literary history: How should we interpret that 3300 node graph in Macroanalysis? Read more
Posted on 10 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading the Human Swarm 3: A Digression About an Image with an Applicaton to...
What’s this image represent? I supposed I’ve you’ve been reading New Savanna for awhile you know what it represents. But imagine you didn’t know. What would... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More Greenery, Below Grade [with Tiny People]
Posted on 09 October 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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On Kurtz’s Twice-quoted Orison, as Well as People Named and Unnamed [#Heart of...
I like that word, “orison”. I’ve never used it myself, not ‘till now, though I’ve certainly read it. My dictionary says it means prayer and that it’s archaic.... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hmmm.... How About a Super Yacht to Cruise the Congo [Who Would Commission Such ...
Peter Wilson, No One Needs a Superyacht, but They Keep Selling Them, NYTimes, Oct 8, 2019: Research by the Superyacht Group shows that after peaking in 2008... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GPT-2 Sure Demos Impressively [be Skeptical]
Mark Liberman at Language Log reports on John Seabrook, "The Next Word: Where will predictive text take us?", The New Yorker 10/14/2019, which is about the... Read more
Posted on 08 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Windows on the World, a Quick Thought About Critical Illusion [#counting #DH]
Michael Gavin has an interesting article in Critical Analytics, Is there a text in my data? (Part 1): On Counting Words (09.17.19). Read more
Posted on 08 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Retail Banking Like It Used to Be
By buddy Cobb has an interesting post about banking the old-fashioned way, before the internet and all that: I’ll talk about retail banking in 1980 when I was... Read more
Posted on 08 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Direction of Literary History: How Should We Interpret That 3300 Node...
That's the name of a draft I've put on Academia.edu for comment. Here's the link:... Read more
Posted on 07 October 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
