December 12, 2006
Marvin Minsky on love:
Artificial intelligence pioneer and cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky whispers sweet nothings to The Boston Globe in an interview about emotion:
What, in your view, is love?
There's short-term infatuation, where someone gets strongly attracted to someone else, and that's probably very often a turning-off of certain things rather than something extra: It's a mental state where you remove your criticism. So to say someone is beautiful is not necessarily positive, it may be something happening so you can't see anything wrong with this person. And then there are long-term attachments, where you adopt the goals of the other person and somehow make serious changes in what you're going to do.
Try putting that in your next Valentine's card. Shakespeare be damned.
I tried to think up a joke based on artificial intelligence, Minksy and a love machine, but I haven't managed it so far, so please consider it a kit and assemble one in your own time.
Link to 'Minsky talks about life, love in the age of artificial intelligence'.
