This revelatory book is especially applicable to understanding the Buddha' discovery that there is no Self to be found. Salient reasons are that (1) the many independent agencies of the mind simply cannot share their memories, and (2) total control would be lethal. Really eye-opening. ( )

Human nature as seen by a computer scientist. Minsky goes for breadth, at the severe expense of depth. ( )

Full of very original intuitions on how the mind might be organized explained clearly and without intimidating professional jargon and as such a good reading for anyone approaching the subject for the first time. At the same time extremely frustrating for the lack of evidence that this is how the mind *does* indeed work. This is particularly true for Minksy's excursion in the domain of linguistics, where he tosses around just-so stories as if completely oblivious of all the work that was being done at the same time at the linguistics department next door. To understand how scary this is consider what it would be like working for somebody whose thought never abandons the level of sweeping but empirically unsubstantiated intuitions and be left to explain to the customer why things didn't work as promised. Another interesting feature of the book, which appears charming and dated 20 years later is its taking Freud much more seriously than anyone would today. ( )

Very interesting theories about how the mind may work. ( )