Bbenzon
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 ( 6413 )
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Pansies
Posted on 08 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sun, the City, the River, the Boats
Posted on 07 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GOAT Literary Critics: Part 5.2: The Nature of Authority in Literary Criticism a...
I don’t know just when it was, but at some point in my career – likely well before I had anything one would call a career – I learned that arguments from... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Visualizing Attention: A Transformer's Heart
This is the second of three videos from 3Blue1Brown about how transformers work. Here's the first. Timestamps: 0:00 - Recap on embeddings: 1:39 - Motivating... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Historical-Psychological Text Analysis with Contextualized Construct...
Yuqi Chen, Sixuan Li, Ying Li, Mohammad Atari, Surveying the Dead Minds: Historical-Psychological Text Analysis with Contextualized Construct Representation... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Siren Song of the AI Crowd
Make no mistake, every time I read a news story about all the time, effort, and investment being poured into building larger and larger generative AI models,... Read more
Posted on 06 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Data Hunger is Leading AI into Crazyland [Tulip Mania Redux]
Oh, I understand why they think they need more more and more data data data data. But I don’t think scaling is the answer and the industry is now headed into... Read more
Posted on 06 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flower Power
Posted on 06 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
When the Mind Reveals Itself: Some Moments from My Early Life.
On Wednesday I posted a tribute to the late John Barth in which I talked about a review I wrote about his 1968 collection: Lost in the Funhouse. Read more
Posted on 05 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sabrina Hossenfelder on Why the Academy is Broken
"...unlike academic research, this is an honest trade. You get some of my knowledge. I get some of your attention. I like the simplicity of that" (12:53). Read more
Posted on 05 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Another Walk in the Park
Posted on 05 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rice Farmers Are More Collectivist Than Wheat Farmers
đ¨ New paper! đ¨ Rice theory = labor and irrigation networks of rice farming causes collectivism, but causality is hard to nai... Read more
Posted on 05 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Street
Posted on 04 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
No AIs Here, but There is a Birdbrain
Posted on 03 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Seasonal Oddities of AI: Ethan Mollick Talks with Ezra Klein [+prompting]
The New York Times, How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?, 4.03.24 Deep into the interview: Ethan Mollick: “What the hell” is a good question. And we’re just... Read more
Posted on 03 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers, Long Exposure & Blurred
Posted on 03 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
John Barth and Me, Having Fun [Trapped]
John Barth died yesterday (April 2). He was 93. I don't know him and never met him, but he was important to me early in my career. In fact, I suppose, in a... Read more
Posted on 03 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Heartbeats During a Rachmaninoff Marathon: Yuja Wang, Yannick Nézet-Séguin,...
From the YouTube page: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall for a... Read more
Posted on 02 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
But What is a GPT? Visual Intro to Transformers
This is the first of three videos from 3Blue1Brown about how transformers work. The other two will be released in the coming weeks, though if you’re a member... Read more
Posted on 02 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More Pizza and Fanta Orange + Light
Posted on 02 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY