Talk:Chris McKinstry

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Articles for deletion

This article was nominated for deletion on December 27, 2005. The result of the discussion was keep (nomination withdrawn). An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

Hey someone fix this page. I am a hacker. Not reformed.


Contents

[edit] No link to his final thoughts?

Hours before he took his life, Chris spent some time on a forum discussing his planned suicide.

While the group attempted to dissuade him, Chris ultimately succumbed to his own designs. What is most noteworthy is his state of mind, which appeared no more unusual than his typical fair. He made logical arguments, small jokes, and even went off on a few tangents.

While morbid, his final thoughts are an accurate representation of this peculiar (to put it lightly) man. I am surprised that there is no mention of this. 24.90.108.178 17:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


His final thoughts along with an article can be found here: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery?currentPage=all I hope we can use this to make this page better 68.48.66.55 (talk) 00:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Debt

Chris fled Winnipeg owing a lot of money to the CR6 creditors. Odd that the link to the Manitoba Court Registry would be taken out... Grub 17:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suicide?

Read the two latest posts on http://www.mindpixel.com/chris/.

The forum he made his last known statements on has been taken offline permanently -- whether it's related to his suicide or not we weren't told. I managed to grab PDFs of the posts at the last minute and am hosting them temporarily, but it's not an ideal solution. 81.159.213.154 00:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hacker

Chris might call himself a hacker but what definition of hacker are we using here. Geeks might use one definition of 'hacker' while the general public uses another. I think we should use the definition of the word the general public uses. I can't find any evidence that Chris was/is a hacker (using the general public definition) so I am going to take the entire hacker part out. On a side note I think it is great that people are taking an interest in wikipedia articles on themselves but we don't have to write things the way they want them. commonbrick 30 June 2005 01:27 (UTC)

[edit] Hacking

I am a theoretical psychologist. I hack consciousness. chrismckinstry 04 July 2005


[edit] Happy 5th Birthday GAC

Mindpixel 80,000 Questions with Corresponding Probability of Truth.

www.mindpixel.com/chris/gac80k-06-july-2005.html chrismckinstry 06 July 2005

[edit] nomination for deletion

This article was nominated for deletion but the nomination was withdrawn by the nominator (me) following discussion and evidence of notability. See [1] --Misterwindupbird 16:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Suicide note

Suicide note --Lumos3 23:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

As we know, the above link is not working. Do you have it cached, or is there a mirror that you know of? --Amit 20:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mindpixel December 2005 closure

That is very sad. Why did he close down his mindpixel work in December?

I haven't come across his suicide note, if there was one, but I think it is possible that he eventually realized that his project would never produce the broad AI he so desired. --Amit 20:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish news

[2]

[edit] Mindpixel dead?

Whatever happened to the Mindpixel project? I expected to be able to find some information about the continuation/termination of the project. I haven't been able to find anything unrelated to Chris' death. It's weird, I've been following this for years and I was just checking in... User:Mnemosign 06:02, 23 April 2006

I don't know, the link is dead now, but one of the last things Chris did (12 January) was link mindpixel to commonsense reasoning. A bit freaky, since this means two of the three people who have edited that page so far have committed suicide. --Jaibe 20:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Jaibe, yes, that is freaky (the other person being Pushsingh). It seems to me that AI researchers need to be more pessimistic than optimistic, because optimism there has only eventually led to suffering, for the past sixty years. More formally, they seem to expect a lot of reasoning from a little bit of data, whereas in my opinion the reverse really holds true. --Amit 20:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other AI project

I was listening to NPR this morning and there was a story on a researcher who was trying to teach a robot like a child, based on the progression of a 14 month old boy. Sounds like what Chris had proposed. If memory serves correctly, it was being conducted at MIT and the robot's name is Ripley, after the character in "Alien". Cheri on July 10, 2006.

This is interesting. I am not aware of what Chris had proposed, but to me teaching a robot like a child is not anything like Mindpixel. Mindpixel is assimilating the collective knowledge into a knowledge-base that can then be used to reason. Both approaches seem fundamentally different. --Amit 20:09, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

The reference to item #11 ( http://www.dashslot.co.uk/chris-mckinstry.htm ) is down, it looks like the domain no longer belongs to the "original" owner. Is there another link for this reference? MikeDawg (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Attempts to discredit McKinstry

I cant see why his bipolar delusions should make so much copy on this article?

Many A.I. workers have it, some who are also dead, possibly by suicide.

The notable thing about McKinstry was not his bipolar, which affects 1-2% of the populatiopn, but the pioneering attempts he made in knowledge based systems.

It is easier a stupid or deliberate attempt to alter what his relevance was.

The same attempt was made on Turing which concentrated on his homosexuality until a sustained campaign by Andrew Hodge and others reversed that.

I object to this disporportionate amount of bipolar references to technology and theory, as it lowers the content of wikipedia and clouds the contribution he made.

To cite the exact nature of his periodic illnesses at such length is sensationalism and diverting.

I am glad the move to delete this article has been repulsed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JF Ellis (talk • contribs) 14:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)