Martin Minsky

I’m still trying to wrap my head around a meeting that we had with Martin Minsky during the Constructing Modern Knowledge Conference. We met him at the offices of the One Lapton per Child initiative. Since there was just a small group of us meeting with him, the discussion was fairly informal and was structured as a question and answer with conference participants questioning Martin Minsky about his beliefs and experiences.

I had never heard of Martin Minsky but got carried along with the enthusiasm of the the rest of the participants. The discussion was interesting and got me thinking; it helped me affirm my views of education. I won’t write what I personally thought of Martin Minsky from that one meeting but will highlight some of his comments below.

Martin Minsky’s Comments:

• “Teach children science, and let the learn history”
• Pleasure is over-rated. What should motivate us is the quest for understanding/knowledge for the ability to invent/create.
• Religion is blind faith and Roman Catholicism stunted the growth of science for many years.
• Instead of creating horizontally, we should create vertically. This lead to a discussion of his disgust for athletes as there is nothing that we can learn from them about how the brain works, and about the process of creation/invention.
• Painters and other artists don’t have a vision but rather sees how many principles they can incorporate into their creation for some end result.
• Engineering and science are most praiseworthy because of the process that results in a product or invention.
• Children have individual abilities and potentials. It may be possible for all children to learn Math etc.
• Running cars on water, or from corn, is impractical, inefficient
• Fugues are the only music worth playing because there is more creativity and innovation than repetition.
• Pop music and jazz are a waste of time as they incorporate too much repetition.
• The current state of research in North America is despicable. t is difficult for people to get long term research money. People used to spend 20 or more years doing a Phd to actually invent/discover something; now they do one in much less time, of much less depth.