Here’s where things currently stand with overall views at New Savanna:
There’s that big jump for 2017. I haven’t got the foggiest idea what that’s about. Nor do I understand the big rise that’s been going on since late 2023, but at this point it’s been going on longer than the previous one. I have no idea what’ll unfold over the next year.
Now look at this, which compares my overall performance on Academia.edu with Steven Pinker’s:
We’re both in the top 0.5% of views for the last 30 days. The last 30 days. That would seem to imply that I’m running neck in neck with Pinker, which is absurd. He’s one of the best-known intellectuals in the world, while I’m unknown. He’s got 75 times the number of followers I have and 2.9 times as many total public views. But for the last 30 days, there we are.
Zietgiest for 2025 "which is absurd"
ReplyDeleteSerendipitous. Plus algorithm tuned for a nanosecond view.
Any love is good love.
SD.
May be of interest...
ReplyDeleteNot too often I see a statistician who says "My favorite podcast is BBC Bookclub."
"Positive but not perfect correlations in novel-writing and psychometrics
Posted on March 1, 2025
Andrew Gelman
"My favorite podcast is BBC Bookclub.
...
''And lots of interesting things come up in these conversations. Here’s something Toibin said:
""You’re building a character. And how you’re doing that is you’re doing it with detail. A novel is a thousand details. It may be two thousand. And that the best way of describing this is to look at how Cezanne built up a painting. In tiny little daubs, each daub having a tiny tiny little tone different from the previous one. . . .
This makes a lot of sense!
"In a short story or in a genre novel, characters can be one-dimensional. But if you want to create a three-dimensional character for a novel, you have to present that character in many ways; you can’t just tell the same story over and over. So, each daub is different. But they can’t be too different; they all have to be “in character.”
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/03/01/positive-but-not-perfect-correlations-in-novel-writing-and-psychometrics/
SD
Read it. Interesting.
DeleteAnother I'd certainly never would have thought of...
ReplyDeleteTHURSDAY, AUG. 29, 2024
Stone Soup AI
by Alison Gopnik (UC Berkeley)
For some time, I’ve argued that a common conception of AI is misguided. This is the idea that AI systems like large language and vision models are individual intelligent agents, analogous to human agents. Instead, I’ve argued that these models are “cultural technologies” like writing, print, pictures, libraries, internet search engines, and Wikipedia. Cultural technologies allow humans to access the information that other humans have created in an effective and wide-ranging way, and they play an important role in increasing human capacities (see Yiu, Gopnik, et al., 2023). A good way to capture this idea is through the story of stone soup.
“Stone Soup” is a very old folktale, found in different variations around the world. Three hungry travelers show up in a village looking for food. “We don’t have any to spare,” say the villagers. “That’s all right,” the travelers say. “We will make stone soup.”
...
https://simons.berkeley.edu/news/stone-soup-ai
"Alison Gopnik (born June 16, 1955) is an American professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work in the areas of cognitive and language development, specializing in the effect of language on thought, the development of a theory of mind, and causal learning."
Wikpedia
SD
Ezra Klein interviewed Gopnik for the NYTimes back in 2021. They discussed a number of things, including children and play, consciousness, and AI. I've excerpted the interview here: https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2021/04/alison-gopnik-on-children-exploration.html
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