Marvin Minsky: A Society of Minds | Episode 1613 | Closer To Truth
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- čas přidán 4. 06. 2024
- One of artificial intelligence’s pioneers, Marvin Minsky, died in 2016. With this episode, we examine his penetrating analysis of brains, minds, AI, religion, and God.
Season 16, Episode 13 - #CloserToTruth
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#AI #Minsky
After listening to this segment Marvin just became one of my all time heroes.
One of Epstein's buddy's
One of my favorite hand talkers for years now. Love it. Cant believe its already 4 yrs since he passed
Marvin was the best,thanks for posting this!👍
Love the way Marvin express his ideas, too interesting. Also love this series. Thanks for sharing.
That was nice of him to fly out and do your show. Wonderful tribute to him
Love watching his MIT lectures TY for this
"The simulation hypothesis" is modern subjective idealism.
I see it, therefor it is?
escapism- utopism- cowardness
smokey04200420
Marvin: We could be a simulation in a program that hasn’t even been thought up yet by the programmer.
Robert: What do you think of the idea of God?
Marvin: Preposterous!
@@smokey04200420 actually you can run simulations, even in your mind. God is a consciousness that cares if you jerk off and has moral rules for fun and giggles.
This was an awesome video. Marvin Minsky was a brilliant and easy to understand person...and the questions asked by Robert were great! Thanks for sharing this video with us.
One of Epstein's buddy's
I love to hear this well prepared interviews with some of our greatest thinkers and scientists of our time. Marvin is one of my most admired, for his thoughts and answers to many questions to which I can follow his logic and conclusions that are familiar to me but not in all points.
Thankyou fot the good work and the interesting series.
I have never heard of Mr. Minsky. Thank you for this show.
People are reacting to his extreme physicalist position but he is incredibly optimistic.
I disagree, I believe the Reason we feel is a reaction to a subconscious "prediction" of a future. Anger is a bad future, while happy is a good future. The fact is that it happens so fast we can't describe it even if asked
He is truly has faith in Mam.
Are words the form and representation of a definite action of good or bad if there is a program that directs it?🤔 I'm from Indonesia still very ambiguous about that 🤔
Just like consciousness, religion is also a vague word. It has good parts, a yearning of eternity and transcendence, hope for the future, dealing with tragedy but also the bad parts that Marvin outlined, just don´t say religion anymore because you mix together what doesn´t belong.
His thinking on religion is not as good as he thinks it is. For example, at 21:05 when he says religion guarantees our death and science can give us immortality, and would have by now, he completely overlooks counterfactuals.
I like this guy
🙏🙏🙏
Smart, funny, provocative guy! I liked his valuing of emotion as a way of understanding the world but was not so keen on his idea of mysterious forces by which 'society' keeps us from thinking. Minsky as a disciple of Nietzsche and Foucauld? Wow!
I think he really is a disciple of Nietzsche and Foucauld. I just discovered him while I was about to say the same things as he did while basing my hypothesis on Nietzsche and Foucault
Oh well. Some of Marvin's explanations were nothing more than a "because"; for example, he thinks that believing in a universe is depressing, but believing in multiverses is marvelous; or that God's existence begs the question of who created God, but believing that we are a simulation is self-explanatory, since we do know how simulations work - wow.
All the same, I liked most of what he said, because they made me think more about those ideas.
Idk something is off
What an incredible series
Awesome Interview - what a being.
Marvin Minsky personally slowed down the development of Deep Learning by a couple of decades. Impressive.
Why is that?
yeah, But how could you be sure the deep learning is the wrong way we are going into?
thanks for the info.. it shows how he was projecting his own arrogance to others, so many times in this video
He was such a brilliant mind., Thanks for posting
I don't think spiritual connection is entirely incompatible with science. Especially if it's an individual process that leads you to math and science, and becoming a better thinker. Something powerful and unexplainable can lead you to begin a transition of yourself. Which can begin a scientific questioning. It lead me here.
