Marvin Minsky dies at 88
nytimes.com
Marvin Minsky dies at 88
1–10 of 188 posts
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#2[deleted]
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#3Oh man... This is really sad news. I mean, don't get me wrong, ANY death is sad news, especially for that person's friends and family. But while I never knew Marvin Minsky personally, I've felt his influence on my life for a long time. AI has always been one of my favorite subjects, and he's one of the forefathers of AI research and his presence looms large in the life of anyone connected to the field. So this feels like losing an old friend.
Not to mention that he was a brilliant mind, and his loss is a loss for humanity at large.
Anyway, RIP Mr. Minsky.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#4In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"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.
RIP.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#5[deleted]
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#6Besides his contributions to computer science, his invention of the confocal microscope profoundly affected biology research and is still in wide use.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#7Isaac Asimov: "The only people I ever met whose intellects surpassed my own were Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky."
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#8In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "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…
From the jargon file [1]
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#9What a sad day, he was truly one of the great minds of the twentieth century. Inspiration to generations.
P.S. Web of Stories has an extensive, autobiography style interview with Marvin Minsky [1].
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#10RIP. I will always hold him as an inspiration.
Of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_vs._scruffies
I find it interesting because Minsky did a lot of the foundational work in Neural Network research yet he philosophically identified as the opposite on the Neat/Scruffy spectrum of most NN researchers today. Much like Bayes, I think there is some immense wisdom from his research that will not even be acknowledged as wisdom for decades.