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Comment by aroman | Hacker News Reader

"Let's get another group of beginners in to see what they can do... and fire the experts."

What a thing to say.

Minsky certainly knows what the experts can do: he and Seymour Papert more than decimated research in neural networks by writing "Perceptrons". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptrons_(book)

He remains critical of neuroscience:

http://luttrellica.blogspot.com/2007/01/marvin-minsky-bashes...

I've sometimes thought that AI would be solved only once Minsky passed from the scene.

To paraphrase MM: Let's fire all the experts in NN and make room for someone naive enough to reinvent GOFAI.

Great to hear I'm not the only one. I can't make up my mind regarding the sign (plus or minus) of his contribution to the field.

It's the right thing to say though, especially for technological progress. Old ideas and old people last to long in this business, they need to be overthrown more quickly. Punctuated equilibrium is directly due to old hierarchy handling the helms for too long. Out with the old (including myself) and in with the new.

> Old ideas and old people last to long in this business, they need to be overthrown more quickly.

I'm not sure how literally you mean this, but have you considered that old people are still humans, and after a certain point it's a lot more likely that they have a family to support, need more medical care, plus a bunch of other things? You can't just throw people out because they are no longer as fresh and efficient as they were in the beginning. Being old comes with it's own advantages. There's a place for everyone in the business.

I am one of the most humane persons you will probably never meet. I am in total support of taking care of older people, I just think they hang around too long and impede technical progress. I would posit there is a strong correlation between youth of faculty and innovation of a given university in any research area.

There is value in the old and they young, and ideally you would have both on a team or faculty. You need youth for innovation and boldness, and you need age for experience and wisdom.

When trying to bring about a big change, his point seems to be that sometimes new simple thinking is more important than old complicated thinking. That's very much in line with the MIT Media Lab and their way of looking at the world.

He did say this was a gloomy suggestion..

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