How Sussman Achieved Satori

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", Sussman replied.
"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

A physicist, an engineer, and a computer scientist were discussing the

nature of God. “Surely a Physicist,” said the physicist, “because

early in the Creation, God made Light; and you know, Maxwell's

equations, the dual nature of electromagnetic waves, the relativistic

consequences...” “An Engineer!,” said the engineer, “because

before making Light, God split the Chaos into Land and Water; it takes a

hell of an engineer to handle that big amount of mud, and orderly

separation of solids from liquids...” The computer scientist

shouted: “ONE WORD: FORCED INDENTATION OF CODE, THREAD OVER. MY OTHER CAR IS A CDR! I put on my robe and my wizard hat. hax my anus”

—Anonymous