Comment by shagie
3 months ago
Evolve is another beast... but for the: "I've thought about this a lot. I'm no philosopher or AI researcher, so I'm just spitballing... but if I were to try my hand at it, I think I'd like to start from "principles" and let systems evolve or at least be discoverable over time" part, hunt up a copy of "The Society of Mind" by Minsky who was both and wrote about that idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind
> The work, which first appeared in 1986, was the first comprehensive description of Minsky's "society of mind" theory, which he began developing in the early 1970s. It is composed of 270 self-contained essays which are divided into 30 general chapters. The book was also made into a CD-ROM version.
> In the process of explaining the society of mind, Minsky introduces a wide range of ideas and concepts. He develops theories about how processes such as language, memory, and learning work, and also covers concepts such as consciousness, the sense of self, and free will; because of this, many view The Society of Mind as a work of philosophy.
> The book was not written to prove anything specific about AI or cognitive science, and does not reference physical brain structures. Instead, it is a collection of ideas about how the mind and thinking work on the conceptual level.
Its very approachable as a layperson in that part of the field of AI.
Wow, you are maybe the first person I’ve seen cite Minsky on HN, which is surprising since he’s arguably the most influential AI researcher of all time, maybe short of Turing or Pearl. To add on to the endorsement: the cover of the book is downright gorgeous, in a retro-computing way
https://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780671...
I've tangentially mentioned it before though I don't think directly (it has influenced my theory of humor).
Mentions of it show up occasionally, though it seems to be more of a trickle than an avalanche of mention. Much more so back when AI alignment was more in the news. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Part of it, I suspect, is that it is a book book from the 80s and didn't really make any transition into digital. The people who are familiar with it are ones who bought computer books in the late 80s and early 90s.
Similarly, "A Pattern Language" being a book from the time past that is accessible for a lay person in the field - though more in a tangental way. "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" was the influence behind "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" - though I believe the problem with Design Patterns is that it was seen more as a prescriptive rather than descriptive guide. Reading "A Pattern Language" can help understand what the GoF were trying to accomplish. ... And as an aside, and I also believe that it has some good advice for the setup of home offices and workplaces.
As much as I love the convince of modern online book shopping and the amount of information available when searching, the "browsing books" in a book store for "oh, this looks interesting" and then buying it and reading it, I feel has largely been lost to the past decades.