ai koans
Don Steiny
AI Koans: (by Danny)
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the
power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke
sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
understanding of what is going wrong."
Knight turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.
- - - - -
One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a
better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the
pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following
story-
"One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to
make a better garbage collector...
- - - - -
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play"
Minsky shut his eyes,
"Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that momment, Sussman was enlightened.
- - - - -
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
true", asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
Lisp". Almost before the student had finshed his question, Greenblatt
shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
- - - - -
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his
morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said
the outsider,"because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper
that was offered him and put it into the toaster- "I wish the toaster to
be happy too".
- - - - -
(by who?)
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found.
"Where is the wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing
student.
"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
- - - - -
--
scc!steiny
Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382 ihnp4!pesnta -\
109 Torrey Pine Terr. ucbvax!twg --> scc!steiny
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 fortune!idsvax -/
apr...@iuvax.uucp
For more in this vein, not of a LISPish nature, see "Zen Comics", author
unknown. There are several volumes. One comic I remember in particular is
where the Teacher and the Student go on a picnic by a stream, and eat their
lunch without speaking. When they return, the teacher asks the student what
he heard. "Nothing," replies the Student. "Oh, how quickly you advance!"
marvels the Teacher jokingly. "It was many years before I could hear Nothing!"
The Student is Enlightened.
Another is a lecture on the Zen Philosophy. It is in a small university lecture
hall, and the Teacher enters the stage, which is bare except for a table. The
Teacher raises his walking stick, and strikes the table sharply. Then he walks
off the stage. The audience is shown confused, with some members alarmed, and
a single member Enlightened.
----
-- Allan Pratt
...ihnp4!inuxc!iuvax!apratt