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"Let's get another group of beginners in to see what they can do... and fire the experts." What a thing to say.
by aroman 11y ago
"Let's get another group of beginners in to see what they can do... and fire the experts."
What a thing to say.
- philsalesses 11y agoWhen trying to bring about a big change, his point seems to be that sometimes new simple thinking is more important than old complicated thinking. That's very much in line with the MIT Media Lab and their way of looking at the world.
- aswanson 11y agoIt's the right thing to say though, especially for technological progress. Old ideas and old people last to long in this business, they need to be overthrown more quickly. Punctuated equilibrium is directly due to old hierarchy handling the helms for too long. Out with the old (including myself) and in with the new.
- cesarbs 11y ago> Old ideas and old people last to long in this business, they need to be overthrown more quickly. I'm not sure how literally you mean this, but have you considered that old people are still humans, and after a certain point it's a lot more likely that they have a family to support, need more medical care, plus a bunch of other things? You can't just throw people out because they are no longer as fresh and efficient as they were in the beginning. Being old comes with it's own advantages. There's a place for everyone in the business.
- aswanson 11y agoI am one of the most humane persons you will probably never meet. I am in total support of taking care of older people, I just think they hang around too long and impede technical progress. I would posit there is a strong correlation between youth of faculty and innovation of a given university in any research area.
- cicero 11y agoThere is value in the old and they young, and ideally you would have both on a team or faculty. You need youth for innovation and boldness, and you need age for experience and wisdom.
- audi100quattro 11y agoHe did say this was a gloomy suggestion..
- giardini 11y agoMinsky certainly knows what the experts can do: he and Seymour Papert more than decimated research in neural networks by writing "Perceptrons". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptrons_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptrons_(book) He remains critical of neuroscience: http://luttrellica.blogspot.com/2007/01/marvin-minsky-bashes-neuroscience.html http://luttrellica.blogspot.com/2007/01/marvin-minsky-bashes... I've sometimes thought that AI would be solved only once Minsky passed from the scene.