[shaggyfrog]

This is the perfect place to quote one of the hacker koans:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-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.

[claar]

If you don't understand this (like me), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan#Uncarved_block for an explanation.

According to that link, it's based on a true story:

  So Sussman began working on a program. Not long after,
  this odd-looking bald guy came over. Sussman figured the
  guy was going to boot him out, but instead the man sat
  down, asking, "Hey, what are you doing?" Sussman talked
  over his program with the man, Marvin Minsky. At one point
  in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a
  certain randomizing technique in his program because he
  didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions.

  Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't
  know what they are." It was the most profound thing Gerry
  Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him
  that the world is built a certain way, and the most
  important thing we can do with the world is avoid
  randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be
  planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on
  seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was
  hooked.