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Marvin Minsky dies at 88

nytimes.com

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Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#161

Post by fuck_dang »

God, when I log on to HN in the morning and see that damned black bar I know it's going to hurt.

But Marvin Minsky? My Tuesday wasn't ready for this. He has had such an impact on the field of AI, and even on the social dialogues about it. Not everybody thinks that robots are going to go Skynet on us, and a lot of us that realize that were informed by his work. Whether directly or indirectly, so much of his work has become common knowledge amongst AI enthusiasts and scientists.

I'd be wasting my breath to say that he'll be missed, of course. I wish I could have met him.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#163

Post by brudgers »

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…

The user dang is the moderator. A charitable reading of his comment would be that dang was relieved that someone else was responding to the subthread in a way consistent with his sense of how people should act on Hacker News.

Meta-discussion of the black bar is intellectually uninteresting at best. Off topic in the middle. And disrespectful of people's grief at worst. The least of these is reason enough to downvote.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#164

Post by wittedhaddock »

I audited a class on policy at the Harvard Kennedy School in October of 2015, and instead of going to class one day, we listened to a speaker (Jaron Lanier). After the talk, I stuck around in the front row and eavesdropped on people asking him questions. Eventually, one person came up to his side and asked "are you going to Marvin's house tonight?" I thought this person may have been talking about Minsky! So after Jaron responded with a "maybe" I approached this man and asked him if he was. And he did mean Minsky!!

This man and I started talking about intelligence, ML vs. symbolic, and more... he truly knew many intricacies of AI! Eventually, for some amazing reason, out of nowhere he asked me if I wanted to come to Marvin's house that evening! Of course I said yes! At the time, the only paper I had on me was ironically Patrick Winston's thesis printed out in my backpack, so this man wrote the name "Henry Lieberman" (a colleague of Minsky's) on the cover and gave me Minsky's address!

I went to Marvin's house that evening, and it was simply wonderful! We talked about SoM, and I was included in these discussions and was treated like a colleague. Marvin answered all my initial questions, but only created more within me! He engaged me! I really felt included. It was one of luckiest days in my life.

I'm sharing because I'm reading other stories about people's encounters with Marvin, and while I was reading them I didn't feel as sad. Perhaps mine might do the same for someone somewhere.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#165

Post by mikeash »

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…

It's not a passive aggressive put down, it's just regular aggression with sarcasm. I straight up called it "extremely distasteful" in the prior comment.

You don't have to have the same point of view on this topic, just don't take a discussion of a recently dead person being officially mourned by the site owner as an opportunity to criticize that.

If this "censorship" (which is far from it) causes people who are going to argue over mourning to not join the discussion, then mission accomplished.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#166

Post by wittedhaddock »

luckydude wrote: post #99
proc0 wrote: post #92

So sad. I wanted him to survive until a true AI breakthrough happens, which seems so close (granted for many decades now, but that's why).

If you look at what the cars are doing, I'm not an AI guy, but that deep learning that the cars are doing seems like something he might like. In my book that neural network stuff is AI.

Machine learning is not Artificial Intelligence.

Machine Learning is applied science. Artificial Intelligence is science.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#167

Post by krapp »

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…

On reflection, I think mikeash is correct. The civil thing to do on my part would have been to not bring the subject up, as there's a time and place for everything, and this thread was probably neither. I accidentally created exactly the sort of noise I wanted to avoid. It would be better to expect more of people.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#168

Post by reality_hacker »

joshu wrote: post #57
reality_hacker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imagine who deserves a black bar if Minsky doesn't Have you chance to elaborate why this guy deserved this? Did he build first neural network, lisp machine, ALICE chatbot, break image net. I always considered him as some kind of celebrity from science, while other guys, which names nobody remembers, actually pushed AI movement by doing real things, while working on Google Brain, Watson, cyc, trying to catch…

Ignorance is not an excuse

Could you elaborate?

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#169

Post by physicsyogi »

jonbaer wrote: post #14

"You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way." ... RIP ... The Society of Mind one of the best books.

I remember reading The Society of Mind in high school and being amazed by the ideas after reading his novel The Turing Option. I haven't thought about either in years. Looking back, maybe it's no surprise that I work in machine learning now.

Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88

#170

Post by xxcode »

I would go to Marvin's lectures - they were in the evening, like 7PM or so. This was early 2000's, and I was a grad student at MIT.

I went to Patrick Winston, and asked him if it was worth going to Marvin's lectures given that I keep falling asleep. He said - of course, we all know you are overworked, but marvin may say something that will change your life.

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