
Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened? - terpua
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery?currentPage=all
======
Alex3917
If you want to know what mindpixel actually spent his time thinking about and
how others treated him, this k5 article is fairly representative:

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/6/11/224459/073>

~~~
boredguy8
Beat me to the k5 connection. But Mindpixel consistently demonstrated an
inability to translate his claims into anything remotely resembling reasonable
thought. There's a now-lost-forever post in which he claims to have predicted
a terrorist attack.
[http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2006/8/21/121745/650?pid=12...](http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2006/8/21/121745/650?pid=128#135)
certainly sums up the silliness.

~~~
Alex3917
I think the general consensus was that he was a really intelligent and
creative guy, but he lacked the discipline to sit down and spend 20 years
proving his theories. I remember the post you are talking about though.
Supposedly he used a Bayesian filter on real time Google searches to predict
two gas station bombings in Baghdad. It's a shame that story didn't get front
paged, it was kind of interesting even if it was made up.

It's really weird though going back and reading my conversations with him on
K5. I'm sure a lot of people here probably knew him though; it would be almost
impossible not to have had a conversation with him if you were a regular
social news user circa 2000. The guy posted constantly on Slashdot, K5, Joel
on Software, Usenet, etc.

~~~
boredguy8
That's not at all accurate. He was looking at queries that hit GAC and /post
facto/ saw a correlation. Not exactly brilliance, imho.

~~~
Alex3917
If true, this Slashdot comment is also telling:

[http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=424396&cid=22117930](http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=424396&cid=22117930)

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bayareaguy
The story mentioned CyC. I haven't heard about that in at least a decade.

Wikipedia says OpenCyc 1.0 was released in July 2006. Google turned up one
recent article:

\-
[http://newmobilecomputing.com/story/17331/Interview_with_the...](http://newmobilecomputing.com/story/17331/Interview_with_the_OpenCyc_Guys)

but that doesn't say much about any practical applications. There also seems
to be a web service for it here:

\- <http://www.cycfoundation.org/blog/?page_id=13>

I wonder if anyone has found a good application for it.

The Texai project sounds like it is trying to do the same thing these people
were doing using text from Wikipedia and terms from OpenCyC.

\- <http://www.texai.org/blog/about/texai-project>

------
ojbyrne
I met Chris McKinstry in Winnipeg, Canada in 1995. I was not very impressed -
he wanted to start a course on linux sysadmin or something... - with me doing
pretty well everything except collecting the money... and he couldn't even
organize it properly. He struck me as a scammer, though obviously it's only a
thin line between that and "Internet entrepreneur."

~~~
marvin
...and an even thinner line between scammer and AI guru. At least in web
startups your popularity will decide whether you are doing something
worthwhile or not. In academia, promises that "it will work tomorrow, I
swear!" has historically worked very well while providing few results.

------
bayareaguy
More articles should use the textbox-in-a-frame scheme like this one did to
quote things at length.

~~~
eru
Why not quote them without a frame at length?

~~~
bayareaguy
I only like that for short things.

One of these days I hope to find a way to get a browser to follow a link by
opening a smaller window/area directly in the text. That way I don't entirely
lose the visual context on the screen.

I've been told the original Xanadu system was designed that way.

Enso also uses this idea in places. Now that the <http://www.humanized.com>
developers have joined Mozilla, I'm somewhat optimistic that this may actually
happen.

------
rkts
This story and the mention of MIT's "high suicide rate" remind me of something
I've wondered about. Depression and suicide seem to be common among very smart
people. Does anyone know why?

~~~
tokipin
i place my bets on existential depression

from:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depress...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Depression)
"A number of people have noted a higher incidence of existential depression
[in the gifted], which is depression due to highly abstract concerns such as
the finality of death, the ultimate unimportance of individual people, and the
meaning (or lack thereof) of life."

they recognize the irrelevance of everything. it's not uncommon for all types
of people to have these sorts of thoughts, but the very abstractive abilities
of the gifted mean these are more than just thoughts to them. these issues are
as clear, concrete, and tangible as a brick wall is to mere normal humans

compounding things is the fact that these gifted people hold nature in the
highest regard, and see it as the only arbiter of truth. they can't escape the
irrelevance of everything, because that's just how nature is

it's a painful QED

~~~
akkartik
Here's my shield against existential depression, arrived at after much pain
(with major influences):

Notice that you don't bother wondering what it all means when you're having
fun. Meaning comes from having fun. _([http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-
Accidental-Revolutionar...](http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-
Revolutionary/dp/0066620724))_

Having fun usually involves work.
_(<http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169645>
<http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/21256293>)_

How do you figure out what you love? Do something, see where it leads. Iterate
between the doing and the loving as fast as you can. Sketch.
_(<http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24170012>
<http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/24169153>
<http://scrapbook.akkartik.name/post/1451852>)_

What you love is a moving target, it changes with you. If you neglect it you
will lose it.

~~~
michaelneale
I prefer the "dolphin" approach (from Hitchikers guide...). Where the dolphins
think they are the most intelligent because all they do is muck about in the
water having a good time.

------
rms
Existential depression is something we all deal with just fine. It doesn't
cause suicide. In this case, presumably unmedicated serious bipolar disorder
caused suicide. There is a big difference and a life probably would have been
saved if someone would have just taken their lithium.

------
doubleplus
heh: "How do you keep garbage out without any form of validation mechanism?
... All you have to do is try to [imagine] Slashdot without the moderation
system to see what's going to happen to your database."

------
tlrobinson
Antitrust, anyone?

(pretty bad movie, I know, but it makes you wonder...)

~~~
dfranke
Why do so many people rag on that movie? Are they expecting it to be some kind
of epic manifesto of open source culture, and then getting let down? It's just
entertainment with a few extra morsels for hackers. When you look at it that
way, it's easily in the top 20% of what comes out of Hollywood.

------
icky
'M-x doctor' made them do it... ;-)

~~~
eru
My Emacs doctor cares:

> I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are
> finished talking, type RET twice.
    
    
      I want to commit suicide.
    

> If you are really suicidal, you might want to contact the Samaritans via
> E-mail: jo@samaritans.org or, at your option, anonymous E-mail:
> samaritans@anon.twwells.com . Or find a Befrienders crisis center at
> <http://www.befrienders.org/> . I would appreciate it if you would continue.

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DarrenStuart
truely a very sad story.