8:10 I think that I am the same and not the same as when I was 6 years old. Not the same in the sense that there is probably not a single molecule from that time left in my body, the same in the sense that there is a continuity of my existence. I think dialectics are great for things like this.
Although I'm a great admirer of Marvin Minsky, I think he was close-minded with respect to the possibility of the non-material.
And Somebody might think you are close-minded with respect to the possibility of people having their own concepts. But as you can see nobody argued with you, because who wants to look like a close-minded person correcting another close-minded person about being close-minded.
Marvin was a magnificent mind indeed! Jewel of humanity.
After osho rajneesh probably Marvin is the one who hit at religion so hard ...
Marvin: We could be a simulation in a program that hasn’t even been thought up yet by the programmer.
Robert: What do you think of the idea of God?
Marvin: Preposterous!
I think you've misunderstood then. Marvin is refuting the idea of a judeo-christian deity. A "god" in the sense of an entity creating a regulated or unregulated virtual reality is not at all in line with the Bible.
Wonder how many times we was on epstines island ...
i really liked this one
12:54 oyster & pearl story (“i worked very hard to become a good scientist”)
throw some books, junk ,under the legs of one end of bed. 6 inches sleep with your feet at raised end ,free energy for the brain
Very insightful
What would Papa Misnky think of this pandemic and the reaction of the current US gov 😂
that and the death of jeffrey epstein whose island he visited a couple of times.
I hope I'm the only ignorant one who came to know this pioneering thinker long after his death. Homage to an amazing mind!
Wonder what made him and Epstein so close ?
No one, especially not Robert Kuhn (the interviewer for Closer to Truth) will ever explain that little uncomfortable bit of history. It's probably what one suspects.
The woman said she was forced to sleep with him . Gisel maxwell made here
Marvin, what a very clear thinking human.
I feel very similar to Marvin Minsky. Thank you for this video.
What about epstine
Love Marvin to death. I come back to his appearances on CtT from time to time. And while I greatly admire his aggressive approach to certain topics, the idea that our ancestors 2000 to 4000 years ago were held back by religion, even though they built monolithic monuments we couldnt even replicate with today’s technology, is just wildly naive for such an insanely smart individual.
Brilliant.
God is just a word but it must all be working some how. How does the science work on living for ever when people are losing their minds more than ever. Or fuck I don’t know guess people have always been the same level of crazy.
He talks about our universe being a simulation and about programs programs but who wrote the program who is running the simulation. How about if we call the programmer God. I bet he wouldn't like that.
Any thing but a God
Honestly I didn't find him all that insightful. His fanfare fell a little flat on hearing him out.
The abrahamic God is, according to the scriptures, the creator of the uni-verse, he is the beginning and the end of everything and the ultimate answer for the existence itself. Hence there is nothing beyond him.
Whereas a programmer God is just the creator of our "sub-verse" or simulation, which is part of a greater reality, including the programmer God himself.
Because of the much greater differences than similarities, I think Minsky would avoid the term "God" to prevent false associations.
@@eyebee-sea4444 the abrahamic scriptures does not claim to reveal all reality there is a great mystery that has not been revealed. You cannot limit the the programmers ability to self create. Your assumption that the programmer is not capable of self creating is a spurious argument. Time is just another dimension in our universe. If you can create space then you can probably also create time. If you can create time then you're probably not limited by your creation.
He wouldn't like it because it is not even remotely a logical proof of a God, in the traditional sense of the word.
@@bubayou "You cannot limit the programmers ability to self create."
"Your assumption that the programmer is not capable of self creating ..."
You accusations are contradictory.
If Minskys version of a programmers god has only the ability to create a simulation (=our "universe") then it would be misleading to call him God. Because when talking about "God" we usually mean the abrahamic version, an omnipotent power that, for sure, is mysterious, but also for sure the origin of everything and not just an inhabitant of a greater reality beyond our "universe".
RIP but I think we can revive him eventually.
Lonely men tend to ramble about nothing.
