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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Thought Question: A kinder and gentler net??
Message-ID: <1995Feb1.043233.3279@news.media.mit.edu>
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Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <3gh2i9$8l6@ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <1995Jan29.223330.864@news.media.mit.edu> <3gmb7s$2oh@prime.mdata.fi>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 1995 04:32:33 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:2099 comp.ai.philosophy:25118 comp.ai:26953

In article <3gmb7s$2oh@prime.mdata.fi> jsand@mits.mdata.fi (Jan Sand) writes:
>Marvin Minsky <minsky@media.mit.edu> wrote:
 [snip]
>Mr. Minsky, I am grateful for the clarification and hope that it will
>squelch what looked like the inception of a snarling party. These things

Thanks. Actually, perhaps we have the same problem: I think that I get
a lot of good ideas as side effects of getting angry at people for one
thing or another.  In fact, the theory of emotional exploitation in
section 4.4 of The Society of Mind is an example of an idea about
*that* which is "based on itself".  It doesn't work on the net, of
course, because it wastes the time of other people--but I still can't
help doing it sometimes, late at night, etc.

>... Although you are pretty
>pessimistic as to the possibilities of introspection, it is 
>really the only tool I have available and I think it  is not as 
>totally hopeless as you seem to fee I find I inspect the world
>by various means and utilise the input in various ways that are regular
>and available to analysis.

Yes. The problem we all face is that our informal introspection about
how our own minds work is our richest source of evidence, but we can
never tell if we're "watching" underlying processes (which I doubt) or
models of same that parts of our minds have cleverly constructed.  I
think I've made some progress by all that experience with debugging
robots--the same experience that led to Gerald Sussman's little known 1972
thesis about theories of debugging, etc. 

In other words, the combination of philosophical-type critical
analysis with our new opportunities to make simulated models and then
being surprised by them give us, I think, a chance to get around the
historical fact that we face: the one you describe as 

>painfully inching my way to
>at least some comprehension of what I am, a problem which
>I must at least attempt to solve in the next few years or leave
>the world pretty thoroughly puzzled and frustrated. Since this
>problem has confronted minds far more competent than mine for
>most of the thinking history of the human race, it may be
>grossly egotistical of me to hope for success, but I have no
>choice but to try.

I think the availability of all the new concepts of computer-science
concepts makes it much less egotistical.  In reading Husserl's
"Phenomenology of time-consciousness," he tries to describe what it's
like to remember a piece of music--you know, the phenomenon that you
have to go to the beginning of a phrase when you get stuck, to try
again, and your inability to back up any amount less than a whole
phrase.  Well, he was a mathematician, but before the invention of
only-forward-linked list structures.  I felt sorry for him because he
was trapped in an era just before there were any decent ideas at all
about possible representations of knowledge.  Just think how much
worse off were the best philosophers of times before that.

----------

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