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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

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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
Tell
Complexes
Believe
Complex
Things
Envy
Thinking
Otherwise
Mathematics
Wishful
Ones
Theorems
Simple
Truths
Often
Rarely

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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.
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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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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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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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Eventually, robots will make everything.
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Computer languages of the future will be more concerned with goals and less with procedures specified by the programmer.
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In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.
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If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.
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An ethicist is somebody who sees something wrong with whatever you have in mind.
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The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
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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.
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You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
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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.
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Everything is similar if you're willing to look far out of focus.
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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.
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In science, one learns the most by studying what seems to be the least.
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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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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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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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We turn to quantities when we can't compare the qualities of things.
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