You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
January 25, 2016 6:39 PM Subscribe
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posted by lalochezia at 6:43 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by lalochezia at 6:43 PM on January 25, 2016
He was a true giant in so many arenas. His book The Society Of Mind changed the way I look at thought and the working of the mind. He impacted so much, and we are much richer for his having been here.
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posted by hippybear at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
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posted by hippybear at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
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posted by LobsterMitten at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:44 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by mondo dentro at 6:47 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by mondo dentro at 6:47 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by Bringer Tom at 6:48 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:48 PM on January 25, 2016
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Listened in on one small seminar on AI topics he was in, seemed like a really pleasant down to earth fellow.
posted by sammyo at 6:50 PM on January 25, 2016
Listened in on one small seminar on AI topics he was in, seemed like a really pleasant down to earth fellow.
posted by sammyo at 6:50 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:50 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:50 PM on January 25, 2016
I worked with Prof Minksy at the Media Lab for awhile. A brilliant and nice guy who was still doing research in his 80s. Even if AI didn't turn out how he thought, he pushed a lot of fields forward and seemed constantly interested in the world. I didn't know him well, but everyone respected him.
In fact, I saw Terminator 3 with him and a bunch of other AI researchers from the lab. We agreed that it wasn't very good. But he had a sense of humor about it.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:52 PM on January 25, 2016 [13 favorites]
In fact, I saw Terminator 3 with him and a bunch of other AI researchers from the lab. We agreed that it wasn't very good. But he had a sense of humor about it.
posted by blahblahblah at 6:52 PM on January 25, 2016 [13 favorites]
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posted by tychotesla at 6:59 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by tychotesla at 6:59 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by silentbicycle at 7:06 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by silentbicycle at 7:06 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by one weird trick at 7:06 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by one weird trick at 7:06 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:07 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 7:07 PM on January 25, 2016
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His books inspired me. I never lived up to my potential, really, but hell, I have 40 years left if I have him as a guide.
posted by mephron at 7:12 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
His books inspired me. I never lived up to my potential, really, but hell, I have 40 years left if I have him as a guide.
posted by mephron at 7:12 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
there are very few scientists who can truthfully be described as being a founder of an entire field of study. Marvin Minsky was one of those scientists.
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posted by bluesky43 at 7:18 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by bluesky43 at 7:18 PM on January 25, 2016
You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
But, 2016, I really don't want to understand death this much.
posted by otherchaz at 7:25 PM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]
But, 2016, I really don't want to understand death this much.
posted by otherchaz at 7:25 PM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]
On my first day of grad school, I attended a "meet all the professors" session. I was a couple of weeks late starting (and new to America) so totally confused as to what was going on. I went into the presentation hall and ended up sitting beside a smiling and genial older man. We said hello and got settled and over the course of the next 20 minutes or so as others presented, he slowly rifled through a bunch of overhead transparencies. Eventually, he rather randomly picked one or two and then stood up, strolled to the front and was introduced as Marvin Minsky. He slapped the slides on the overhead, spoke thoughtfully about the decades old marks, then sat down beside me again. We exchanged smiles again and that's when I really began to freak out in a simultaneously delighted and terrified way. Interesting first day and many more after. What a mind.
posted by recklessbrother at 7:37 PM on January 25, 2016 [14 favorites]
posted by recklessbrother at 7:37 PM on January 25, 2016 [14 favorites]
FUCK YOU JANUARY 2016.
FUCK. YOU.
cons (Minsky .)
posted by eriko at 7:47 PM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]
FUCK. YOU.
cons (Minsky .)
posted by eriko at 7:47 PM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]
Aw, man. My very first posting to Usenet got a nice reply from Minsky, which addicted me to the Internet forever.
Seconding the recommendation of Society of Mind.
posted by zompist at 7:51 PM on January 25, 2016 [10 favorites]
Seconding the recommendation of Society of Mind.
posted by zompist at 7:51 PM on January 25, 2016 [10 favorites]
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Minsky's "Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines" was my introduction to what computation was all about. A beautiful book.
posted by brambleboy at 7:55 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
Minsky's "Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines" was my introduction to what computation was all about. A beautiful book.
posted by brambleboy at 7:55 PM on January 25, 2016 [4 favorites]
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.posted by Harvey Kilobit at 8:04 PM on January 25, 2016 [34 favorites]
"What are you doing?" asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe," Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?" asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play," Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
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posted by JohnFromGR at 8:14 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by JohnFromGR at 8:14 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by Fibognocchi at 8:15 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by Fibognocchi at 8:15 PM on January 25, 2016
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posted by limeonaire at 8:22 PM on January 25, 2016
posted by limeonaire at 8:22 PM on January 25, 2016
The last time I saw Marvin Minsky, he was walking into a party with Quincy Jones. There is cool, and then there is cool.
posted by grounded at 9:04 PM on January 25, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by grounded at 9:04 PM on January 25, 2016 [13 favorites]
Professor Minksy was one of those guys who taught me the lesson of don't look too closely at your heroes lest you discover they're human. I was taking a class at the Media Lab and he was the guest lecturer for the day. Great lecture - I remember it as being full of interesting, thoughtful stuff. (Very much a brief primer to SoM)
We get to the end of the lecture and he's wrapping up his talk. He gets to the end and starts musing about various topics and he ends with a brief discourse on multi-culturalism. This was back in the early 90's when multi-cultural teaching was really first taking hold nationwide. And then he said the thing that wiped everything else out from his talk out of my mind - "I wonder if we're not doing the wrong thing by teaching our kids all of these other 'wrong' cultures."
