AI Koans

From: Todd E Van Hoosear (vanhoose@manetheren.cl.msu.edu)
Date: 10/10/03

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    Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny.reruns
    From: ajs@hpfcajs.UUCP
    Keywords: chuckle, originally appeared in first quarter, 1989
    Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 7:20:00 PDT
    
    (From sri-unix!greiner@Diablo Sun Jul 24 17:21:00 1983)
    
    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.
    
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    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...
    
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    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 the room will be
    empty."  At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
    
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    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 finished his question, Greenblatt
    shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
    
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    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."
    
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    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.
    
                ------------------------------------------------
    
    
    A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
    Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
    Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
    with the mouse, and asked, "what do you see?"  Very earnestly, the
    Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor."  The Hacker then quickly
    pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously
    hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual.
    The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
    
    --
    >From the RHF archives as selected by Brad Templeton, Maddi Hausmann and
    Jim Griffith.  This newsgroup posts former jokes from the newsgroup
    rec.humor.funny.   Visit http://www.netfunny.com/rhf to browse the RHF pages
    and archives on the web.
    
    Join and contribute to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today.
    -- end of forwarded message --
    
    -- 
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            ```''        T o d d   E   V a n   H o o s e a r
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