COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00002 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002	%quiz[f88,jmc][f88,jmc]		Answers to Kyoto questions
C00010 ENDMK
C⊗;
%quiz[f88,jmc][f88,jmc]		Answers to Kyoto questions
\magnification=\magstep 1
\parskip 8pt plus 1pt
\centerline{ANSWERS TO KYOTO QUESTIONS}
\centerline{John McCarthy}
\centerline{Stanford University}
\centerline{Stanford, CA  94305}
\bigskip
1. When I was a child, I lived with my parents and my younger
brother.  My father first worked as a carpenter,  then as a union official,
as a fisherman, and as a delivery truck driver.  His last work
was again as a carpenter.  My mother worked as a journalist and
as a social worker.  We lived succesively in Boston, New York
Los Angeles and Pasadena.  We moved a lot.  I spent at least two
years away from my parents boarded on farms.  At one I attended
a one room school.

2. I talked early, and as a young child I was sick a lot, sometimes
dangerously.  I read a lot and was interested in science.  I read many
popularized science books as well as Marxist books to which my parents
were inclined.  After I became two years ahead of my contemporaries in
school, this accentuated my competitive intellectual tendencies.  I
began to learn more from books than from my teachers.

3. No special memory occurs to me.

4. Athough my father had a fourth grade education, he subequently
learned a lot of literature and social science.  He like to recite
poetry (which he did well) and sing (which he did badly).  He liked
to sail boats, though he didn't often have the opportunity.  My mother
was a college graduate and had been a woman suffrage leader.  Both
were interested in left wing politics.

5. I wanted to be a scientist as soon as I formulated ambitions.  My
ideas about what a scientist did were rather realistic.  When my
college application required a statement of intentions, I wrote
that I intended to become a professor of mathematics.

6. As described in my commemorative lecture, my interest in articifial
intelligence began in 1948, when I attended the Hixon Conference on
Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior.  I pursued this part time, while I
did my thesis in differential equations.  The reason for making AI
a part time activity was that I had no confidence in the particular
ideas I was pursuing at that time.  I was right; they weren't good
ideas.

7. I liked all branches of pure mathematics and most branches of
technology.

8. I cannot cite books or persons as influences without making
more distinctions that there is presently time for.  However, I
can say that I was more influenced by books than by persons.  My
guess is that this is because I didn't meet as a child the kind
of person I met later and who would have influenced me as a child.

9. I have two grown daughters by my first wife from whom I was
divorced in 1966.  My older daughter is a writer and an editor
and is currently studying journalism.  She has two children and
is married to a lawyer.  My younger daughter has wanted to be
horse veterinarian since she was about ten.  She is now in her
second year in veterinary school.  My second wife died in 1978
in a mountaineering accident.  My present wife, Carolyn Talcott, is a research
associate in computer science, working on the mathematical
theory of computer programs.  She received a PhD in chemistry
in 1966 and a PhD in computer science in 1985.  We have a 3 year
old son Timothy.  He is rather precocious and is a great pleasure.

10. I have been a rock climber, an airplane pilot and a parachute
jumper.  I was also an enthusiast for rock music in the late 1960s
and early 70s.  I do none of these at present.  I spend my spare
time with my son and have lately taken up bicycling.

11. I have always had a large number of scientific projects.  The
most active today is formalizing common sense knowledge and reasoning
in mathematical logic.  There's enough about that in my lecture
texts.  I also have a project on a language Qlisp, which is a
version of Lisp for a shared memory multi-processor system.
I continue to develop my ideas on technological opportunities for
humanity and hope to finish a book about it.

12. I don't understand the English of this question.  I suppose
my own discoveries that impressed me the most were Lisp and
the circumscription method of nonmonotonic reasoning.  In both
cases, something that initially seemed complex came out more
simply than expected and that was very pleasant.  In most of the
topics I work on, it's the other way around.

13. Think about it terms of deciding on what problems you can
do your best work.  React to the subject and not to the teachers.

14. No motto.

15. I spent three months in Kyoto in the Spring of 1975 and enjoyed
the city, especially the quiet neighborhood between the University
and the mountains.  I think the Japanese as a nation are only
beginning to be rewarded for their hard work and close attention
to discovering the best way of doing things.  Their problems are
different in some respects from those faced by Americans.
\bye