3 ms·
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly
by antoinevg 10y ago
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
- justinpombrio 10y agoWith risk of spoiling the Haiku, could someone explain this in more detail? What is Sussman suggesting that Minsky do instead: wire the neural net in a fixed way instead of randomly? What does that have to do with the difference between viewing the room with your eyes open vs. closed?
- JMStewy 10y agoThe koan is commonly accompanied by the following: "What I actually said was, 'If you wire it randomly, it will still have preconceptions of how to play. But you just won't know what those preconceptions are.'" -- Marvin Minsky