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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Tyler Cowen Chats with the Remarkable Ada Palmer
About Palmer: Ada Palmer is a Renaissance historian at the University of Chicago who studies radical free thought and censorship, composes music, consults on... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
World "model" in Llama-2
Do language models have an internal world model? A sense of time? At multiple spatiotemporal scales?In a new paper with @tegmark we provide evidence that they d... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Midtown, Manhattan, Port Authority to the Right
Posted on 04 October 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Entanglement and Intuition About Words and Meaning
Two things have just occurred to me about my recent post, Word meaning and entanglement in LLMs: 1.) That the issue is one of intuition as well, and 2. Read more
Posted on 04 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
At Last, Someone Has Taken the Proper Measure of Dan Dennett, Who Comes up Short.
Dan Dennett has written and autobiography, I've Been Thinking. I suppose he has. Stuart Jeffries reviews it in The Guardian. He opens with the story of how... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Zeitgeist to Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis: a Hegelian Breakfast in...
Posted on 03 October 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What Would It Mean to Understand How a Large Language Model (LLM) Works? Some...
I don’t mean “understand” in any deep philosophical sense. I mean only a rough and ready sense of the word. We understand how toasters work, automobiles, moon... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The AI Future Isn’t Going to Be What You Think, Can’t Be
Now that ChatGPT and other engines have put AI on the agenda, hopes and fears for the future are multiplying. But they are hopes and fears of people who have... Read more
Posted on 02 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Word Meaning and Entanglement in LLMs
It is my impression that, unless someone has had experience with distributed accounts of word meaning, they’re likely to think of word meaning as an enclosed... Read more
Posted on 02 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Yesterday's Walk in South Philly
Posted on 02 October 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Dynamics in the Epigenetic Landscape
The molecular and mathematical basis of Waddington's epigenetic landscape: a framework for post-Darwinian biology? https://t.co/pXUg3PVxkx - this (2012) paper... Read more
Posted on 01 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Transformation of Arnold Schwarzenegger
David Marchese, Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally), NYTimes, Sept. 28, 2023. Schwarzenegger has a new coming book out on Oct. 10: Be... Read more
Posted on 01 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Internal Feedback in the Cortical Perception-action Loop Enables Fast and...
Jing Shuang (Lisa) Lia, Anish A. Sarmaa, Terrence J. Sejnowskic, and John C. Doyle, Internal feedback in the cortical perception-action loop enables fast and... Read more
Posted on 01 October 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Pier 13 to the World
Posted on 01 October 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Saucer Pad in Hoboken's New Park
Posted on 30 September 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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LLM as Kernel of a New Operating System?
With many đ§Š dropping recently, a more complete picture is emerging of LLMs not as a chatbot, but the kernel process of a new Operating... Read more
Posted on 29 September 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
That Reverse Thing: Chatster is Puzzled by “be Not Or Be To” as Well.
As you may know, the following paper has been making the rounds in the LLM world: The Reversal Curse: LLMs trained on “A is B” fail to learn “B is A”. Read more
Posted on 29 September 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Debate Over AI is All Over the Place, Widely Divergent Views, a...
Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders, Doomsayers, Reformers and Warriors: The Bitter Battle for the Future of A.I., NYTimes, Sept. 28, 2023. Read more
Posted on 28 September 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gotta' Clear the Mind [shaky-cam]
Posted on 27 September 2023
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Discursive Competence in ChatGPT, Part 2: Memory for Texts
I've finished a new working paper. Title above, links, abstract, table of contents, and introduction below. Academia.edu: https://www.academia. Read more
Posted on 27 September 2023 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
