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 ( 7824 )
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Has the Computer Metaphor for the Mind Run out of Steam?
In May of this year John Brockman hosted one of those high-class gab fests he loves so much. This one was one the theme of Possible Minds (from this book). Read more
Posted on 19 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Chalmers Tells Us How Computers Will Eclispe is in the Future – Aka Where...
Prashnath Ramakrishna interviews David Chalmers for the NYTimes: D.C.: Deep learning is great for things we do perceptually as human beings — image... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neual Criticality, Between Order and Chaos
Our brains appear to operate near a critical point where it easy to shift bw diff states. Whether this is adaptive what the states are has not been clear. Read more
Posted on 18 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Human's Can "read" a Computer's "mind"
Read the whole thread: Humans can decipher adversarial images! Our new work (out TODAY in @NatureComms) shows that people can do "theory of mind" on... Read more
Posted on 17 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Things End, Or Not – A Problem of Form [#QualityTV | Media Notes 3]
Consider what we might call the “traditional” one-hour TV drama, such as any in the Star Trek franchise. Each episode is a story independent of the others,... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Does Stanford Want from the Human Sciences Going Forward?
Cynthia Haven has a post about a recent meeting of Standford's Faculty Senate concerning the future of Stanford University Press. Read more
Posted on 16 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
One Step for a Man, One Gialnt Leap for Mankind – 50 Years Later
Jill Lepore reviews seven new books on the moon landing, Why Did the Moon Landing Matter? (NYTimes). She concludes: One small step for man, one giant leap for... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Network – and Four Decades Later Trump Becomes President [Media Notes 2]
I don’t know whether or not I saw Network when it was originally released in 1976, nor for that matter, whether I watched it in whole or in part on TV sometime... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Star Trek DS9 S1 E10: Move Along Home [Media Notes 1]
Note: This is episode 9 on Netflix, where the first two episodes are combined into a single numbered episode. Broadcast March 9, 1993 I’ve been watching a lot o... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Cognitive Science Washed Up?
Rafael Núñez, Michael Allen, Richard Gao, Carson Miller Rigoli, Josephine Relaford-Doyle and Arturs Semenuks, What happened to cognitive science? Read more
Posted on 13 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Our Brains Are Made for Music
A news release from NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: In the eternal search for understanding what makes us human, scientists found... Read more
Posted on 13 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Asteroid mining. Gene editing. Synthetic meat. We could provide for the needs of everyone, in style. It just takes some imagination. https://t. Read more
Posted on 12 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Daniel A. Shore on Why Literary Studies Abandoned Linguistics
I've been reading some interesting remarks by Daniel A. Shore on why literary studies (at least in much of the Anglophone world) abandoned linguistics, though... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Rhythmic Nature of Speech
Is speech rhythmic? Definitely not perfectly isochronous, but still sound quite temporally regular to me. Check out this recording (and also other clips of... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Anti-tech Coalition
Big (internet) tech is under attack. Alexis Madrigal lists the players in The Atlantic, The Coalition Out to Kill Tech as We Know It. He observes: At a broad... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Classic Text from 1957, Frank Rosenblatt's Tech Report Introducing the...
Here's a link to a downloadable PDF of the report: The Perceptron — A Perceiving and Recognizing Automaton. That introduced the idea of artificial neural... Read more
Posted on 09 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once More, Kin Selection and Group Selectioni
Jonathan Birch, Are kin and group selection rivals or friends? Current Biology, Volume 29, ISSUE 11, PR433-R438, June 03, 2019,... Read more
Posted on 09 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Predicting History
Joseph Risi, Amit Sharma, Rohan Shah, Matthew Connelly Duncan J. Watts, Predicting history, Nature Human Behaviour (03 June2019) Abstract Can events be... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Human Cerebellum, Universal Transform Or Multiple Functionality?
At what level does a uniform circuitry really imply a uniform function? Maybe it's time to rethink the "the cerebellum is an internal model" doctrine. Our revie... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Connectionism, Symbolic AI, and Machine Learning in AI
Where do the predictive techniques of machine learning come from? How do they represent and organise the social? Join us for a public talk with’s Dominique... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
