P.S. Web of Stories has an extensive, autobiography style interview with Marvin Minsky [1].
Of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_vs._scruffies
I find it interesting because Minsky did a lot of the foundational work in Neural Network research yet he philosophically identified as the opposite on the Neat/Scruffy spectrum of most NN researchers today. Much like Bayes, I think there is some immense wisdom from his research that will not even be acknowledged as wisdom for decades.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcor_Life_Extension_Foundatio...
Brain injury kept Roy Walford from being cryopreserved, though there it was clearly an extension of his own thoughts on the matter: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=24045 I see that as a terrible shame; it is guessing in advance as to the limits of what can be restored.
Yes, but they will be our children.
--Marvin Minsky http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html
Why Programming is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly Understood and Sloppily-Formulated Ideas
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Why%20programming%20...
The proposal:
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmou...
In one of the lectures, Minsky told a story about how when he was at Princeton, Oppenheimer invited him to lunch. When Oppenheimer brought Minsky to the lunch, there were two other people there - Gödel and Einstein. Talk about brainpower, that must have been an interesting table conversation.
Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious
Marvin Minsky, MIT
Abstract: Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay I argue that the different forms of humor can be seen as much more similar, once we recognize the importance of knowledge about knowledge and, particularly, aspects of thinking concerned with recognizing and suppressing bugs -- ineffective or destructive thought processes. When seen in this light, much humor that at first seems pointless, or mysterious, becomes more understandable.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-...
"So Sussman began working on a program. Not long after, this odd-looking bald guy came over. Sussman figured the guy was going to boot him out, but instead the man sat down, asking, “Hey, what are you doing?” Sussman talked over his program with the man, Marvin Minsky. At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn’t want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, “Well, it has them, it’s just that you don’t know what they are.” It was the most profound thing Gerry Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him that the world is built a certain way, and the most important thing we can do with the world is avoid randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was hooked.]"
[1] http://spetharrific.tumblr.com/post/26600309788/sussman-atta...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-line_(artificial_intelligenc...
EDIT: You can get a little intro to his thoughts on the matter starting about 27:16 in this video [1] (linked at the time marker). If you watch for about 10 minutes, he demonstrates some of the difficulties of using single abstractions for something as complex as human intelligence.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Why%20programming%20...
https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/front/node3.html
From SICP preface, which is the quote that actually matters, this is inspired by Minsky's quote. I hate that the quote that went public were all the other less inspired quotes from SICP.
http://archive.darpa.mil/shredderchallenge/
And, come to think of it, a variation was in the novel Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.
Chapter 3 talks about McCulloch-Pitts.
I remember being impressed with chapter 14 ("very simple bases for computability") as a kid. Finding UTMs with minimal number of states etc. are great riddles. I also fondly remember the discussion of the halting problem and related problems ("does program P output X") in chapter 8. This was my first introduction to this procedure and Minsky made the idea of reducing one problem to another totally straightforward. Many years later I realized that not a few CS students find these ideas confusing.
While he was in Hawaii, I also paid to fly him to the "Big Island" (Hawaii) to speak with people (mostly astronomers and their children, though some people drove up from Hilo.)
https://blogs.oracle.com/barton808/entry/my_travels_in_hawai...
Since I was paying for his ticket, I knew he would be at the airport.
I lived in Hawaii at the time.
Back in Las Vegas (where I lived at the time), the book, and emacs, were new to me. I took it to read then.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/12/14/a-i
"Because of the random wiring, it had a sort of fail-safe characteristic. If one of the neurons wasn’t working, it wouldn’t make much of a difference—and, with nearly three hundred tubes and the thousands of connections we had soldered, there would usually be something wrong somewhere. In those days, even a radio set with twenty tubes tended to fail a lot. I don’t think we ever debugged our machine completely, but that didn’t matter. By having this crazy random design, it was almost sure to work, no matter how you built it."
https://web.archive.org/web/20120717041345/http://sch57.msk....
It is possible to lose an entire brain hemisphere and retain complete functionality (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy).
There is a huge amount of redundancy in the brain, and most brain matter is only concerned with I/O, signal processing, and life support. It's one of the reasons I have a lot of hope that cryonics is feasible -- massive loss of brain tissue need not mean irreversible loss of an individual.
Though not as strong and fast-talking as he once was, Marvin's humor and wisdom shine through.
Here's a link to the video: http://www.media.mit.edu/video/view/ml30-2015-10-30-01
Danny begins his introduction at about 41:29.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120717041345/http://sch57.msk....