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Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.

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
Learn
Three
Fortran
Take
Lisp
Would
Except
Already
Knew
Days
Anyone

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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.
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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?
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One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.
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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.
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An ethicist is somebody who sees something wrong with whatever you have in mind.
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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.
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Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas - of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks.
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No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing but most of the time, we aren't either.
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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.
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You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
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The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
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All intelligent problem solvers are subject to the same ultimate constraints - limitations on space, time, and materials.
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Experience has shown that science frequently develops most fruitfully once we learn to examine the things that seem the simplest, instead of those that seem the most mysterious.
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Everything, including that which happens in our brains, depends on these and only on these: A set of fixed, deterministic laws.
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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.
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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.
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It's ridiculous to live 100 years and only be able to remember 30 million bytes. You know, less than a compact disc. The human condition is really becoming more obsolete every minute.
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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
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How many processes are going on, to keep that teacup level in your grasp? There must be a hundred of them.
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