zlacker

My father had a book by Minsky which I swiped from his bookshelf and read cover to cover. I can't for the life of me remember the title but looking over his bibliography I think it was this one. This book, if indeed it was this one, had a big impact on my younger self, though I'm ashamed of two things now: 1) I can't remember exactly what it was about it that affected me so, and 2) I don't know where the book is! I do remember the chapters about McCulloch-Pitts artificial neurons and Turing machines and the halting problem. I'd dearly love to find a copy of that book to see if my older self recognises what my younger self saw in it.

>>igravi+(OP)
You can see the ToC here: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1095587

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.

>>ehudla+Z2
Neat-o. My searching didn't turn up that link for some reason. Thanking you kindly.