Introduction

This is a small review of Society of Mind(SoM). I urge anyone who is looking for a more in depth analysis to check Push Singh (R.I.P) review or just to read the book itself. It is the magnum opus of Marvin Minsky, and it is more a philosophical and psychological venture into the nature of the mind than a technical AI work.

There are very few works around like this one. It basically sets a very abstract framework of how he thinks the mind works. The ground that is covered in the book is staggering, and I think it is one of the reasons why this book is not as famous and cited as it should. It is the culmination of the ideas of two genius, Minsky and Papert, on how the mind structure itself, the world, time and beyond.

The structure of the book is also something very uncommon. It is organized in several mini ideas, one per page, and those ideas are themselves organized in larger modules or chapters. So Minsky used his society idea for the structure of the book itself. What that results is there are technical aspects that are not immediately clear, but run through the book, much like a though.

So, it is a difficult book to understand, but one that is easy to read I guess. I'm going to try and give some insights from several quotes I have gathered in my path in the book. It is very disconnected and floating around, but the book is in this format, and I for sure lack the competence to formulate a coherent string of though were Minsky himself failed to. Like he says:

My explanations rarely go in neat, straight lines from start to end. I wish I could have lined them up so that you could climb straight to the top, by mental stair-steps, one by one. Instead they're tied in tangled webs.

Well, I'll use his justification also:

I'm inclined to lay the blame upon the nature of the mind: much of its power seems to stem from just the messy ways its agents cross-connect. If so, that complication can't be helped; it's only what we must expect from evolution's countless tricks.

The book

The book provides several kind of falsifiable (perhaps some are too abstract) theories and hypothesis floating around the book, but don't worry, Minsky is well aware of how science marches

The only course left for us is to study the mind the way scientists do when something is too large or too small to see - by building theories based on evidence.

That is not what the book is about of course, like I said before, it provides a framework, or several frameworks and hypothesis, to begin building experiments and improving the hypothesis and frameworks(or destroying them).

There is a lot of talk about what things mean, and how meaning is merely the connections that one does between scarcely existing things.

The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the ''real meaning'' of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.

This connectionism is keenly related to Papert's principle and to how people learn (the ideas that grew into this book originated from Papert and Minsky dialogues, but they went into separated directions, Papert went into pedagogy and the applications of these ideas into constructionism, Minsky remained interested in the construction of an intelligent machine).

I disagree with what Minsky's concept of intelligence.

Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems that we consider difficult. ''Intelligence'' is the name for whichever of those processes we don't yet understand.

Then he goes and adds

Like the concept of ''the unexplored regions of Africa'', it disappears as soon as we discover it.

I think that our concept of intelligence is flexible and mutable, but it is not bound to disappear, it will just change with our perception of the world.

There is also several Buddhist quotes, mostly about the nature of suffering (attachment). Since I identify a lot with those though, I'll cite one of them:

Do not become attached to the things you like, do not maintain aversion to the things you dislike. Sorrow, fear and bondage come from one's likes and dislikes.

The most interesting part for in was the description of what is called Papert's principle:

Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative was to use what one already knows.

I think the development of this principle is one of the aspects of the book who is most valuable in a profound personal way. It is, as Papert would say, a powerful idea

This idea, in my opinion, is the embryo that gave birth to constructionism. There is several ideas that resonate with those found in other works by Papert, specially Mindstorms. Like for instance

Our best ideas are often those that bridge between two different worlds!

The book goes on through a lot of ground. Sincerely there is quite a lot to learn, even from casual reading, like this little pearl from Buddha:

If the mind were an ego-personality, it could do this and that as it would determine, but the mind often flies from what it knows is right and chases after evil reluctantly. Still, nothing seems to happen exactly as its ego desires. It is simply the mind clouded over by impure desires, and impervious to wisdom, which stubbornly persists in thinking of ''me'' and ''mine''.

Well, I'll say it one more time, Minsky is a genius, one of the greatest minds to work on AI and psychology. This is a great work, so go ahead and fetch it! My bet is that this book and its successor will still be studied for decades, and will be looked back as reference for a lot of subjects.

The present and the future

There is a successor for the book, and I have it in hands, so there will be a review of it in the future. Not that I have digested the SoM, but perhaps a little peek on the development of the ideas will make me understand them better.

This book is a point of view from an AI father about intelligence, and it is a must read. But there is a lot of finer tools for analysing the brain these days. My hope on cracking the intelligence and consciousness enigma is to look at the brain with those tools and frameworks like those shown in this work.

One last quote:

One can acquire certainty only by amputating inquiry.

