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

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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.
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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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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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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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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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In science, one learns the most by studying what seems to be the least.
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Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children.
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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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We turn to quantities when we can't compare the qualities of things.
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If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.
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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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In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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