5HC : Chinese boxes or tea chests?

James Wynn · 01 Feb 2005, 12:43 · from 2005-February.txt.gz

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From: thewynns at earthlink.net (James Wynn)
Date: Tue Feb  1 12:43:04 2005
Subject: (urth) 5HC : Chinese boxes or tea chests?
References: <20050201154712.13264.qmail at web25703.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<1f7617370502011143170eb5c8 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <021d01c5089e$9f351bc0$4c1e4b0a at vcorp.ad.vrsn.com>

>Searle has not, to the best of my knowledge, proposed
>either a definition of "knowing Chinese" or an empirical
>test for determining whether the Room actually knows
>Chinese. He has instead relied on his readers' paralogical
>emotional response to assure us that it does not. But that
>does not mean that it does not.

Yes, but to be fair Turing's criteria is just as subjective. Roughly, "can a
computer succeed in impersonating a human person well enough to fool
humans." Where is the "control" here? Mr. Raylor has brought up an excellent
point: What if a computer can succeed in fooling someone that it is
something we KNOW it is not? That would be a useful control, I think. Is
successful mimicry really the final criteria for personhood for a machine?
>From bird's point of view, many bugs succeed in fooling them that they are
thorns, leaves and sticks. To the mother bird, the coo-coo is her child.

Another possible control that someone has pointed out is that a computer
conceivably might be conscious and might think and NOT seem at all human in
its responses. Such a computer would not test positive for the Turing test.
I used to subscribe to AI Magazine but I'm not much of an authority on this.
How does the Turing criteria eliminate for an especially good mimic (to
bring this discussion back to V.R.T)?

Wolfe, cleverly, has upped the ante on the Turing test by making the
"simulation" much more elaborate:

1) Mr. Million (referred to a "simulation" as a deliberate foil to V.R.T's
"simulation") and Rose and the Whorl gods who are much the same thing in
another form

2) The Lemur clan and Potto (are the chem bodies whose bodies they have
commandeered walkie-talkies as they apparently intended or are they only
simulating the psyches of the Ayuntamiento?)

3) What does it mean that the souls of the inhumi look very similar to the
physical bodies of their hosts?

~ Crush

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