Go ahead, read the book with a lot of inquiry, and enjoy!

This book is a very interesting reading for everyone who wants to get a hold of a emerging framework for understanding intelligence, specially as a it emerges from a common algorithm in the neurocortex.

The neuro and cognitive sciences are, by the experts own admission, lacking a common and powerful framework where to try out the large corpus of data that exists and continue to be collected. This book presents a very compelling hypothesis for one. Basically Jeff argues that

The neocortex areas act as one single mechanism.

and that its main function is to recognize patterns and elaborate predictions based on them. Roughly there is a upward flow of information in the neocortex from the diverse senses and a downward flow that fills information and elaborates predictions (this is overly simplified, you should really grab a copy of the book and read the whole argument). Here is a small quote that tries to clarify this point:

Think about information flowing from your eyes, ears, and skin into the neocortex. Each region of the neocortex tries to understand what this information means. Each region tries to understand the input in terms of the sequences it knows. If it does understand the input, it says, "I understand this, it is just part of the object I am already seeing. I won't pass on the details." If a region doesn't understand the current input, it passes it up the hierarchy until some higher region does. However, a pattern that is truly novel will escalate further and further up the hierarchy. Each successively higher region says, "I don't know what this is, I didn't anticipate it, why don't you higher-ups look at it?" The net effect is that when you get to the top of the cortical pyramid, what you have left is information that can't be understood by previous experience. You are left with the part of the input that is truly new and unexpected.

One thing that the reader should be aware is that the book is a new framework proposal, so there is a lot of assumptions going on. That is not to say that Jeff is wrong, but simply that there is not enough compelling evidence for the framework yet. He honestly admits that on chapter 6 (where he presents the kernel of the framework) of the book:

To find and establish a new scientific framework, it is necessary to look for the simplest concepts capable of uniting and explaining what were large quantities of disparate facts. It is an unavoidable consequence of this process that the pendulum swings too far toward simplification. Important details are likely to be ignored, and facts will be misinterpreted. If the framework takes hold, refinements and fixes will inevitably be found showing where the initial proposal went too far, didn't go far enough, or was in error. In this chapter, I have introduced many speculative ideas on how the neocortex works.

Jeff also makes a very interesting analysis of creativity and why it is so mystified:

Isn't creativity some extraordinary quality that requires high intelligence and giftedness? Not really. Creativity can be defined simply as making predictions by analogy, something that occurs everywhere in cortex and something you do continually while awake. Prediction by analogy— creativity— is so pervasive we normally don't notice it.

That lead to some insight on how to improve one's creativity

First, you need to assume up front that there is an answer to what you are trying to solve. Second, you need to let your mind wander. You need to give your brain the time and space to discover the solution.

what mind is and some warnings about the failings of the brain/mind:

I hope I have convinced you that mind is just a label of what the brain does. Our brains are always looking at patterns and making analogies. If correct correlations cannot be found, the brain is more than happy to accept false ones. Pseudoscience, bigotry, faith, and intolerance are often rooted in false analogy.

I did had a problem with his Einstein example:

It had more support cells, called glia, per neuron than average. It showed an unusual pattern of grooves, or sulci, in the parietal lobes— a region thought to be important for mathematical abilities and spatial reasoning. It was also 15 percent wider than most other brains. We may never know why Einstein was as creative and smart as he was, but it is a safe bet that part of his talent derived from genetic factors.

Given the brains plasticity, we cannot be sure that Einstein's brain differences are genetic in nature or the result of his efforts and focus on creative process.

His framework is sound and very promising, and this book is probably a landmark in neuroscience study. I did have a couple of problems with the book though.

He is careful to make a distiction between intelligence and intelligent behavior. That is paramount and of course there is a difference. But his failing in this case is to use The Chinese Room argument to illustrate his point. I think that argument is a fallacy, and I use Jeff's own words to illustrate why it is a fallacy:

There is a single powerful algorithm implemented by every region of cortex. If you connect regions of cortex together in a suitable hierarchy and provide a stream of input, it will learn about its environment.

Here he makes a case where intelligence is rested on a given algorithm. Well, the same could be said about the chinese room, invalidating it's supposed conclusion that computers cannot be intelligent.

The second point I would critisize is his suggestion to read Hubert Dreyfus in the end of the book. For anyone interested in a thoughful analysis on Dreyfus ideas and why they are filled with fallacies I suggest and old work by Seymour Papert.

To summarize, it is a great reading, his framework sounds very promising and a new encompassing algorithm was really needed in the field. Go ahead, it is more than worth the money and time. And if you feel curious, fetch his article explaining in more depth his theories.