Quote

It would be as useless to perceive how things 'actually look' as it would be to watch the random dots on untuned television screens.

Marvin Minsky

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Marvin Minsky
Age: 88 †
Born: 1927
Born: August 9
Died: 2016
Died: January 24
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
Scientist
University Teacher
New York City
New York
Marvin Lee Minsky
Marvin L. Minsky
Watch
Television
Actually
Dots
Science
Random
Look
Screens
Looks
Perceive
Things
Useless
Would
Watches

More quotes by Marvin Minsky

Image
If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.
Marvin Minsky
Image
There was a failure to recognize the deep problems in AI for instance, those captured in Blocks World. The people building physical robots learned nothing.
Marvin Minsky
Image
What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Theorems often tell us complex truths about the simple things, but only rarely tell us simple truths about the complex ones. To believe otherwise is wishful thinking or mathematics envy.
Marvin Minsky
Image
The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Once the computers got control, we might never get it back. We would survive at their sufferance. If we're lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Kubrick's vision seemed to be that humans are doomed, whereas Clarke's is that humans are moving on to a better stage of evolution.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Everything is similar if you're willing to look far out of focus.
Marvin Minsky
Image
One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.
Marvin Minsky
Image
By the way, it was his simulations that helped out in Jurassic Park - without them, there would have been only a few dinosaurs. Based on his techniques, Industrial Light and Magic could make whole herds of dinosaurs race across the screen.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Computer languages of the future will be more concerned with goals and less with procedures specified by the programmer.
Marvin Minsky
Image
We wanted to solve robot problems and needed some vision, action, reasoning, planning, and so forth. We even used some structural learning, such as was being explored by Patrick Winston.
Marvin Minsky
Image
I believed in realism, as summarized by John McCarthy's comment to the effect that if we worked really hard, we'd have an intelligent system in from four to four hundred years.
Marvin Minsky
Image
Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!
Marvin Minsky
Image
You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
Marvin Minsky
Image
In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.
Marvin Minsky
Image
The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the real meaning of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.
Marvin Minsky
Image
No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing but most of the time, we aren't either.
Marvin Minsky