
Minksy: “My career was based on cowardice” - eigenvalue
http://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/19
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eigenvalue
"That is, here was this new field called cognitive psychology, and I was
really good at it, getting new ideas, and except for a few other people like
Sigmund Freud and William James, who maybe had better ideas than I did, there
wasn’t much competition. Licklider and Miller were… accepted me as an equal,
and so you could say that my career was based on cowardice, or… or something.
If there was a field where there were five or 10 people who were better at it,
why bother? Because in these fields, you know, if you were a very good
physicist and you ran across a Richard Feynman, what’s the use?"

