Quote

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

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
Many
Differences
Societies
Needs
Whether
Cars
Make
Individual
Individuals
Sense
Rules
Left
Car
Makes
Difference
Need
Single
Right
Example
Drives

More quotes by 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
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
Image
The brain happens to be a meat machine.
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
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
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
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.
Marvin Minsky
Image
I cannot articulate enough to express my dislike to people who think that understanding spoils your experience... How would they know?
Marvin Minsky
Image
The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
Marvin Minsky
Image
General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.
Marvin Minsky
Image
All intelligent problem solvers are subject to the same ultimate constraints - limitations on space, time, and materials.
Marvin Minsky
Image
You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
Marvin Minsky
Image
But the big feature of human-level intelligence is not what it does when it is works but what it does when it's stuck.
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
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
Eventually, robots will make everything.
Marvin Minsky
Image
If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.
Marvin Minsky
Image
To say that the universe exists is silly, because it says that the universe is one of the things in the universe. So there's something wrong with questions like, What caused the Universe to exist?
Marvin Minsky
Image
How many processes are going on, to keep that teacup level in your grasp? There must be a hundred of them.
Marvin Minsky