Debbie Foster

By stacking transformers one on top of the other, each using self-attention, language can be filtered through a computational skyscraper that learns the connections that each word in every position has to every other. Combined with gigantic training data, these innovations allow LLMs to begin to model very long-range interactions in text—not just

… ‘genius' functions as a mythology rather than an objective category. A genius needs a story as well as achievements.

There's no version of "control the poets" that's easily compatible with a free society.

I suggest that our most meaningful connections to others and to ideas traverse the Not Yet, made possible by the 4-D nature of our meaning-making brain.

I was supposed to write about my immediate sensory experiences, my social mistakes and my small depressions, to imagine nothing outside myself and my feelings. Our teachers (who were mostly white women, teaching classes mostly composed of young white women) encouraged us to write what we knew, and we were supposed to know as little as possible.

Dreams feel as real as life—the primary distinction between dreaming and waking consciousness is an absence of a sense of self, insight, self-reflection. You aren't surprised that you can fly, walk through walls, or meet long-dead animal companions, lovers, parents, or siblings. You are along for the ride, watching a movie that someone else is

Political corruption, instability, and conflict are the natural results of the abandonment of reason.

"Categories" are just stories we tell ourselves about how we're similar to or different from each other, and these stories become even simpler through self-Flanderization. It feels so much easier to frame age differences as generational, so we reduce our identities to fit those labels. It's easier to talk about your fashion preferences when you're

I couldn't say it was paradise but, more, a different kind of reality; and what gave it its fascination was that the traditional owners had never lost contact with their gods. Faithfully, they kept linking heaven and earth with their songs, while the rest of us remained stranded in perplexity, able to feel the power of the rocks, but not to read