"Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!"

Loneliness

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Loneliness as articulated by Marvin Minsky. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Loneliness provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About Marvin Minsky

Marvin Lee Minsky was an American mathematician who conducted research in the cognitive and computer science aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). After three years as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, Minsky joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1958 and spent the rest of his career at that institution. There, he co-founded MIT's AI laboratory, among other initiatives, and wrote extensively about AI and philosophy. Minsky, Claude Shannon, Nathaniel Rochester, and John McCarthy have been called the "fathers of AI" due to their participation in the Dartmouth workshop. At the time he was made emeritus, Minsky was the Toshiba Professor of Media Art & Sciences at MIT.

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More by Marvin Minsky

"Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men."

— Marvin Minsky
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"Once the computers got control, we might never get it back. We would survive at their sufferance."

— Marvin Minsky
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"If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do."

— Marvin Minsky
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"There was a failure to recognize the deep problems in AI for instance, those captured in Blocks World. The people building physical robots learned nothing."

— Marvin Minsky
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More about Loneliness

"The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all."

— Doug Coupland
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"Successful crimes alone are justified."

— John Dryden
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"Today osteoporosis affects more than 75 million people in the United States, Europe and Japan and causes more than 2.3 million fractures in the USA and Europe alone."

— Gro Harlem Brundtland
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"I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone."

— Laura Marling
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