I recall reading a book by Rodney Brooks where IIRC he recounts his time in the MIT AI lab and how Marvin Minsky prose him certain problems to solve.
I think this was in reference to a robot turtle or something to that affect.
Marvin Minsky dies at 88
171–180 of 188 posts
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#172One of my earliest exposures to CS was his Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines. "Communication with Alien Intelligence" is another favorite of mine. The idea of enumerating all possible Turing Machines and looking for ones that do something meaningful is brilliant.
It is too bad that his book Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines is out of print.
Very true, but FWIW, it's not too hard to find a copy, whether it's a used dead-tree copy (18 or more available on Amazon.com right now), or a bootleg PDF. The PDF version is on the popular e-book sharing sites.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Thank you as well.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#174Isaac Asimov: "The only people I ever met whose intellects surpassed my own were Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky."
Pretty egotistical to frame it that way of Asimov.
Especially given that Asimov said he stopped understanding Calculus when he got stuck on the Quotient Rule (i.e., couldn't be bothered to learn the proof)
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I know very well that dang is a moderator. I had expected that a moderator would actually consider the site's own guidelines when someone displays what they describe in their own words as "regular aggression with sarcasm"+.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I know very well that dang is a moderator. I had expected that a moderator would actually consider the site's own guidelines when someone displays what they describe in their own words as "regular aggression with sarcasm"+. + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10973857
I don't read it that way.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#177In 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…
Honest question: What does this koan mean? Specifically, what is closing one's eyes analogous to in the neural network? What is the recommended alternative action?
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the jargon file [1] [1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html#id3141241
Found this original version copied from this story (original source is a dead link) [1] "So Sussman began working on a program. Not long after, this odd-looking bald guy came over. Sussman figured the guy was going to boot him out, but instead the man sat down, asking, “Hey, what are you doing?” Sussman talked over his program with the man, Marvin Minsky. At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he wa…
I had no idea that koan was a (mostly) true story. Thanks a lot for posting.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Found this original version copied from this story (original source is a dead link) [1] "So Sussman began working on a program. Not long after, this odd-looking bald guy came over. Sussman figured the guy was going to boot him out, but instead the man sat down, asking, “Hey, what are you doing?” Sussman talked over his program with the man, Marvin Minsky. At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he wa…
That sounds like the version told in Levy's Hackers. Maybe someone in HN-land can verify that; I can't find my copy.
Someone posted this elsewhere in the thread:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120717041345/http://sch57.msk....
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the era though, Sussman may have actually been working with a neural net that's not the typical hidden-layer variety. "Randomly wired" could be a statement about the topography of the network, not about the weights.
There is no evidence he was actually working with a neural net. https://web.archive.org/web/20120717041345/http://sch57.msk....
I had no idea this existed; it's brilliant!