Minsky made sense to me. He had a sensible world view.
13:23 “it’s very demeaning [to be told that god created you with certain abilities]” - but even if there is no god - you were born with these abilities. So god has nothing to do with it. Either way - there is no freedom of choice. Your accomplishments are not yours. Sorry 😐
why penrose didnt believe in god
@F K 😂😂
His thinking on religion is not as good as he thinks it is. For example, at 21:05 when he says religion guarantees our death and science can give us immortality, and would have by now, he completely overlooks counterfactuals.
23:20 "If you are good at faith, it means you ARE NOT so good at critical thinking." No Marvin, it does not necessarily mean that, even if that is usually the case. Ironically, he fails at critical thinking while criticizing the critical thinking skills of others! 🤣🤣
These examples demonstrate a weakness in his mind that could plausibly be improved by a "religion" such as Buddhism.
Can anybody recommend other people that have ideas as developed and expressed in unconventional ways on topics like these?
Elon Musk
Ray Kurzweil
John Von Neumann
Rodney Brooks
...
2:08 - culture nature - dangers of constantly following rule of authority without critical thinking
3:59 - neurology advancement - the need to focus on the brain's higher level thinking as opposed to focusing on raw circuitry
5:50 - contrary to popular psychology - emotions aren't the opposite of thinking... emotions are ways of thinking (different "emotions" are different regions of the brain being more activated)
7:59 - idea of self - from a cognitive point of view - it's an obstacle to understanding how our minds work
9:51 - consciousness - doesn't exist in one part of the brain because it is part of multiple mental activities/processes going on at once
11:55 -
Marco Leggi why would anyone want to listen to a raging idiot like Musk?
@@nottwo His ideas are well thought out and developed in a range of topics. If people fully read this 4 part series on his motivation for the things he is doing, I can't imagine many people would strongly disagree that his ideas won't advance human civilization for the better.
waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html
Marco Leggi stop worshiping idiots
Marco Leggi then again if you like this Minsky jackass of course you’d love Musk.
A true genius -
Simulation is akin to God's processes. Who, then created the simulator?
The result of that line of questioning is an infinite regress, and that’s unproductive.
Personally, I think it’s okay to speculate for fun, but I also think modern philosophy and science, especially psychology and evolutionary psychology, is strongly suggesting that our insistence on searching for cosmic purpose has little or nothing to do with the nature of the cosmos; rather its an artifact of the way or brains have evolved.
I currently see the universe, the cosmos, as likely past and future eternal. No beginning and no end. No creator required. In a sense we are the creators, starting with creating these stories (religions), then creating other stories (scientific theories).
That is d reason of a selfish ppl,
Great in his field of AI... but I’m struggling to see anything original or deep in his thinking about wider philosophical or religious ideas.... Don’t get me wrong, there are many highly original atheist thinkers, like John Gray, Alain de Botton, Stephen Penrose, David Chalmers... and many, many more, but Minsky’s atheism seems straight off the shelf orthodox vanilla atheism. Indeed what he says about religion - “that it stops people thinking”, could be applied to his own philosophical views. His dislike of religion seems to have blocked any attempt to try and understanding it, beyond dismissing it as unintelligent or a waste of brain space.
One possible exception is Minsky’s “suitcase of consciousness” idea, which was original... However it’s also an obfuscation of the issue. Sure, consciousness is “of” many different things, involving many processes, but what all conscious states have in common is “there is something it is like to be”. Minskys work on emotion as just a multitude of different processes, ignores the quintessential essence of all emotions which is experiential. At root he was a Philosophical Behaviourist, (or even a Materialist Eliminativist), finding reasons to ignore the “what’s it like to be...” of experience, and focussed only on the various observable behaviours. It’s a blind spot for many who would deny the empirical data to preserve their worldview - another similarity with bad religion.
I think you're severely under estimating his intellect & ability to be self critical. There's no way he had such massive "blind spots"...rather he chose to take view points that were more scientifically based, fruitful, & defensible. He was a natural skeptic for sure, but that doesn't mean he never considered less materialistic explanations.
