

Marvin Minsky on Education and Reprogramming One's Mind - nopinsight
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/OLPC-5.html

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synnik
I found the logic of this essay to be less than stellar. He rejects early
animal-based experiments on learning, but says that Cybernetics is a more
promising arena. But he doesn't address his original complaint, that human
minds are different than those experimental subjects.

He also made some logical leaps without citations for his sources, nor
explanations of the logic used to reach his conclusions.

I get his main point - that people need to become self-aware and teach
themselves techniques for their own self improvement. But how can a 6 year old
do that? They are simply not yet developed. The human brain is not done
developing until one's mid-twenties. That needs to be accounted for when
proposing educational changes.

The fact that he presented that had the most substance was that "genius" was
strongly correlated with early childhood environments that encouraged very
active use of the child's own imagination.

From all of this,I'd be much more apt to draw the conclusion that to improve
education, we should just all throw out our TVs.

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nopinsight
> But how can a 6 year old do that?

At least many 12-year-olds can learn to self-modify if they are taught
properly. Some of the research in this area are summarized in "Outsmarting IQ:
The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence"
[http://www.amazon.com/Outsmarting-IQ-Emerging-Learnable-
Inte...](http://www.amazon.com/Outsmarting-IQ-Emerging-Learnable-
Intelligence/dp/0029252121)

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nopinsight
One of the fathers of AI discusses education in a series of essays for the One
Laptop per Child project. This last essay about psychology and learning to
think is especially interesting, in my opinion.

The last section on "How it can help to think of oneself as a Machine" could
really make a difference if we find ways to deploy the ideas to the mass. For
now, applying the ideas to oneself can potentially change our own productivity
significantly.

For other essays in the series, see <http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/>

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lsd5you
Would that be father of AI as in father of the flying car?

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nopinsight
Well, that depends on your definition of AI, of course. But using some
definitions, we are having it in several forms like search engines, self-
driving cars, and question-answering machines.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge>

<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/ibm-watson-jeopardy/>

Meta: snark does not contribute to civil discussion.

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lsd5you
Personally I think that it is unnecessarily agrandising language. That AI has
since improved independently of Minsky does not really have anything to do
with it.

Also it can be a fine line between having civil discussion and becoming an
echo chamber where vigorous disagreement does not occur. Not that my original
reply was the finest example of disagreement to grace this site.

