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 ( 7356 )
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Who’s the GOAT of Economics? Tyler Cowen on Adam Smith, His New AI Book, and...
The influence of AI on economics: 59:06: I think we will start with small economies – you know take a village of 50 Native Americans up in Alaska – and we'll... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Dark Side of Competition in AI [a Moloch Trap]
Note: She seems to take claims about AI and AGI at face value in a way that I don't. But I agree with her about possibility of a race to a bottom. That's what... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hoboken Jersey City
Posted on 11 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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State of AI @3QD, Plus AI Culture and Captain Ahab
Earlier this week I posted another article to 3 Quarks Daily: Aye Aye, Cap’n! Investing in AI is like buying shares in a whaling voyage captained by a man who... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...that Time of Year
Posted on 10 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Effective Accelerationism [e/acc]: Technology Unleashed
Kevin Roose, This A.I. Subculture’s Motto: Go, Go, Go, NYTimes, Dec. 10, 2023. Effective Accelerationism (often shortened to “e/acc,” pronounced “e-ack”) is a... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Metaphysical Supplies, Divination Tools, and Other Things of Miracle and Wonder...
Posted on 09 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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EU AI Act Favors Open-source
The EU AI Act negotiations ended.One contentious issue was the regulation of foundation models, particularly open source ones.Kudos to the French, German, and... Read more
Posted on 09 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Conceptual Coherence for Concrete Categories in Humans and LLMs
Siddharth Suresh, Kushin Mukherjee, Xizheng Yu, Wei-Chun Huang, Lisa Padua, and Timothy T. Rogers, Conceptual structure coheres in human cognition but not in... Read more
Posted on 09 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
When Their Rogue AI Creatures Start Coming After Us, the Rich Digerati Have Plan...
David Bosworth, No Exit: The Uncivil Folly of Libertarian Flight, The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2023. One of the scandalous revelations of the COVID pandemic was... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mechanistic Interpretability is Necessary, but Not Sufficient, for...
A comment I recently posted at LessWrong: ryan_greenblatt – By mech interp I mean "A subfield of interpretability that uses bottom-up or reverse engineering... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: On the Light Rail, from Hoboken to Jersey City
Posted on 08 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Photoshop AI Magic: Before (top) and After (bottom), One Brush Stroke
Posted on 07 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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GOAT Literary Critics: Part 1b, Lit Crit Compared to Economics; Aristotle, No
Tyler Cowen was kind enough to put a link to my GOAT Literary Critics post over at Marginal Revolution. It got a bit of commentary over there as well as... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are LLMs Approaching the Limiting Wall Beyond Which Performance Simply Wanders...
Hot take on Google Gemini and GPT-4:đGoogle Gemini seems to have by many measures matched (or slightly exceeded) GPT-4, but not to have... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blue Giant
With English subtitles: Kevin Nguyen, Jazz anime Blue Giant hits all the high notes, The Verge, Oct. 7, 2023. The setup of Blue Giant is familiar anime... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sun Will Come up Tomorrow
Posted on 06 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Big Think: The Chaos Inside OpenAI with Karen Hao [Excellent]
Journalist Karen Hao joins Big Think’s Editor-in-Chief, Robert Chapman-Smith, to discuss the recent events at OpenAI, including the ousting and reinstatement... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Animal ( Carved Wood), Metal (smelted Mineral), Vegetable (bush)
Posted on 05 December 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Grounding Neuroscience in Behavioral Changes Using Artificial Neural Networks
New paper "Grounding neuroscience in behavioral changes using artificial neural networks"This opinion piece shows how focusing on changes in brain state that... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
