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Article 5724 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: nlc@media.mit.edu (Nick Cassimatis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: subconscious(was Re: AI failures)
Keywords: subconscious
Message-ID: <1992May18.194622.26626@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: 18 May 92 19:46:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992May18.194622.26626
References: <1992May16.162406.17453@news.media.mit.edu> <1992May18.125227.8540@cs.ucf.edu>
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In article <1992May18.125227.8540@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) writes:
>In article <1992May16.162406.17453@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu  
>(Marvin Minsky) writes:
>> As a stoic, I have to work very hard to dislike fun, etc.  I
>> don;t succeed very well and, as a result a lot of my time gets wasted.
>> Almost as much as most other people.
>
>Don't feel guilty about wasting time.  All the work gets done by one's
>seething subconscious society.  Once the conscious has loaded the problem 
>into the queue, there's not a lot the conscious mind can do to speed the 
>solution process.
>
>Fun may be just the subconscious' way of distracting the conscious away 
>from fruitless attempts to interfere with the real solution process. :-/

Bertrand Russel wrote that in the early part of his career he used ot
go through a long week of fruitless torment before he could make
serious progress in writing something.  Later on, he stopped trying to
write during this period of torment and did something else.  When he
finally felt like writing, he would effortlessly finish quickly.

I've heard that Chomsky claims to write his papers in his sleep.  And
there are all those stories about mathematicians and physicists (most
notably Poincare) that had some of their greatests insights on
vacation.


