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 ( 7812 )
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Three Circular Objects + Stuff & Shadows
Posted on 04 February 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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From Species to Hybrids to Horizontal Gene Transfer; from Tree to Web of Life.
David Quammen, Blurring Life’s Boundaries, Anthropocene, 2019. From near the end of the article: Genes going sideways among animals? That was definitely suppose... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
LeCun: "In 4 Years, a Child Has Seen 50 Times More Data Than the Biggest LLMs."
I've made that point before:- LLM: 1E13 tokens x 0.75 word/token x 2 bytes/token = 1E13 bytes.- 4 year old child: 16k wake hours x 3600 s/hour x 1E6 optical... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Graffiti Writers Are on the Case
Rebecca Carballo, Multiple Floors of Los Angeles Skyscrapers Are Covered in Graffiti, NYTimes, Feb. 3, 2024. A bunch of graffiti writers recently covered a few... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Embrace Everything: Mahler and the Maestro
Leonard Bernstein had an affinity for the music of Gustav Mahler, as seen in the climax of the Oscar-nominated 2023 Netflix film “Maestro. Read more
Posted on 03 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lunch
Posted on 03 February 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Wrestlers: [Media Notes 109]
I was aware of professional wrestling when I was growing up. I watched a few matches on TV. I remember an especially colorful character who performed as Gorgeou... Read more
Posted on 03 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Arts Are Not the Cherry on the Cake — They Are the Cake.
“The arts are not the cherry on the cake — they are the cake.”Opening a debate in the House of Lords yesterday, Melvyn Bragg said the UK should realise the... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pattern, Conceptual Ontology, and the Well-Turned Story [ChatGPT]
I’ve spent a lot of time getting ChatGPT to tell stories. I’ve taken a particular interest in having it generate variations on some source story. Read more
Posted on 02 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: I'll Supply the Adventure, You Supply the Story.
Posted on 02 February 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Using a Kiddie-cam to Train an Ai Through the Eyes and Ears of a Child
2/ First, we are incredibly grateful for the authors of the SAYCam paper and dataset (@mcxfrank, @andyperfors, and others not on twitter), which made our work... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
GOAT Literary Critics: Part 3.2, Derrida Deconstructs the Signs While...
In the previous post, René Girard prepares the way for the French invasion, I discussed René Girard and introduced the 1966 structuralism symposium at Johns... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Items Being Priced
Posted on 01 February 2024
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Forest of Jumbled Thoughts Prompting
Our new paper generalizing the chain, circle and graph of thought prompting strategies--that unleashes the hidden power of LLMs (and graduate students). Hope... Read more
Posted on 31 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Short Note on LLMs and Speech
The linguistic capacities of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, is remarkable. However, we should remember that it is also NOT characteristically... Read more
Posted on 31 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Multi-cellular Life is 1.6 Billion Years Old
A new study describing a microscopic, algalike fossil dating back more than 1.6 billion years supports the idea that one of the hallmarks of the complex life... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Primal Scene of Artificial Intelligence
I've grabbed this from Cosma Shalizi:Herbert Simon recalls running Logic Theorist for the first time: Al [Newell] and I wrote out the rules for the components o... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories & Their Role in Developing the Self
Dubourg, Edgar, Valentin Thouzeau, Beuchot Thomas, Constant Bonard, Pascal Boyer, Mathias Clasen, Melusine Boon-Falleur, et al. 2024. “The Cognitive... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Israeli Looks at Gaza | Robert Wright & Russ Roberts
1:51 How Israelis think about civilian casualties in Gaza 20:47 Is the war spawning a new generation of terrorists? 34:39 Explaining versus justifying bad... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Arithmetic in Early Modern England
Jay Hancock reviews Jessica Marie Otis, By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England (Oxford UP 2024) (H/t... Read more
Posted on 29 January 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