@@ktx49Sure, Minski was a smart guy and a founder in his field of AI at MIT. However, after the massive build up by RLK as this “original visionary thinker”, I was sorely disappointed. In contrast to an atheist like David Chalmers, he had a total blind spot about the “Hard Problem” of consciousness, and seems to have made no attempt to understand religion except as some sort of primitive science. That’s such an undergrad straw man misconception! He obviously never read any psychology of religion eg. Jung, or Huxley or William James, let alone tried to see why intelligent people might believe. I found his dismissive arrogance as the ‘only rational thinker around’, just irritating when his ideas are neither scientifically based, nor fruitful nor defensible.
@@uremove again not saying you're wrong or inaccurate... just that he chose these positions with full knowledge of things like the hard problem. I'm a huge fan of David Chalmers & he's done a lot to change the academic approach. However let's not forget Minski was from much earlier times where non materialistic viewpoints were not exactly accepted or welcomed(and much less lucrative).
@@ktx49 Fair point - Minsky was a man of his time, but in 2020, I don’t find his scientism very visionary or original. I can’t share his faith that Science will solve all our problems.
What I admire about Chalmers is he openly wrestles with problems eg. consciousness, and comes up with creative (if counter-intuitive) solutions, such as Panpsychism. I really like Thomas Nagel too, for similar reasons. IMO we need a new vision (preferably secular), that reconnects us with the planet and with each other. Science gives us knowledge, but more importantly, we also need the wisdom to use it well. Traditionally, cultivating wisdom has been the role of religion. If we were 2,000 years ahead of ourselves technologically (as in Minsky’s ‘no religion’ thought experiment), we would be a dead planet. Nero or Caligula with nukes?! 🤯
It’s going to be a close run thing, as it is!
I' WONDER FOR THIS MAN SOUL WERE IS NOW? GOD CREATED INVISIBLE (WIND) UNIVERSE AND VISIBLE (HUMAN) UNIVERSE
miss this guy
The main goal of this channel is to confuse people.
A God, how preposterous, but an almighty computer with a higher reality that you can hack and go on living forever on another hard-drive, yes that would be exciting. Sorry but I can’t see the difference between God and a computer, same thing different names. Consciousness running the universe is ridiculous, but a computer doing it is fine. Seems like that almighty device is hard to avoid no matter what you call it.
It seems that Marvin rejects conventional religion because he has his own religion of technological immortality, the simulated universe and that "everything thatv is possible = exists". He sais faith is a deterrent to progress, yet he maintains faith in our ability to understand the world...
One of Epstein's buddy's.
I would say quite the opposite, Minsky's virtual constructs are best hint reality is not a simulation and it can't be because internal mechanics of machines is so different than real life environment. But he did pointed out even best theories could be just a part of simulation since none can describe entire picture, but all do work to some extend. Ideas are logical, if they're combined in rational structure that can be visualized by geometry and symbols, system can be managed by adjusting many parameters. This is what globalization actually is, everything that is is artificial and connected can be controlled by puppet masters on top. It might not be total and absolute control, but still much better than pure natural chaos.
Global virtualization does allow many modifications of human natural abilities and behavior, science is capable to track every single living creature on this planet, in real time, together with all natural parameters, like weather or motion of natural elements. Because most people try to be normal, our movement and behavior is similarity predictable, so AI behind simulation could easy ques what we will do or even feel and think next. This would give central AI ability to make short trips into a virtual future of the world. If machine could ques right what will happen in next 5 minutes, this would give it plenty of time for various small and quick modifications before predicted future could actually occur. It's so much easy to predict what player will do in video games, because entire world is just a mathematical and optical illusion, real world is way more complicated, except there's much less of that chaotic nature in urban city environments, where most people live this days.
