6 ms·

The Society of Mind (2011)

135 points by gjvc 5y ago

gjvc 5y ago
This is an incredible lecture series, and one to watch if you ever catch yourself taking MIT OCW for granted. (This is a figure of speech and not necessarily to be taken literally.)
Thursday24 5y ago
Goes well with the nicely formatted, media enhanced web version of the book here: http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/ http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/
- pupperino 5y ago
  We wouldn't have gone through the "are neural networks conscious" bit of discourse if more people read this book.
- Simplicitas 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this
- l0c0b0x 5y ago
  Oh, thank you!
- kemitchell 5y ago
  Thanks so much! I treasure my dead-tree copy, and had no idea this existed.
ArtWomb 5y ago
From Stewart Brand's The MIT Media Lab: Inventing the Future: After a dinner of take-out dim sum, Minsky, who had been reading the Koran with some dismay at its violent inquiry-blunting formulae, sermonized, “Religion is a teaching machine— a little deadly loop for putting itself in your mind and keeping it there. The main concern of a religion is to stop thinking, to suppress doubt. It’s interested in solving deep problems, not in understanding them. And it’s correct in a sense, because the problems it deals with don’t have solutions, because they’re loops. ‘Who made the world?’ ‘God.’ You’re not allowed to ask, ‘Who made God?’” “Science feels and acts like a kind of religion a lot of the time.” Minsky had heard that one before: “Everything is similar if you’re willing to look that far out of focus. I’d watch that. Then you’ll find that black is white. Look for differences! You’re looking for similarities again. That way lies mind rot.” That lively loop has been cycling in my mind ever since!
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  There are dogmatic forms of religion and non-dogmatic forms. The mystics of various religious affiliation sought a direct experience of the transcendent reality, which as an experience itself is beyond dogma (though dogma could play a role in the experience's interpretation).
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    Oh I've seen a lot of loops and asked a lot of questions about them. In one particular instance I had logically concluded myself into an extratemporal nihilism, where I forgot that time exists, therefore everything was meaningless. It ended when my friends reminded me that time indeed exists and everything will pass, including this momentary infinity. Your mind is, literally at the biological level, a bunch of loops for electricity to flow through. It's not like your mind channels energy to get rid of it? It's more efficient to hold onto energy, and you need a loop for that to maintain continuous function. Don't mistake the spiral for a loop. It only appears to go around in circles because you're a lesser-dimensional being looking at it from a flat plane. Stars don't have stable orbits, they follow a straight line through warped spacetime. We also travel forwards in time. Everywhere is a point of no return because no place is exactly the same when returned to. Time is change. Evolution is an inevitable phenomena of some law of physics we might as well call God. Nature, like God, is mysterious. The more we learn, the less we know we know. Knowing anything, even a load of nothing, calms the mind. Asking questions is the surest way to engage a brain. Asking difficult questions is like discovering labyrinths. Yes, they're confusing to navigate. Yes, there be monsters. But also, loot and enlightenment. It turns out there's a bit of truth in everything and a byte of lies to chew through to get to the good stuff. Nature protects its bounty. You have teeth for a reason. Brush them and smile. You're God. love expands life life expands consciousness consciousness is vital to space travel travel, without moving.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Helloyello 5y ago
randomsilence 5y ago
This seems like a constructive approach: >This course is an introduction to the theory that tries to explain how minds are made from collections of simpler processes. Whereas, at least in parts, the brain seems to work 'reductively': [1] >In fish... >"Contrary to expectation, the synaptic strengths in the pallium remained about the same regardless of whether the fish learned anything. Instead, in the fish that learned, the synapses were pruned from some areas of the pallium — producing an effect “like cutting a bonsai tree,” Fraser said — and replanted in others." Could it be that we need other forms of thinking than mere 'analytical thinking' to come up with a full understanding of the human mind? [1] Scientists watch a memory form in the brain of a living fish https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572633
- trash_cat 5y ago
  We need to clarify what is meant by constructive. There is the theory that the mind is a construction of culture. Essentially we use tools (such as maps or fingers to count) which are external to us, later become internalized. It´s an oversimplification but the point being is that you need other people for minds to develop, and this development happens through culture. [1] The thing that we talk about here is the property of Emergence. [2] "In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. " [1] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/activity-theory https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
  - randomsilence 5y ago
    >have properties its parts do not have on their own That could already be the root of the problem. The properties don't come out of nothing. They must already be in the parts. The mind is already in the genes and in each cell. We just lack the tools to notice the entire thing in the parts.
colordrops 5y ago
Read the first few chapters, and I'm hooked. If this were a course when I was in college I would have been all over it. I suspect with the mind and also life, we will eventually come to the conclusion that they are just human constructs, and either everything is conscious/alive, or everything inanimate, depending on how you look at it. Similar to how Goedel found the boundary of math and Wittgenstein philosophy.
- zwkrt 5y ago
  He gets a little into the weeds at the end of it, but you would probably enjoy the first couple chapters of Spinoza’s ethics. In the book he’s trying to create a solid quasimarhematical foundation for ethics based in his understanding of how the human mind relates to its outside world. His conclusion is that the world of the mind and the world of external reality run parallel to each other. He ‘solves’ Descartes’s mind-body problem by saying there is no problem, they are just two totally separate ways of talking about the same thing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Related: The Society of Mind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050936 - July 2016 (2 comments) Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind Lectures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971310 - Jan 2016 (6 comments) The Society of Mind (1988) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877144 - Jan 2015 (6 comments) The Society of Mind Video Lectures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8668750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8668750 - Nov 2014 (10 comments) Marvin Minsky's "The Society of Mind" now CC licensed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846505 - Dec 2013 (2 comments) MIT OCW:The Society of Mind (Graduate Course by Minsky) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856714 - Oct 2009 (2 comments)
breck 5y ago
I love Society of Mind. I read it concurrently with A Thousand Brains by Hawkins. It seems like modeling the mind as a multi-agent system is a productive approach. I was also recommended Minsky's later Emotion Machine, which I'm reading now (thanks DK for the pointer!). Open to other pointers for related work!
EliasY 5y ago
Minsky's subsequent book called "the emotion machine" probably has some of the most complete treatments of topics like intelligence, understanding and consciousness.
humanistbot 5y ago
Remember: Minsky organized academic conferences at Jeffrey Epstein's private island. Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell "directed" her to have sex with Minsky. https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-unsealed-documents-name-powerful-men-in-sex-ring https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-unsealed-docum...
- cma 5y ago
  Were they trying to blackmail Minsky or was he in on it?
thedream 5y ago
The Society of Mind, where the "hapless" and "unhappy" Autistic Children are "doomed to fail" [1]. [1] http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/som-29.6.html http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/som-29.6.html

