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Finding Inspiration in Two Symphonies for Winter

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By ChatGPT. Usually, February is one of my least favorite months of the year. It tends to be cold, wet and dreary. There are not as many sunny days as January and I'm tired of winter by this point. Unfortunately, there are usually weeks of damp and chilly weather yet to come, so I seek extra inspiration in various ways. One of them is through specific pieces of music. I've already posted about how I relate to Ragged Glory , which helped me through a worrisome arctic blast in January. But long-time readers know I enjoy classical music most of all, about as far from garage band music as you can get. But that's me. With the start of each new year and throughout the duration of winter I find myself drawn to two symphonies that seem to capture something essential about this cold and troublesome but contemplative time of year: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 (see previous review here ) and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 (previously reviewed here ). Both these wor...
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The Astonishing Prefrontal Cortex – Part Seven: PFC Short Takes III

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By ChatGPT.   [ Part One ] [ Part Two ] [ Part Three ] [ Part Four ] [ Part Five ] [ Part Six ]   For a Long Time Human Beings Did Not Know How to Think 200,000 years ago, human beings literally did not know how to think in the way we understand thinking today. While they possessed sophisticated concrete thinking abilities, they had not yet developed the cognitive tools and frameworks that we consider fundamental to human thought. Their mental processes centered on survival, social interaction, and technical knowledge - but without the symbolic representation and abstract conceptualization that characterizes modern human consciousness. Having the neural hardware (specifically the prefrontal cortex) didn't translate into knowing how to use it for the kinds of thinking we take for granted. The archaeological record shows that tool-making required complex technical thinking over 300,000 years ago, as did social interaction and knowledge of the tribe. But what makes our humanit...
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The Astonishing Prefrontal Cortex – Part Six: PFC Short Takes II

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By ChatGPT.   [ Part One ] [ Part Two ] [ Part Three ] [ Part Four ] [ Part Five ] The Prefrontal Cortex Comes Online: The Evolution of "I" The human experience of self—our ability to think of ourselves as "I"—is not a static feature of the brain but an unfolding process shaped by evolution, culture, and technology. The contemporary self, with its introspection, personal narrative, and abstract identity, is the result of a long and gradual process, largely driven by the prefrontal cortex (PFC) coming online over millennia. The PFC existed long before it was fully utilized, waiting for the right environmental and cultural conditions to activate its potential. From early social cognition and dreams to art, symbolism, and finally, writing, the self has been transformed at every stage of human development. The dorsolateral and ventromedial regions of the PFC were the first of its sub-regions to emerge, existing in early hominins at least 1-2 million years ago. Howeve...
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The Astonishing Prefrontal Cortex – Part Five: PFC Short Takes

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By ChatGPT.   [ Part One ] [ Part Two ] [ Part Three ] [ Part Four ] I recently subscribed to Claude. That opened up its “projects” functionality, which offers something I have been seeking since I started playing around with LLMs. They needed “memory” so I didn't have to reexplain myself every single chat. Further, they need my ability to just sit down and talk to them about an idea with perfect knowledge of a wide-range of previous documents uploaded and chats. Projects do exactly that. It is a self-contained world. By creating “project knowledge” I better explore the topic with Claude understanding my previous thinking leading to this point. I can have more in-depth conversations with the LLM which allows me to explore ideas in terms of casting a wider net. I constructed this series essays as a Claude project to inaugurate this wonderful new capability and, more importantly, to address a fact of evolution that astonished me in at least four ways. I explored all sorts o...
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