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From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Subject: Re: Did Marvin Minsky ever write this ?
Message-ID: <1995Dec15.143007.15974@media.mit.edu>
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Cc: minsky
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
References: <x74tv4m2qf.fsf@ue801be.ue801be.ppp.lrz-muenchen.de>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 14:30:07 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:35352 comp.ai.philosophy:35884

In article <x74tv4m2qf.fsf@ue801be.ue801be.ppp.lrz-muenchen.de> gewil@ue801be.ppp.lrz-muenchen.de writes:
>
>Hello,
>
>I've just started to read SICP and I found this curious reference:
>
>"Why programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood and
>sloppily formulated ideas" M.Minsky.

What is SICP?>

>Unfortunately there wasn't any further hint on where to find this article
>and due to it's place as a motto of the preface, it is perhaps sort of a
>polemic fiction.

"Why Programming is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly-Understood and
Sloppily-Formulated Ideas,"  in [Design and Planning II -- Computers in
Design and Communication,] (Martin Krampen and Peter Seitz, eds.),
Visual Committee Books, Hastings House Publishers, New York, 1967

I can't find a copy right now.  It was a serious article.  In 1967,
most people still believed that programs could do only logical things.
(I have the impression that some of the arguments in  Penrose's
AI-skeptical writing reflect this.)  In this old paper I argued that
progams could also perform (or simulate) ordinary non-logical
reasoning, and could use heuristics to make productive analogies, etc.
The paper goes on to discuss the idea that inside a program you could set
up adversarial processes--with one side composing defenses for an
idea, another attacking them, with others acting like judges, juries,
and arbitrators. 

If I can find a copy, I'll scan it and put it on my ftp web page: see

   http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/minsky.html

or

   ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/minsky/


