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Are blind or deaf people not intelligent? But if you must pretend to be sighted and hearing, there are many descriptions of green, of dogs barking, of motors,

Are blind or deaf people not intelligent? But if you must pretend to be sighted and hearing, there are many descriptions of green, of dogs barking, of motors, etc, scattered through the many books written in English (and other languages.) Are these descriptions perfect? Maybe not. But they are sufficient to mimic or communicate with humans through text. It's sufficient to beat a Turing test, to answer questions intelligently, to write books and novels, and political arguments, etc. If that's not AGI, I don't know what is.

argonaut 10y ago
Yes they are. However, is a blind, deaf, person with absolutely no motor control, no sense of touch, and no proprioception intelligent? Unclear. They certainly have no language faculties.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  But a blind person can't describe green. A deaf person can't describe the sound of a motorboat. A person without taste can't describe mint flavor. That is the point I was making. I don't propose that a human could lose all of their senses and still be able to communicate. But I do believe computers could do so, if they are designed to do that. Humans are not designed to work lacking those senses.
  - argonaut 10y ago
    So a blind person would never be able to understand the different categories of color (other than that they are placeholders for distinct categories of something). Now we are just speculating. We believe a computer might be able to understand things for which it doesn't have the sense - but that is speculation and totally untested, and certainly can no longer be justified by using human minds as an example.
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      A blind person could pretend to be sighted though. There have been blind authors who wrote about sighted characters, for instance. They need not experience the thing themselves. Just learn from experience how sighted people behave and describe things, and mimic that.
      - argonaut 10y ago
        Can you provide any examples of blind (from birth) authors giving convincing visual descriptions from the points of view of sighted characters? That seems hard to believe.
        bsaul 10y ago
        You can explain red by saying it's a "warm" color for example. Metaphors work, analogies, senstion from one sense can be explained using sensations from another. Now you need to have at least one sense, which machines clearly don't.

argonaut 10y ago

Yes they are. However, is a blind, deaf, person with absolutely no motor control, no sense of touch, and no proprioception intelligent? Unclear. They certainly have no language faculties.

Houshalter 10y ago
But a blind person can't describe green. A deaf person can't describe the sound of a motorboat. A person without taste can't describe mint flavor. That is the point I was making. I don't propose that a human could lose all of their senses and still be able to communicate. But I do believe computers could do so, if they are designed to do that. Humans are not designed to work lacking those senses.
- argonaut 10y ago
  So a blind person would never be able to understand the different categories of color (other than that they are placeholders for distinct categories of something). Now we are just speculating. We believe a computer might be able to understand things for which it doesn't have the sense - but that is speculation and totally untested, and certainly can no longer be justified by using human minds as an example.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    A blind person could pretend to be sighted though. There have been blind authors who wrote about sighted characters, for instance. They need not experience the thing themselves. Just learn from experience how sighted people behave and describe things, and mimic that.
    - argonaut 10y ago
      Can you provide any examples of blind (from birth) authors giving convincing visual descriptions from the points of view of sighted characters? That seems hard to believe.
      - bsaul 10y ago
        You can explain red by saying it's a "warm" color for example. Metaphors work, analogies, senstion from one sense can be explained using sensations from another. Now you need to have at least one sense, which machines clearly don't.