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

More quotes by Marvin Minsky

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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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Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.
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We turn to quantities when we can't compare the qualities of things.
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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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I bet the human brain is a kludge
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One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.
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Eventually, robots will make everything.
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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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In science, one learns the most by studying what seems to be the least.
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You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
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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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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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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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The brain happens to be a meat machine.
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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The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.
Marvin Minsky
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Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.
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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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.
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