Marvin Minsky quotes - page 2

Only the surface of reason is rational. I don't mean that understanding emotion is easy, only that understanding reason is probably harder. (Marvin Minsky)
Perhaps the music that some call 'background' music can tranquilize by turning under-thoughts from bad to neutral, leaving the surface thoughts free of affect by diverting the unconscious. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Questioning one's own "top-level" goals always reveals the paradox-oscillation of ultimate purpose. How could one decide that a goal is worthwhile - unless one already knew what it is that is worthwhile? View quote
Marvin Minsky
We wanted to solve robot problems and needed some vision, action, reasoning, planning, and so forth. We even used some structural learning, such as was being explored by Patrick Winston. View quote
Marvin Minsky
There are three basic approaches to AI: Case-based, rule-based, and connectionist reasoning. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Get the mind into the (partial) state that solved the old problem; then it might handle the new problem in the "same way." View quote
Marvin Minsky
Most adults have some childlike fascination for making and arranging larger structures out of smaller ones. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Each subsociety of mind must have its own internal epistemology and phenomenology, with most details private, not only from the central processes, but from one another. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Perhaps it is no accident that one meaning of the word express is "to squeeze"-for when you try to "express yourself," your language resources will have to pick and choose among the descriptions your other resources construct-and then attempt to squeeze a few of these through your tiny channels of phrases and gestures. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Unless we can explain the mind in terms of things that have no thoughts or feelings of their own, we'll only have gone around in a circle. (Marvin Minsky)
Most theories of learning have been based on ideas of "reinforcement" of success. But all these theories postulate a single, centralized reward mechanism. I doubt this could suffice for human learning because the recognition of which events should be considered memorable cannot be a single, uniform process. It requires too much "intelligence." Instead I think such recognitions must be made, for each division of the mind, by some other agency that has engaged the present one for a purpose. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Changing the states of many agents grossly alters behavior, while changing only a few just perturbs the overall disposition a little. View quote
Marvin Minsky
It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Only the professional remembers the music itself, timbres, tones and textures. View quote
Marvin Minsky
A thing or idea seems meaningful only when we have several different ways to represent it - different perspectives and different associations. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Concrete concepts are not necessarily the simplest ones. View quote
Marvin Minsky
It would seem that making unusual connections is unusually difficult and, often, rather "indirect"-be it via words, images, or whatever. The bizarre structures used by mnemonist (and, presumably unknowingly, by each of us) suggests that arbitrary connections require devious pathways. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Every system that we build will surprise us with new kinds of flaws until those machines become clever enough to conceal their faults from us. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Most of our future attempts to build large, growing Artificial Intelligences will be subject to all sorts of mental disorders. View quote
Marvin Minsky
Since we have no systematic way to avoid all the inconsistencies of commonsense logic, each person must find his own way by building a private collection of "cognitive censors" to suppress the kinds of mistakes he has discovered in the past. (Marvin Minsky)
Music... immerses us in seemingly stable worlds! How can this be, when there is so little of it present at each moment? View quote
Marvin Minsky
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless. View quote
Marvin Minsky
We still remain prone to doctrines, philosophies, faiths, and beliefs that spread through the populations of entire civilizations. It is hard to imagine any foolproof ways to protect ourselves from such infections. ...the best we can do is to try to educate our children to learn more skills of critical thinking and methods of scientific verification. View quote
Marvin Minsky
The way the mathematics game is played, most variations lie outside the rules, while music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a casual accompaniment. View quote
Marvin Minsky