This is what makes Minsky a good scientist and not so much philosopher, in my opinion, this kind of people are never satisfied with reality and are always searching for ways to replace it with own constructs. But his basic logic is right, virtualization is the way how we take control over natural environment anyway, doesn't matter if we do it with ethics, culture, science or psychology. Except this would imply anybody can create another simulation and assimilate all other simulations, his worlds can be hacked, reality can not, we are always at mercy of natural unpredictability and unknown unknowns, from inside, outside and from beyond.
Typical PBS. Pissing on its audience's souls.
All these guys looking at computers to find metaphors for reality. Our perspective is distorted.
Marvisky makes sense only if everything is mechanical or programmed, and this seems to have been demolished by Newton long ago. Science has progressed more at micro level since, not much at the macro level like economics and politics, so how do we fill the gaps and cracks in his arch theory of AI by replacing all religions and what about the origins of everything?
It is demolished by Newton? Can you elaborate?
seal I think the world or reality is unintelligible to us, mysteries dominate, and may never be intelligible with human limited capacity. Newton regarded gravitation with contact as mystery, still is despite various theories about it. These theories do not dispel the mysterious origin of it.
Sorry, gravitation Without contact
Newton wondered how distant objects can affect each other, because according to Descartes and the common worldview at that time everything should be a result of pushes, pulls, twists, and things bumping or rubbing up against other things. But nevertheless, Newtons laws of motion and his gravitational law together are the foundation of a total mechanical universe, in which the behaviour of matter is totally deterministic and predictable. Because of this, it is also called the Clockwork Universe.
@@eyebee-sea4444 that Newton theory was proved to be incorrect or not the reality by later theories. The working of the mind remains mystery, may even beyond our cognitive capacity to decipher. I think AI by this scientist has reached a certain level of religion faith that we can know everything, like GOD. That contradicts human intelligence which is not unlimited, and empirical evidence that there are puzzles beyond the reach of our mind.
Yes Marvin made a lot correct comments. But I dont agree with one thing he said. He said we are always changing. But the true self never changes. It acquires the suitcase of knowledge that he just mentioned. So what is the true self let's say the unmodified observer.
What if one were to meditate and find that the conciousness really was outside the body. Even so much so this consciousness was able to sense the body far away.
Well either the brain to complicated for us to figure this out or the alternative to say consciousness is the soul and brain is just like a cell phone.
I love how he shushed Rebecca Goldstein in one of the discussions at the World Science Festival. I wish to silence some of my friends who keep invoking ideas like consciousness, soul and demean the mind.
Chomsky saw him for the fool he was, and in this interview those reasons are all laid to bare.
On the surface to some, he sounds logical, but he has rationalized his own philosophy and has done no better in his concepts than to replace religious or spiritual terms or concepts with either an eraser and fill in the blanks with man made computers and gear and some non provable entity or entities or some inexplicable machinery that is somehow magically there behind the scene. He is troubled by words like exist and reality. Gee no wonder why... when one is hard wired to be a skeptic and yet takes every opportunity to try and blast faith, soul, God out of the water which he claims as irrevelant, nonsensable and non existent. Try and shoot a duck that is not there. A sensible person wouldn't even waste bullets.
So he died with his own myth of which he seemed so sure of in his uncertainty.
So basically Marvin Minsky is in hell right now
Omar A. Khan hell doesn’t exist you primitive idiot!
All these mental activities is not what consciousness is! Totally wrong! He is talking about cognition, memory, vision, etc.
Something off about this guy. Idk why the presenter is so impressed.
If we found strong evidence that our universe was a simulation (which I think is impossible) I would be filled with dread that at any moment our creators would get bored and turn it off!
“I would be filled with dread that at any moment our creators would get bored and turn it off!”
But you’d never notice, right? One minute you’re hoisting a beverage to your lips, and then… nothing
Minsky is correct in many ways, but he should have met some Indian gurus during his lifetime.
14:01 “is there a soul”. Wow. What a waste of precious time with a super genius. Terrible.
Well Minsky wouldn't know since he is soulless. www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed
You seem so certain. Your life must be empty.
