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

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If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.
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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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The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
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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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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?
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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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You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
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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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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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An ethicist is somebody who sees something wrong with whatever you have in mind.
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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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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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Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.
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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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Computer languages of the future will be more concerned with goals and less with procedures specified by the programmer.
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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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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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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.
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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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In science, one learns the most by studying what seems to be the least.
Marvin Minsky