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/A-I koh'an/ One of a series of pastiches of Zenteaching riddles created by Danny Hillis at the MIT AI Labaround various major figures of the Lab's culture.See also ha ha only serious, mu.In reading these, it is at least useful to know that MarvinMinsky, Gerald Sussman, and Drescher are AI researchersof note, that Tom Knight was one of the Lisp machine'sprincipal designers, and that David Moon wrote much of LispMachine Lisp. * * *A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turningthe power off and on.Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "Youcannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with nounderstanding of what is going wrong."Knight turned the machine off and on.The machine worked. * * *One day a student came to Moon and said: "I understand how tomake a better garbage collector. We must keep a referencecount 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...[Pure reference-count garbage collectors have problems withcircular structures that point to themselves.] * * *In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to himas he sat hacking at the PDP-6."What are you doing?", asked Minsky."I am training a randomly wired neural net to playTic-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 disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he waseating his morning meal."I would like to give you this personality test", said theoutsider, "because I want you to be happy."Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it intothe toaster, saying: "I wish the toaster to be happy, too."