Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Farewell, Marvin Minsky

blog.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#21

Post by versteegen »

ericjang wrote: post #3

I wasn't aware that Danny Hillis was a student of Minsky's and that the Connection Machine mainframe series was created with brain simulation in mind. That's really cool. When thinking about implementing the network topology for a large-scale brain simulation, the network topology should reflect the 3D spatial local-ness of the real brain (to avoid redundant N x N communication between units). One seems to either arr…

But a 3D lattice is actually quite bad in the sense of having a very high graph diameter for the same degree (6) as the number of nodes goes to infinity, compared to other designs, though probably not so bad for low n. Still far better than a square lattice, of course. Wiring of processors in clusters and supercomputers is one of the main uses of graphs with low degree and high diameter (see [1]). I also know that twisted hypercubes were used for connection graph of nodes in supercomputers, because they have a number of nodes which is a power of 2, fairly simple and uniform routing rules (in general other graphs don't), large bisection bandwidth, low diameter, high (maximal?) fault tolerance, and more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_the_largest_known_gra...

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#22

Post by delish »

dang wrote: post #17

Hey everyone: What we can call Wolfram Derangement Syndrome—the vast indignation provoked in internet commenters by his vast self-reference—is off topic. Nothing so predictable can be interesting, and predictable rage reflexes are toxic. The first few times this came up, years ago, it was worth noting. I laughed at the same parodies everyone else did. But by now, Wolfram's odd tic has long been commoditized, and it's…

Thank you. Every time I read, "I never expected so-and-so to stoop so low," I think, "Well I wasn't inventing expectations of others, so I don't have this problem you have." This how-dare-so-and-so instinct grates on me.

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#23

Post by krat0sprakhar »

dang wrote: post #17

Hey everyone: What we can call Wolfram Derangement Syndrome—the vast indignation provoked in internet commenters by his vast self-reference—is off topic. Nothing so predictable can be interesting, and predictable rage reflexes are toxic. The first few times this came up, years ago, it was worth noting. I laughed at the same parodies everyone else did. But by now, Wolfram's odd tic has long been commoditized, and it's…

I know an upvote is the usual protocol in these cases but just this time I'd say - what an awesome comment! Thanks dang :D

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#24

Post by [deleted] »

xenophonf wrote: post #7
daveguy wrote: post #2

30 links. 27 links to Wolfram and his products. 2 links to Minsky's work. 1 link to a mathematics geneology site (who was who's grad student). The math geneology site (not Wolfram) is pretty cool. Otherwise this is a particularly distasteful way to put out self-aggrandizing plugs. Edit: that math geneology site that shows all the students of Minsky (and their students, etc) -- http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu…

Wolfram is pretty shameless, but I don't think you're being fair to him here. The links to Wolfram Alpha are no different from you or I linking to a Google search, and in context the references to Wolfram's _A New Kind of Science_ speaks to Minsky's influence on his work.

[deleted]

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#25

Post by daveguy »

dilap wrote: post #10
daveguy wrote: post #2

30 links. 27 links to Wolfram and his products. 2 links to Minsky's work. 1 link to a mathematics geneology site (who was who's grad student). The math geneology site (not Wolfram) is pretty cool. Otherwise this is a particularly distasteful way to put out self-aggrandizing plugs. Edit: that math geneology site that shows all the students of Minsky (and their students, etc) -- http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu…

Wolfram threads always fill up with comments like this, from people upset that he doesn't slosh out more credit to 3rd parties. But so what? We do ourselves a disservice to get so caught up in this social game. Wolfram isn't being nasty; he's just sharing his own personal recollections and ideas, often quite interesting. Where's the harm? Take the good, leave the social judgement aside.

Well, you know, when you are eulogizing someone its generally courteous to talk more about that person than about yourself. When you are promoting your books and "science", be plagiarizing and criticize those who point it out. Just try to put it on pause for the eulogies.

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#27

Post by gjm11 »

dang wrote: post #17

Hey everyone: What we can call Wolfram Derangement Syndrome—the vast indignation provoked in internet commenters by his vast self-reference—is off topic. Nothing so predictable can be interesting, and predictable rage reflexes are toxic. The first few times this came up, years ago, it was worth noting. I laughed at the same parodies everyone else did. But by now, Wolfram's odd tic has long been commoditized, and it's…

Maybe every HN post linking to something Wolfram has written needs an Official Wolfram Ego Bitching subthread, where everyone can say "Wow, guys, I just noticed that Wolfram has a really big ego and does a lot of inappropriate self-promotion!!!!". Then everyone can enjoy complaining about Wolfram's ego there, without it taking over the rest of the discussion. (This would work better if HN offered a way to "collapse" subthreads.)

In principle, you're right, and just not doing it at all would be a cleaner solution, but what are the actual chances of that?

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#28

Post by nabla9 »

dang wrote: post #17

Hey everyone: What we can call Wolfram Derangement Syndrome—the vast indignation provoked in internet commenters by his vast self-reference—is off topic. Nothing so predictable can be interesting, and predictable rage reflexes are toxic. The first few times this came up, years ago, it was worth noting. I laughed at the same parodies everyone else did. But by now, Wolfram's odd tic has long been commoditized, and it's…

The readership of online publications is open ended. You should not expect community or memory of past exchanges. Wolfram is irritating prick and that fact will come up frequently when people discover it again and again. Don't except evolution in discussion when the site is just stream of links.

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#29

Post by poseid »

really nice thoughts, esp. about teaching and discoveries "marvinminsky said [...] that the best way to teach programming was to start by showing people good code"

Re: Farewell, Marvin Minsky

#30

Post by mark_l_watson »

ericjang wrote: post #3

I wasn't aware that Danny Hillis was a student of Minsky's and that the Connection Machine mainframe series was created with brain simulation in mind. That's really cool. When thinking about implementing the network topology for a large-scale brain simulation, the network topology should reflect the 3D spatial local-ness of the real brain (to avoid redundant N x N communication between units). One seems to either arr…

I was fortunate enough to be able to write software for the first version of the CM (the SIMD one). Although I was keenly interested in AI even back then, I viewed the CM as a great system for parallel processing, with good I/O throughput, and not for AI research.
Post reply on HN