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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

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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
Lives
Screw
Science
Screws
Else
General
Problem
Problems
Everything
Fiction
Much
Pretty
Way
People
Ways

More quotes by Marvin Minsky

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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
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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!
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I bet the human brain is a kludge
Marvin Minsky
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But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually.
Marvin Minsky
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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
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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
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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
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This is a tricky domain because, unlike simple arithmetic, to solve a calculus problem - and in particular to perform integration - you have to be smart about which integration technique should be used: integration by partial fractions, integration by parts, and so on.
Marvin Minsky
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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
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One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.
Marvin Minsky
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In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.
Marvin Minsky
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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
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If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.
Marvin Minsky
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Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.
Marvin Minsky
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The brain happens to be a meat machine.
Marvin Minsky
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I cannot articulate enough to express my dislike to people who think that understanding spoils your experience... How would they know?
Marvin Minsky
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The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
Marvin Minsky
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In science, one learns the most by studying what seems to be the least.
Marvin Minsky
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You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
Marvin Minsky
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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