I can't imagine who deserves a black bar if Minsky doesn't, unless a grey bar would be more appropriate (Minsky was signed up for cryonics with Alcor, so he's not dead dead.)
This debate will be an interesting one. I imagine life insurance companies demanding their money back if the once deceased person is alive again. Also, how would inheritance work if heirs can spawn multiple instances of themselves that may not act as a single collective (and inheriting copyright may fit here).
> I can't imagine who deserves a black bar if Minsky doesn't
Have you chance to elaborate why this guy deserved this? Did he build first neural network, lisp machine, ALICE chatbot, break image net. I always considered him as some kind of celebrity from science, while other guys, which names nobody remembers, actually pushed AI movement by doing real things, while working on Google Brain, Watson, cyc, trying to catch spam, terrorists and fraudsters.
Well humans mourn their dead, but also there is a more practical reason if you'd like:
When I see a black bar on Hacker News, it serves as an alert to me to scan the news more carefully. Although I knew who McCarthy was, Jobs, etc, I didn't know this person. The black bar alerted me that someone in this community that is considered quite an influence died. Now I'm reading all about the person in various articles. The black bar helped to alert me to that.