Most of this show is about nonsense superstitions.
As emotional and decisive as an angry teenager. His credential in some specific areas (AI) mixed with a temper seem to have created a guy with outlandish and baseless assertions about (1) high likelihood of the whole life being only imaginary (simulation), (2) rejecting “real” as an obsolete concept, (3) regarding possibility of immortality 2000 years ago only if religion didn’t exist, and (4) insulting philosophers who disagree with him. The first three make him like typical traditional “idealists” or some mystics centuries ago. The last makes him an unpleasant guy with closed mind, resisting to learn from others. Rigid mind. His outright rejection of those who are “sure” because they don’t want to think more, seems to apply to himself in many areas he talks with the certainty of someone who’s very sure. Example of his too emotional assertions: In 2007 (main part of the interview) he said in 20 years time the simulated figures of the computer games would be intelligent enough to look like humans. 13 years on now (2020), we are as far from his dream as we were in 2007, And AI was his specialty. This is what happens when your intellect is suppressed by your stubbornness, emotion, and ideological inclinations. A somewhat lucky guy at the right time to be among AI pioneers in the 1950’s & 1960’s (also to be supported financially by Epstein in the 2000’s and 2011). It’s amazing how an open-minded scholar like the interviewer shows too high a regard for someone as rigid and closed-minded as the interviewee.
After listening to this man talk, I am not impressed at all. I see Mr. Minsky as an "intelligent" fool. A fool with a God-complex even though he himself does not believe in a Supreme Being. I have always believed that the brain is made up of multiple high-performance components while also undoubtedly believing in a spiritual realm and spiritual entities. And it doesn't surprise me the least how everyone is eating what he says as gospel. The sheep will always be sheep. After death, everyone will know with certainty that there is life beyond the physical. And now that he is dead, he knows.
”A Society of Minds。“ Marvin is a great thinker! No ambiguity. Neuroscience reductionism is apparently on the wrong track in the first place. Without groups, then nothing is meaningful. Happyness, angry, loves, hatred, morality, gods, ideologies, spirits, knowledge, languages, scientific achievements.......you name it. Unconsciously and objectively surviving is the only purpose on which I can attach a tag so-called meaningful. Collective ideas are the cause rather than the effects of an individual's ideas. There are two major cognitional barriers within western culture. Human centralism, which has been inherited from western religions, and the confident feeling of scientific reductionism, which was pretty much established by the understanding of rocks rather than life. Since human beings have escaped from the brutal environment of natural selection, they have quickly realized that the environment of human society is even more brutal, it is probably where the superficial, ideal type purposes called ideas come from. Morality, religion, ideology, are typical examples of such kinds of self feelings.
Hegel and Marx are probably proud.
@@patmoran5339 【Hegel and Marx are probably proud.】----- Dialectic logic is not my favorite logic. For example, I normally don't predict what the futures will be or should be.
My logic can be simply summarized as "collectivistic-reductionism. " Tom Kuhn is closer to the nature of science than Carl Popper in that the science is pretty much a matter of tik-tok between deductive logic and inductive logic. First, it is the Inductive logics that made the wastebasket full, then it is deductive logic to clean it up.
Bruce Lee Thomas Kuhn is the king of pessimism.
@@patmoran5339 I'm not a pessimist, especially regarding the power of applied science. Human beings have had enough power so far to differentiate themself from other mammoths. The only stupidity is the social attitudes of human beings. Liberal individualism is deconstructing social setups from every angle, which apparently is a mutual suicide.
@@patmoran5339 Pessimism represents a subjective attitude to the future, which is no more than a matter of prediction. I normally don't like to predict things. In the social domain, I think the inductive mindset is not only unreliable but some times also dangerous and aggressive. Pure scientists, especially cosmologists and particle physicists, is no more than a matter of feeling-chasing in order to satisfy the unlimited curiosity. If societies agree to fund a small meritocratic circle to do the job, I am totally okay.