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I think every person either inherits or eventually makes up their own idea of what they are and who they are and what caused the world to be, and it seems to me that these stories of creation myth, adopted by different cultures - most of them are less insightful than the stories made up by individual poets and writers.
Marvin Minsky
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Individual identity is shaped by personal narratives rather than cultural myths.

Marvin Minsky suggests that the understanding of one's self and the world comes from personal stories rather than traditional cultural myths. He argues that while creation myths from various cultures exist, they often lack the depth and insight found in the personal narratives crafted by poets and writers. This highlights the value of individual perspectives in the quest for meaning.

Themes

IdentityNarrativeCulturePoetryInsight

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a writing workshop to emphasize the importance of personal storytelling.

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If you understand something in only one way, then you don't really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all other things we know. Well-connected representations let you turn ideas around in your mind, to envision things from many perspectives until you find one that works for you. And that's what we mean by thinking!
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I believe that everyone has to construct a mental model of what they are and where they came from and why they are as they are, and the word soul in each person is the name for that particular mish-mash of those fully formed ideas of one's nature.
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If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do.
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You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
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Quote by Marvin Minsky | QuoteProject