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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Almost unrelated by now to Minsky's new article
Message-ID: <1994Dec21.182700.2540@news.media.mit.edu>
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References: <D0uyvy.4v5@armory.com> <3d7nn4$52m@crl10.crl.com> <D164FE.68s@armory.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 18:27:00 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:26017 comp.robotics:16484 comp.ai.philosophy:23953

In article <D164FE.68s@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>In article <3d7nn4$52m@crl10.crl.com>, Walter Raisanen <azi@crl.com> wrote:
>>Richard Steven Walz (rstevew@armory.com) wrote:
>>: ! ... !!!
>>[ ... and a whole passel more of them ...]
>>Steve, you should know that god allots to man a fixed number of !'s.
>>You are using yours up at a prodigious rate.  Have a care.
>>Also, try decaf.  It will lower your blood pressure.
>>Merry Christmas, Wally
>----------------------------------
>Haven't used stimulants since 1979! I'm actually quite sedate. But periods
>somehow just don't Do it for me! See! Ilike some of the larger, prettier
>characters in the extended ASCII set. Maybe I'll take to using the upper
>bit as well; THEN I can put such things as , or , or  in my sentences as
>delimiters! And if there were a fixed number of bangs, (!'s), then C and
>UNIX programmers would all be dead by now!!!;->
>Happy Solstice, Steve :-)
>-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

Don't let them slow you down.  When I was a kid, strangers were always
saying things like "Take it easy," and stuff like that.  (But not my
parents, thank goodness.)

It may be true about the fixed number of '!'s though.  My orthopedist
(who rebuilt my ankle after I tried a wrong-footed leap) agrees that a
person may have a fixed number of high-impact steps to take before the
articular cartilages wear down; these are among the few tissues that
don't repair themselves after injury.  So he's negative about such
exercises as jogging.

I feel obliged to add, because of posting to c.a.p., that there has
been recent claims for evidence that in order to keep smart you should
spend time solving hard problems.  For this, I suspect, one
should do high-impact ones while avoiding anaerobic thinking--e.g., trying
to define consciousness, or asking the meaning of Turing tests.

