The Society of Mind

I first read this when I was experimenting with chatbots in the early 1990's. It's more or less how a computer scientist sees child psychology, with the goal of describing how the mind works. It's pretty much full of profound BS, but there are a few gems hidden in the weeds. It was worth a re-read, if only to remember how much thinking about thinking has not really changed in forty years."Reductionist" doesn't do it justice - when all you have is a communication channel, everything looks like a network.

A book like no other. 270 one-page essays carefully outlining Minsky's theory of the mind. These range in topic and complexity from casual anecdotes and folk reasoning to dense, neologism-laden academic work. Minsky's style is crisp and enjoyable, so he helps you swim through the difficult stuff. It all feels like a text whose aphoristic tone and broad scope will reward each return to it, saying more than it seems to say at first.

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 show more 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. show less

For anyone interested in the nature of his or her mind and how it functions this is a basic book. Although decades have passed and much work has been done in the higher reaches of the theory and science suggested in this book, it remains a useful basic reader. To just see the complexity suggested (and arguments remain about there being less complex descriptions of the mind) is a useful provocation. The clarity of Minsky's presentation, he breaks down his larger ideas into pieces that will fit on a page, often with supporting graphics, is one good reason for this work to still be considered. Sections on Space, Seeing and Believing, are of special concern to photographers, but should not be isolated from the many other mental processes show more involved in our daily approach to life. show less

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

Very interesting theories about how the mind may work.

Selected e-content from Google Books: https://goo.gl/6SS7U8
Review from Google Books:
Marvin Minsky -- one of the fathers of computer science and cofounder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT -- gives a revolutionary answer to the age-old question: "How does the mind work?"
Minsky brilliantly portrays the mind as a "society" of tiny components that are themselves mindless. Mirroring his theory, Minsky boldly casts The Society of Mind as an intellectual puzzle whose pieces are assembled along the way. Each chapter -- on a self-contained page -- corresponds to a piece in the puzzle. As the pages turn, a unified theory of the mind emerges, like a mosaic. Ingenious, amusing, and easy to read, The Society of Mind is an adventure show more in imagination. show less