Farewell, Marvin Minsky
blog.stephenwolfram.com
blog.stephenwolfram.com
When thinking about implementing the network topology for a large-scale brain simulation, the network topology should reflect the 3D spatial local-ness of the real brain (to avoid redundant N x N communication between units). One seems to either arrive at a fat-tree CM5 architecture or a 3D lattice of asynchronous processors (but this is not very general-purpose).
Thinking Machines as a company struggled with defining the target market: was it a machine for AI algorithms or was it a more general machine. See it's use with Fortran, doing more traditional stuff, not AI.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_the_largest_known_gra...
Wolfram and Minsky both have backgrounds in academia. In academia "self-promotion" is actually not generally frowned upon.
People really do expect you to bring up your own work whenever possible and connect it whatever issue is at hand. This is not considered rude or offensive or "bragging", anymore than if someone told you they're from New York City and you mentioned that you'd lived in Brooklyn for seven years.
It's a way for people to find common ground and show how much they share intellectually.
Thus, I'm pretty sure Minsky wouldn't be offended.
And yes, for the record I have found Wolfram to be somewhat self-aggrandizing in the past, but I just don't think this is an example of that, he's simply reminiscing over his history with Minsky and describing some connections between their work.
The first few times this came up, years ago, it was worth noting. I laughed at the same parodies everyone else did. But by now, Wolfram's odd tic has long been commoditized, and it's our problem if we choose to dwell on it.
Wolfram has other things to say as well, and many of them—recently about Ada Lovelace, George Boole, and now Minsky—are interesting. Those are the things HN should be discussing.
It's a test for this community: can we stay focused on what's interesting? Or must we lose our shit every time the catnip is wiggled?
There are gems in this article that would stimulate a good HN discussion under normal circumstances. Let us put on our anti-troll suits and give that a try.
In principle, you're right, and just not doing it at all would be a cleaner solution, but what are the actual chances of that?
We toy sometimes with the idea of creating an 'overflow' section of offtopicness, but it would be more interesting if HN could steer into the hardest problem, which is (to use your apt phrase) enjoying complaining.
That is indeed quite distasteful.
Edit: that math geneology site that shows all the students of Minsky (and their students, etc) -- http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=6869
Edit2:
Book by Minsky Society of the Mind -- http://aurellem.org/society-of-mind/
Paper by Minsky on finite automata --https://books.google.com/books?id=oL57iECEeEwC&pg=PA117&lpg=...
In one of his blogs, he went as far as to compare NKOS with the Principia.
But so what?
We do ourselves a disservice to get so caught up in this social game.
Wolfram isn't being nasty; he's just sharing his own personal recollections and ideas, often quite interesting. Where's the harm?
Take the good, leave the social judgement aside.
It's one thing to confront somebody when they're being rude. That can be good. But it's pointless to pretend "confront" someone who isn't even here, especially when they're basically famous for it.
Unreal. You're so great, Wolfram.
Yes, I do believe Wolfram went overboard with his claims for "A New Kind of Science", but I don't think this very sweet blog post was in any way inappropriate.
It's not rude to reference your own work when discussing someone else's, especially when you're showing how much they influenced you and were important to your growth.