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Marvin Minsky dies at 88

nytimes.com

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Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#141

Post by pantalaimon »

koder2016 wrote: post #135
cmarschner wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resurrection from cerebral hemorrhage seems unlikely, though. How would they do it - wash it out? A brain that thought about the brain for a lifetime, wiped out in minutes.

How about a cybernetic creature that is 30% Minsky? Is it much worse then current approach - passing down DNA and spending 18 years on training?

I'd find the thought of only having 30% of your brain left functioning pretty scary - rather be dead than barely alive.

Everything eventually ends, I don't see the appeal in pushing that only to suffer.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#142

Post by jacquesm »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #137
dang wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you.

Why?

Because it very strongly reflects the guiding idea of what is best for HN given that 'petty disputes' are the opposite. They are destructive to a degree that is hard to imagine until you put a figure on it.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#143

Post by rbanffy »

Eliezer wrote: post #36
rbanffy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When he's uploaded, who owns the copyright of this mind? Should it be considered a derivative work from his education?

Uh, Minsky does?

This debate will be an interesting one. I imagine life insurance companies demanding their money back if the once deceased person is alive again. Also, how would inheritance work if heirs can spawn multiple instances of themselves that may not act as a single collective (and inheriting copyright may fit here).

It'll be fun.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#144

Post by myztic »

d0mdo0ss wrote: post #109

One amazon review for The Society of Mind says "The book has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. It has everything to do with speculation. And since no one has builty the society of mind from this blueprint in over 15 years, what does that tell us about the usefulness of the idea??" A"Marvin Minsky" replied: "It tells us that most AI researchers are still looking for oversimplistic solutions to problems. This…

He also wrote a few product reviews http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3145L3LF7U7F5/ref=cm_c... ;)

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#145

Post by zimpenfish »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #114
mckoss wrote: post #113

As a grad student, I remember shooting the bull with Minsky and Hillis (1983). The CIA had offices across the hall and we were discussing how we might grab one of their bags of shredded documents and use a computer to piece together all the fragments by hashing the pattern of edge fragments on each piece.

Which later became a real-life DARPA Challenge (solved). http://archive.darpa.mil/shredderchallenge/ And, come to think of it, a variation was in the novel Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.

There's an excellent chapter about it in http://www.glassner.com/portfolio/morphs-mallards-and-montag...

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#146

Post by heyrhett »

While I was a student at MIT, I heard a rumor that Prof. Minsky in the 1960's thought computer vision was such an easy problem that he assigned it to a first year undergrad.

I asked him if it was true, and he said that it wasn't true that he thought the problem was easy, but it is true that he had a first year undergrad student that he decided to put in charge of his grad students working on the problem. The first year student was Gerald Sussman.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#147

Post by JupiterMoon »

jacquesm wrote: post #142
JupiterMoon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because it very strongly reflects the guiding idea of what is best for HN given that 'petty disputes' are the opposite. They are destructive to a degree that is hard to imagine until you put a figure on it.

Unfortunately to my eyes the comment that dang thanked looked like it was a rather passive aggressive put down. Especially in the context that the OP was not being petty but was raising an important point in a measured way.

EDIT Civility is important but it should not be confused for everyone having the same point of view on a topic. And censorship by "civility" causes people to not join discussions. When I come to HN I want a intelligent but lively discussion. However, some issues have reached such a consensus such that even well thought out opposing views put politely get heavily downvoted.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#148

Post by EGreg »

Reading the comments here, I would have loved to meet the guy. I'm in my 30s and I've met and spoken to precious few of "the greats" of our generation. I feel like there are two phenomena going on:

1) We don't always know who is one of "the greats" of today's generation, until much later.

2) Today, content generation is so democratized (eg wikipedia, soundcloud) that there are less individual superstars like Pushkin, etc.

3) Even intellectuals who were once highly regarded would today have tons of comments on their blog nitpicking and debating every detail of what they said, with many of the comments being low quality. See eg Sam Harris vs Noam Chomsky debates.

It seems like a world in which it's harder to be great like Alan Turing or Claude Shannon or Richard Feynman or Marvin Minsky. At the same time, maybe there are more great people than ever, and we just don't always know who they are until much later.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#149

Post by joe563323 »

pavs wrote: post #106
gonzo wrote: post #93

I met Minsky once in February 1987, at a rally in Las Vegas to protest the Nevada Test Site.. A lot of famous people (Carl Sagan, Barbara Boxer, Tom Downey, Ramsey Clark, Martin Sheen, Kris Kristofferson) were there, but I'd gone to meet Minsky. I had taken along a (quite early) copy of the GNU Emacs manual. The FSF was selling them, but I'd put this one together myself. Running TeX on the texinfo source, converting…

Amazing. If possible, can you please share a picture of the autographs?

Yes. Please please please do share the picture of autographs.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#150

Post by tomhoward »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #147
jacquesm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it very strongly reflects the guiding idea of what is best for HN given that 'petty disputes' are the opposite. They are destructive to a degree that is hard to imagine until you put a figure on it.

Unfortunately to my eyes the comment that dang thanked looked like it was a rather passive aggressive put down. Especially in the context that the OP was not being petty but was raising an important point in a measured way. EDIT Civility is important but it should not be confused for everyone having the same point of view on a topic. And censorship by "civility" causes people to not join discussions. When I come to H…

Think about it this way...

Imagine you were the caretaker of a public establishment like a school or business, and news broke of the passing of an eminent person who was deeply respected and admired by many of the people who frequent that establishment.

So you went and lowered the flag to half-mast, because that is the customary and respectful thing to do. And whilst most people appreciated the gesture and felt comforted by the shared sense of mourning and respect for the deceased person, a small minority erupted into a noisy debate about how appropriate it was to lower the flag, and whether someone else was more worthy of having the flag lowered in their honour, etc.

If you can imagine this scenario in real life, you can understand how dang feels when this kind of argument erupts on a bereavement thread on a site he runs and cares so deeply about cultivating as a pleasant site to visit.

He can't be the one to call people out for being insensitive, but he can at least say "Thank you" to someone who does, and who in doing so, gives him some much-needed reassurance about the level of emotional intelligence around this place.

Discussions about the merits of customs and policies on the site are fair enough, but if we're to be as humane and compassionate online as we would try to be offline, the time and place of the mourning and honouring of a just-deceased person is not the right time and place.

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