A Wisdom Archive on Marvin Minsky

Blum attended MIT, where he received his bachelor's degree and his master's degree in EECS in 1959 and 1961 respectively, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1964 under professor Marvin Minsky. He worked as a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley until 2000. He is currently the Bruce Nelson Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where his wife, Lenore Blum, and son, Avrim Blum, ...

Read more here: » Manuel Blum: Encyclopedia II - Manuel Blum - Biography

He is known for his design of Planner that was the first Artificial Intelligence programming language based on procedural plans that were invoked using pattern-directed invocation from assertions and goals. Hewitt (whose 1971 disseration in mathematics committee was Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert (supervisor) and Mike Paterson) championed the "procedural embedding of knowledge" in the form of high level procedural plans in contrast to the logical approach pioneered by John McCarthy who advocated expressing knowledge declaratively in mathemati ...

Read more here: » Carl Hewitt: Encyclopedia II - Carl Hewitt - Academic work

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM or LSCM) is a valuable tool for obtaining high resolution images and 3-D reconstructions. The key feature of confocal microscopy is its ability to produce blur-free images of thick specimens at various depths. Images are taken point-by-point and reconstructed with a computer, rather than projected through an eyepiece. The principle for this special kind of microscopy was developed by Marvin Minsky in 1953, but it took another thirty years and the development of lasers as near-ideal point light ... Including:

• Confocal laser scanning microscopy - Image formation
• Confocal laser scanning microscopy - Resolution enhancement by the confocal principle

Read more here: » Confocal laser scanning microscopy: Encyclopedia - Confocal laser scanning microscopy

Photographic memory, eidetic memory, or total recall, is the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with great accuracy and in seemingly unlimited volume. It is said that many famous artists and composers, like Claude Monet and Mozart, possibly had eidetic memory. Eidetic memory - Controversy. Dr. Marvin Minsky, in his book The Society of Mind, claims to have been unable to verify claims of eidetic memory (see sections 15.3 & 15.6) and considers reports of eid ... Including:

• Eidetic memory - Controversy
• Eidetic memory - Real People With Possible Eidetic Memory
• Eidetic memory - Eidetic memory in fiction

Read more here: » Eidetic memory: Encyclopedia - Eidetic memory

The concept originated in a conversation on a computer net in the 1980s when some scientists who usually work in artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky of MIT and John McCarthy and Hans Moravec of Stanford, were speculating about variations on the skyhook concept with some scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who usually work on laser-initiated fusion, Roderick Hyde and Lowell Wood. As a means of supporting the upper end of a traditional space elevator at an altitude much less than geostationary, they proposed a ring of space ...

Read more here: » Space fountain: Encyclopedia II - Space fountain - History

Dr. Marvin Minsky, in his book The Society of Mind, claims to have been unable to verify claims of eidetic memory (see sections 15.3 & 15.6) and considers reports of eidetic memory to be an "unfounded myth". Support for the belief that eidetic memory could be a myth was supplied by the psychologist Adriaan de Groot, who conducted an experiment into the ability of chess Grandmasters to memorise complex positions of chess pieces on a chess board. Initially it was found that these experts could recall surprising amounts of inf ...

Read more here: » Eidetic memory: Encyclopedia II - Eidetic memory - Controversy

Why we laugh has been the subject of serious academic study, examples being: Sigmund Freud's "Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious". Marvin Minsky in Society of Mind. Marvin suggests that laughter has a specific function related to the human brain. In his opinion jokes and laughter are mechanisms for the brain to learn Nonsense. For that reason, he argues, jokes are usually not as funny when you hear them repeatedly. Edward de Bono in "The mechanism of ...

Read more here: » Joke: Encyclopedia II - Joke - Psychology of jokes

There are two groups distinguished: Acceptors/Recognizers and Transducers. Finite state machine - Acceptors and recognizers. This kind of machine gives a binary output, saying either yes or no to answer whether the input is accepted by the machine or not. The machine can also be described as defining a language, in this case the language defined would contain every word accepted by the machine but none of the rejected ones. All states of the FSM are said to be either accepting or not acceptin ...

Read more here: » Finite state machine: Encyclopedia II - Finite state machine - Classification