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From: steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: net.jokes,net.ai
Subject: ai koans
Message-ID: <422@scc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Feb-85 21:57:58 EST
Article-I.D.: scc.422
Posted: Wed Feb 13 21:57:58 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Feb-85 00:48:38 EST
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Organization: Personetics, Inc. - Santa Cruz, Calif.
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Xref: utcs net.jokes:10178 net.ai:2352


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 -/