“A thing or idea seems meaningful only when we have several different ways to represent it — different perspectives and different associations.”

—  Marvin Minsky

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)
Context: What is the difference between merely knowing (or remembering, or memorizing) and understanding?... A thing or idea seems meaningful only when we have several different ways to represent it — different perspectives and different associations.... Then we can turn it around in our minds, so to speak: however it seems at the moment, we can see it another way and we never come to a full stop. In other words, we can 'think' about it. If there were only one way to represent this thing or idea, we would not call this representation thinking.

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Marvin Minsky 65
American cognitive scientist 1927–2016

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