135 points by gjvc 5y ago

gjvc 5y ago

This is an incredible lecture series, and one to watch if you ever catch yourself taking MIT OCW for granted. (This is a figure of speech and not necessarily to be taken literally.)

Thursday24 5y ago

Goes well with the nicely formatted, media enhanced web version of the book here: http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/ http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/

pupperino 5y ago
We wouldn't have gone through the "are neural networks conscious" bit of discourse if more people read this book.
Simplicitas 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this
l0c0b0x 5y ago
Oh, thank you!
kemitchell 5y ago
Thanks so much! I treasure my dead-tree copy, and had no idea this existed.

ArtWomb 5y ago

From Stewart Brand's The MIT Media Lab: Inventing the Future: After a dinner of take-out dim sum, Minsky, who had been reading the Koran with some dismay at its violent inquiry-blunting formulae, sermonized, “Religion is a teaching machine— a little deadly loop for putting itself in your mind and keeping it there. The main concern of a religion is to stop thinking, to suppress doubt. It’s interested in solving deep problems, not in understanding them. And it’s correct in a sense, because the problems it deals with don’t have solutions, because they’re loops. ‘Who made the world?’ ‘God.’ You’re not allowed to ask, ‘Who made God?’” “Science feels and acts like a kind of religion a lot of the time.” Minsky had heard that one before: “Everything is similar if you’re willing to look that far out of focus. I’d watch that. Then you’ll find that black is white. Look for differences! You’re looking for similarities again. That way lies mind rot.” That lively loop has been cycling in my mind ever since!

