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From: push@mit.edu (Pushpinder Singh)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article (was: Roger Penrose's new book)
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Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 04:35:42 GMT
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In article <39al9e$beq@coli-gate.coli.uni-sb.de>, sean@mpi-sb.mpg.de (Sean
Matthews) wrote:

> Everyone is getting so worked up about Penrose's new book.  But, without
> having read it (though having read `The Emperor's New Mind' and disagreed
> with it), I suspect that in terms of silliness it does not come close to
> what Minsky writes in the October Scientific American, which I have just
> read.

It seems to me that Minsky's tone was appropriate for such a popular forum.  
The average layman that reads Scientific American likely has a basic 
understanding of physics, biology, and chemistry, but the level of 
confusion over what minds are, well, boggles the mind.  Minsky would need 
more than just the few pages alloted him to undo the damage of souls, 
spirits, free will, and all such "single self" fallacies.

So instead he chose to write about ideas that would hopefully get people 
interested in the field, and that would in turn cause them to learn more 
about it themselves.  To those who know more, he offers some heuristic 
advice; for example, people think using multiple representations of 
knowledge and multiple sorts of mechanisms on those representations.  
Obvious?  Perhaps, but tell that to the AI community.  For whatever
reason, such strategies are not popular.

> P.S., And no I don't find anything wrong with intelligent speculation
> about what might be possible in the future: Eric Drexler is someone who
> produced a flamboyant speculation that, inspite of his Analog magazine style
> prose, I find interesting (ignoring some of the wilder bits).  With Minsky not
> the prose, but the speculation, is Analogue magazine style.

Eric Drexler was a student of Minsky's.  So were Danny Hillis, Gerry 
Sussman, Patrick Winston, and many other brilliant and original thinkers.  
You have to wonder why Minsky is a magnet to such people.  It may be the 
case -- and you should think hard about this -- that the kind of attitudes 
that Minsky encourages and that you so revile are precisely those present 
in individuals that produce revolutionary new ideas, forward thinkers that 
are smart enough to judge ideas based on their potential merit, and not 
just on the level of formalism in which they are garbed.

-push
