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Society of Mind Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Agents and Emergence before it was popular.
Comment: This book by one of the most important pioneers in artificial intelligence was ahead of its time.

It deals with a society of agents that interact with each other, organize into hierarchies and networks, and give rise to "emergent" properties (in Minsky's view, the mind).

The ideas in this book were highly influential in artificial intelligence, computer science, the philosophy of mind, and psychology.

The book may seem a "popular" exposition and it was geared, in a sense, to be so. However, the fundamental underlying ideas are extremely important to a variety of fields and have made a substantial impact.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in artificial intelligence, computer science or emergent phenomena.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Simple agents and the human mind
Comment: According to Marvin Minsky the mind is composed of a collection of simple objects, agents. Working together these agents creates our mind.
Some might find this approach somewhat reductionist. However, in broad terms it lines up with my understanding of the mind. So this is ok for me. However, I think that there are many mysteries of the mind that we need to address.
I.e. How can two agents, say sound and sight, bind together and give you an experience which includes both? And how do you really get from something as basic as cells to a conscious experience. All of this is hardly crystal clear .... And the books doesn't bring you any further in
understanding these questions.
Yet, it is, as other readers have stated, a highly original and thought provoking introduction to the major questions involving mental states, concept formation in the brain, learning theory, and artificial intelligence.

-Simon

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Professor, where is your scientific rigor?
Comment: This book is full of sweet tales cooked up in some guy's head. This is okay for Tom Clancy but absolutely dumb for an MIT professor (which the author is). The author never backs up his ideas with rigorous experiments/proof- Its just a pile of sweet-sounding personal opinions. If you like that and have no interest in scientific rigor; just a good story then its a great book. However, if you need to learn about REAL Artificial Intelligence, the mind and similar fields and how a good book in these fields are written then this book is a waste of time and fit only for consumption by a trash bin. I am surprise an MIT professor considers this fit material to publish. Its time for this guy to make a home in Florida and start loading on viagra to keep the wife happy.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Understanding how the mind works
Comment: This is a very unusual book. 270 chapters of one page grouped under 30 headings. Minsky tries to figure out how the mind works, by splitting what it does in one page very interesting bits. The discipline of one subject per page is unusual but effective. The brain is recognised as enormously complicated, but not so complicated that nothing can be understood about it. In fact it can only be understood by understanding its many different bits. Minsky built the first "randomly wired neural network learning machine" the SMRAC Such a type of machine has some kind of intelligence and some learning capabilities. Marvin Minsky is one of the pioneers of "artificial intelligence". He found that to make these machines work intelligently it was useful to figure out how the brain solved the challenges of for example seeing in a useful way. To understand those brain processes Minsky delved into the workings of evolution.He found that you can learn a lot by figuring out how evolution in different steps increased brain capabilities. For example: why are we much more capable to remember faces of people rather than their names? Simply because vision is much older than language. Or why do people have strong egocentric tendencies? That is the result of a child having to learn how to survive. Why blind desire for prestige, money and sex? Our shared ancestry with chimpanzees etc
To me surprisingly the book contains many useful rules that can make you more effective. For example if you want to convince somebody it is better to use parallel than serial arguments. A serial argument is more vulnerable because if one link in the chain is weak you lose. Another example. "Virtually any problem will be easier to solve the more one learns about the context world in which that problem occurs". Finally "Whatever happens, where or when, we're prone to wonder who or what's responsible?" That is why people are uncomfortable inside and outside organisations if they cannot find out who is responsible.
An unusual and very stimulating book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: a very interesting book
Comment: This is a strange book, when i start read it i was astonished about the book organization. There are a lot of brief chapter that introduce the arguments. No one is full explained but it starts you thinking about that little part. At the end you have a full picture of reasoing as whole as a sum of little pictures

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