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 ( 7622 )
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The Moral Choice Machine
Schramowski Patrick, Turan Cigdem, Jentzsch Sophie, Rothkopf Constantin, Kersting Kristian, The Moral Choice Machine, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence,... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Minnie the Moocher: [Media Notes 108]
I’ve just streamed The Blues Brothers, which I saw during its theatrical release in 1980 and which is loads of fun. As I thought about doing a post about the... Read more
Posted on 16 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Contra Chomsky: LLMs Cannot Learn (at Least Some) Languages That Are Impossible...
You may remember Noam Chomsky’s NYT article on ChatGPT from last year. https://t.co/HyL1U2JXZrHe and others have claimed that LLMs are equally capable of... Read more
Posted on 15 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
There Was Snow in Jersey City on Oct. 31, 2011
Posted on 15 January 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Toward a Theory of Intelligence: Did Miriam Yevick Know Something in 1975 That...
One theme that comes up in various discussions of artificial intelligence is that the discipline is primarily an empirical one that lacks theoretical grounding. Read more
Posted on 15 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Toward Precision Medicine for the Many Varieties of Cancer
From the YouTube page: Why have we not found the cure for cancer yet? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore paradigm shifts in... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
American Tech Giants Spend More on R&D Than France and Italy
It is startling to see how much of the world's R D spending comes from (mostly American) tech giants.The R D spending of Amazon is greater than the R D... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Places to Eat on Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ
Posted on 14 January 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Skilled and Ruthless Hit-man-for-hire is Mostly Myth
Jesse McKinley, Hit Men Are Easy to Find in the Movies. Real Life Is Another Story. NYTimes, Jan. 14. 2023. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. Read more
Posted on 14 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Crisis in Higher Education
Welcome to “The Ben Marc Show”, featuring a16z co-founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen. In this latest episode, Marc and Ben tackle the university... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What's a Causal Thicket?
đ§đľđ˛... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DeepSouth: Brain-scale Neuromorphic Computing
Here's the press release from the Western Sydney University, where DeepSouth is being constructed. Domenico Vicinanza writes about DeepSouth at The Conversation. Read more
Posted on 13 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hydraulic Press Channel Has Gotten a New and Bigger Press
I've been watching this channel off and on for several years now. FWIW, it now has almost 9 million viewers, which is probably why they could afford to buy a... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Long-term Study of Human Development, 85 Years of the Same Population...
There's a ton of references at the YouTube site. The overall finding is that healthy relationships with others is the single most important determinate of... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Alone in a Universe of Light and Form
Posted on 13 January 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What’s Up, Or Down, with World Population?
Chris Armstrong has a post at Crooked Timber with the intriguing title, What if there were far fewer people? (Jan. 8, 2023). The article opens: One of the most... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Breakfast, Before and After, Fork in the Middle
Posted on 12 January 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Norsemen [Media Notes 107]
I’ve just watched the first season of Norsemen (2016-2020) I loved it. But then I’ve been watching Viking sagas since Kirk Douglas starred in The Vikings (1958)... Read more
Posted on 12 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Maestro: "...about a Third of the Way In, the Queer Characters All but Fade Out."
Jennie Livingston, The False Note in Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’, NYTimes, Jan. 9, 2024. Here: The film gets right so much of who Bernstein was, allowing us to... Read more
Posted on 12 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sabine: AI is Bad News for Quantum Computing
From the YouTube page: Yann LeCun, the AI chief of Meta, has a surprisingly sane attitude to quantum computing. This deserves celebration and also... Read more
Posted on 11 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