pmoriarty 5y ago
There are dogmatic forms of religion and non-dogmatic forms. The mystics of various religious affiliation sought a direct experience of the transcendent reality, which as an experience itself is beyond dogma (though dogma could play a role in the experience's interpretation).
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Oh I've seen a lot of loops and asked a lot of questions about them. In one particular instance I had logically concluded myself into an extratemporal nihilism, where I forgot that time exists, therefore everything was meaningless. It ended when my friends reminded me that time indeed exists and everything will pass, including this momentary infinity. Your mind is, literally at the biological level, a bunch of loops for electricity to flow through. It's not like your mind channels energy to get rid of it? It's more efficient to hold onto energy, and you need a loop for that to maintain continuous function. Don't mistake the spiral for a loop. It only appears to go around in circles because you're a lesser-dimensional being looking at it from a flat plane. Stars don't have stable orbits, they follow a straight line through warped spacetime. We also travel forwards in time. Everywhere is a point of no return because no place is exactly the same when returned to. Time is change. Evolution is an inevitable phenomena of some law of physics we might as well call God. Nature, like God, is mysterious. The more we learn, the less we know we know. Knowing anything, even a load of nothing, calms the mind. Asking questions is the surest way to engage a brain. Asking difficult questions is like discovering labyrinths. Yes, they're confusing to navigate. Yes, there be monsters. But also, loot and enlightenment. It turns out there's a bit of truth in everything and a byte of lies to chew through to get to the good stuff. Nature protects its bounty. You have teeth for a reason. Brush them and smile. You're God. love expands life life expands consciousness consciousness is vital to space travel travel, without moving.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Helloyello 5y ago

randomsilence 5y ago

This seems like a constructive approach: >This course is an introduction to the theory that tries to explain how minds are made from collections of simpler processes. Whereas, at least in parts, the brain seems to work 'reductively': [1] >In fish... >"Contrary to expectation, the synaptic strengths in the pallium remained about the same regardless of whether the fish learned anything. Instead, in the fish that learned, the synapses were pruned from some areas of the pallium — producing an effect “like cutting a bonsai tree,” Fraser said — and replanted in others." Could it be that we need other forms of thinking than mere 'analytical thinking' to come up with a full understanding of the human mind? [1] Scientists watch a memory form in the brain of a living fish https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30572633

trash_cat 5y ago
We need to clarify what is meant by constructive. There is the theory that the mind is a construction of culture. Essentially we use tools (such as maps or fingers to count) which are external to us, later become internalized. It´s an oversimplification but the point being is that you need other people for minds to develop, and this development happens through culture. [1] The thing that we talk about here is the property of Emergence. [2] "In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. " [1] https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/activity-theory https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
- randomsilence 5y ago
  >have properties its parts do not have on their own That could already be the root of the problem. The properties don't come out of nothing. They must already be in the parts. The mind is already in the genes and in each cell. We just lack the tools to notice the entire thing in the parts.

colordrops 5y ago

Read the first few chapters, and I'm hooked. If this were a course when I was in college I would have been all over it. I suspect with the mind and also life, we will eventually come to the conclusion that they are just human constructs, and either everything is conscious/alive, or everything inanimate, depending on how you look at it. Similar to how Goedel found the boundary of math and Wittgenstein philosophy.

zwkrt 5y ago
He gets a little into the weeds at the end of it, but you would probably enjoy the first couple chapters of Spinoza’s ethics. In the book he’s trying to create a solid quasimarhematical foundation for ethics based in his understanding of how the human mind relates to its outside world. His conclusion is that the world of the mind and the world of external reality run parallel to each other. He ‘solves’ Descartes’s mind-body problem by saying there is no problem, they are just two totally separate ways of talking about the same thing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

Related: The Society of Mind - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050936 - July 2016 (2 comments) Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind Lectures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971310 - Jan 2016 (6 comments) The Society of Mind (1988) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8877144 - Jan 2015 (6 comments) The Society of Mind Video Lectures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8668750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8668750 - Nov 2014 (10 comments) Marvin Minsky's "The Society of Mind" now CC licensed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6846505 - Dec 2013 (2 comments) MIT OCW:The Society of Mind (Graduate Course by Minsky) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856714 - Oct 2009 (2 comments)

breck 5y ago

I love Society of Mind. I read it concurrently with A Thousand Brains by Hawkins. It seems like modeling the mind as a multi-agent system is a productive approach. I was also recommended Minsky's later Emotion Machine, which I'm reading now (thanks DK for the pointer!). Open to other pointers for related work!

EliasY 5y ago

Minsky's subsequent book called "the emotion machine" probably has some of the most complete treatments of topics like intelligence, understanding and consciousness.

humanistbot 5y ago

Remember: Minsky organized academic conferences at Jeffrey Epstein's private island. Virginia Giuffre testified in a 2015 deposition in her defamation lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell that Maxwell "directed" her to have sex with Minsky. https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-unsealed-documents-name-powerful-men-in-sex-ring https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-unsealed-docum...

cma 5y ago
Were they trying to blackmail Minsky or was he in on it?

thedream 5y ago

The Society of Mind, where the "hapless" and "unhappy" Autistic Children are "doomed to fail" [1]. [1] http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/som-29.6.html http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/som-29.6.html