Can only say I sat there in stunned silence trying to process what he just said in relation to my very very collegial leftist point of view.
Still brilliant and Danny Hillis loved him to pieces and I really respect Danny from my time working with him, so...
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:18 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
We get to the end of the lecture and he's wrapping up his talk. He gets to the end and starts musing about various topics and he ends with a brief discourse on multi-culturalism. This was back in the early 90's when multi-cultural teaching was really first taking hold nationwide. And then he said the thing that wiped everything else out from his talk out of my mind - "I wonder if we're not doing the wrong thing by teaching our kids all of these other 'wrong' cultures."
Can only say I sat there in stunned silence trying to process what he just said in relation to my very very collegial leftist point of view.
Still brilliant and Danny Hillis loved him to pieces and I really respect Danny from my time working with him, so...
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:18 PM on January 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
He destroyed analog computing.
posted by varion at 9:50 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by varion at 9:50 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Zompist: back in the day I had posted something in an AI forum on Usenet to be surprised by a response from Minsky which turned into a short email conversation. I never expected that.
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posted by njohnson23 at 9:53 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
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posted by njohnson23 at 9:53 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
Aw shit, The Society Of Mind literally changed my life for the better. Back when shrinks I could afford were useless for PTSD, that book gave me a handle I could use to manage the symptoms.
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posted by ridgerunner at 12:54 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by ridgerunner at 12:54 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
These days you tend to hear either the old anecdote about how he was so over-optimistic in the seventies he assigned AI vision as a summer project to one of his students, or how he and Papert killed Rosenblatt's Perceptron and set progress with networks back for a generation.
But I agree that The Society of Mind has a better ratio of thoughts provoked per page than pretty well any other book I've read.
posted by Segundus at 1:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
But I agree that The Society of Mind has a better ratio of thoughts provoked per page than pretty well any other book I've read.
posted by Segundus at 1:55 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
I learned a lot from "Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines". I am also excessively fond of this quote from page 281:
posted by erdferkel at 2:42 AM on January 26, 2016
PROBLEM. Choose any two-symbol, two-state machine and show that it is not universal. Hint: Show that its halting problem is decidable by describing a procedure that decides whether or not it will stop on any given tape. D. G. Bobrow and the author did this for all (2,2) machines [1961, unpublished] by a tedious reduction to thirty-odd cases (unpublishable).Although my own proofs sometimes get a bit fiddly, I agree that I would not appreciate reading something with so many cases (not to speak of the poor people who would have to review it). (Also, for those who care about these things: This problem was solved in 1973 by Liudmila Pavlotskaya.)
posted by erdferkel at 2:42 AM on January 26, 2016
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescat in pace.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ob1quixote at 2:49 AM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:31 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:31 AM on January 26, 2016
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posted by crocomancer at 4:23 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by crocomancer at 4:23 AM on January 26, 2016
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posted by tickingclock at 5:47 AM on January 26, 2016
posted by tickingclock at 5:47 AM on January 26, 2016
What Marvin Minsky Still Means for AI
How Marvin Minsky, a pioneer of artificial intelligence who died on Sunday, still influences the field today.
(MIT Technology Review)
posted by bukvich at 1:19 PM on January 26, 2016
How Marvin Minsky, a pioneer of artificial intelligence who died on Sunday, still influences the field today.
(MIT Technology Review)
posted by bukvich at 1:19 PM on January 26, 2016
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Oh man, this sucks. It's difficult to describe all the ways he inspired me. But I am a composer and the great work of my early phase was written for his Society of Mind. I hope nobody minds if I provide a link to it. Unfortunately the piece has never been performed. I did try to contact Minsky about a year ago to tell him about it but I never did manage to get through (or he ignored it).
posted by bfootdav at 2:29 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh man, this sucks. It's difficult to describe all the ways he inspired me. But I am a composer and the great work of my early phase was written for his Society of Mind. I hope nobody minds if I provide a link to it. Unfortunately the piece has never been performed. I did try to contact Minsky about a year ago to tell him about it but I never did manage to get through (or he ignored it).
posted by bfootdav at 2:29 PM on January 26, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 2:41 PM on January 26, 2016
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 2:41 PM on January 26, 2016
knowing nothing about minsky i found stephen wolfram's appreciation informative (stripping out the self-aggrandisement...)
posted by kliuless at 10:40 AM on January 29, 2016
posted by kliuless at 10:40 AM on January 29, 2016
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posted by Cash4Lead at 6:43 PM on January 25, 2016