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> Would the alien ever learn to distinguish good dancers from poor dancers? He could hack the problem like this: instead of figuring out which type of dancing

> Would the alien ever learn to distinguish good dancers from poor dancers? He could hack the problem like this: instead of figuring out which type of dancing is impressive directly, just watch reactions. People react to what they think is good dancing, so by watching people he can learn what's considered good dancing.

faboo 16y ago
That's exactly what I thought. In the context of Adams' mind experiment there's a problem with this approach: the aliens need to now both there is a goal to dancing or conversing well, and what that goal is. (Which is confounded a bit by there being multiple goals for these activities, and not everybody's going for the same ones in any given context. Two people who just met will want a different thing from conversation than two friends shooting the shit.) However, Adams' rhetorical questions (though not, I think, his mind experiment itself) have a flaw: people with Asberger's syndrome generally know what the goal of those activities is (or at least, what they want out of it), but are unable to judge whether they're actually achieving those goals (since they have a hard time gauging other peoples reactions as you suggest). This fits with the mind experiment though. Suppose the aliens figure out that conversation and dancing have goals - even what those goals are. The alien still can't tell who the good conversationalists or dancers are without understanding things like human body language, vocal inflection, or subtle word choice - which is nearly the same set of problems people with Asberger's have.
wallflower 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof
zck 16y ago
But people also react to what is bad dancing; you'd have to know what reactions are favorable, and what reactions indicate displeasure. This would be hard for aliens, who wouldn't know what facial expressions mean.
- username3 16y ago
  Perhaps a reality TV show about dancing with stars that think they can dance would be better.
alsomike 16y ago
That's much trickier than you think, because people's reactions are highly contextual. Imagine if someone went on the dance floor who you wouldn't expect to have any dance moves at all, but they are pretty good. They would get extremely positive reactions, so an alien posing as a human watching this would imitate this, but suddenly get a negative reaction because it would be seen as mocking. It's also possible to dance so well that it generates negative reactions like jealousy. Or you can have geeky Napoleon Dynamite dancing - cheesy, inappropriate and flawed, but somehow able to succeed despite itself. This is because quality of dancing isn't wholly intrinsic to the dance itself, it depends on other social factors, like the social identity of the dancer, the self-perception of the audience, the social meaning of the music and the type of dance being performed. For an alien, this would be the hard problem of dancing. What it boils down to is that when knowledge is highly contextual, it's very hard to learn it as a neutral external observer, you have to become a participant - in a way, before you can learn to dance, first you have to learn to be the audience for dance, to become embedded in the social meanings. This might also be the significance of being a good listener before you can become a good conversationalist.
- xenophanes 16y ago
  > That's much trickier than you think I think it's much tricker than you said. Those are just a variety of small details, and there are many more in the same general category. But that doesn't stop it from working. It's very noisy data whatever you do. The difficulty may approach that of learning English while you're there. That could take a decade, who knows. Children learn English faster than that, but we do lots of things to help them, but OTOH the alien is super smart and has computers to analyze patterns in the language. (Of course if the alien does pick up English, these context problems become pretty small.) I took the original question to be about the fact that what constitutes a good dance move is arbitrary. That's a fundamental problem. How do you figure out something that's just an arbitrary convention? Well, the solution is to look at the people who decide it. How people react to stuff, like what they say, is not arbitrary. There's a method to it that you can figure out, unlike dancing which arguably doesn't have a method (I'm not taking sides on that, I just interpreted the problem to be to assume dancing hasn't got a logical method to it).
deleted 16y ago
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AGorilla 16y ago
I don't agree that people react to good dancing. They react more to physical attractiveness, confidence, image, and drink buying. Think of Napoleon dynamite at the end of the movie. He's an amazing dancer but he would likely get a lot of WTFs in a club situation.
hugh3 16y ago
First, he'd need to figure out what is a "good" and "bad" reaction, which is mostly about reading very subtle expressions. The whole thought experiment is a bit weird, because the range of dancing skills on display in the typical nightclub in all the parts of the world I've been to recently is really not that large.

faboo 16y ago

That's exactly what I thought. In the context of Adams' mind experiment there's a problem with this approach: the aliens need to now both there is a goal to dancing or conversing well, and what that goal is. (Which is confounded a bit by there being multiple goals for these activities, and not everybody's going for the same ones in any given context. Two people who just met will want a different thing from conversation than two friends shooting the shit.) However, Adams' rhetorical questions (though not, I think, his mind experiment itself) have a flaw: people with Asberger's syndrome generally know what the goal of those activities is (or at least, what they want out of it), but are unable to judge whether they're actually achieving those goals (since they have a hard time gauging other peoples reactions as you suggest). This fits with the mind experiment though. Suppose the aliens figure out that conversation and dancing have goals - even what those goals are. The alien still can't tell who the good conversationalists or dancers are without understanding things like human body language, vocal inflection, or subtle word choice - which is nearly the same set of problems people with Asberger's have.

wallflower 16y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof

zck 16y ago

But people also react to what is bad dancing; you'd have to know what reactions are favorable, and what reactions indicate displeasure. This would be hard for aliens, who wouldn't know what facial expressions mean.

username3 16y ago
Perhaps a reality TV show about dancing with stars that think they can dance would be better.

alsomike 16y ago

That's much trickier than you think, because people's reactions are highly contextual. Imagine if someone went on the dance floor who you wouldn't expect to have any dance moves at all, but they are pretty good. They would get extremely positive reactions, so an alien posing as a human watching this would imitate this, but suddenly get a negative reaction because it would be seen as mocking. It's also possible to dance so well that it generates negative reactions like jealousy. Or you can have geeky Napoleon Dynamite dancing - cheesy, inappropriate and flawed, but somehow able to succeed despite itself. This is because quality of dancing isn't wholly intrinsic to the dance itself, it depends on other social factors, like the social identity of the dancer, the self-perception of the audience, the social meaning of the music and the type of dance being performed. For an alien, this would be the hard problem of dancing. What it boils down to is that when knowledge is highly contextual, it's very hard to learn it as a neutral external observer, you have to become a participant - in a way, before you can learn to dance, first you have to learn to be the audience for dance, to become embedded in the social meanings. This might also be the significance of being a good listener before you can become a good conversationalist.

xenophanes 16y ago
> That's much trickier than you think I think it's much tricker than you said. Those are just a variety of small details, and there are many more in the same general category. But that doesn't stop it from working. It's very noisy data whatever you do. The difficulty may approach that of learning English while you're there. That could take a decade, who knows. Children learn English faster than that, but we do lots of things to help them, but OTOH the alien is super smart and has computers to analyze patterns in the language. (Of course if the alien does pick up English, these context problems become pretty small.) I took the original question to be about the fact that what constitutes a good dance move is arbitrary. That's a fundamental problem. How do you figure out something that's just an arbitrary convention? Well, the solution is to look at the people who decide it. How people react to stuff, like what they say, is not arbitrary. There's a method to it that you can figure out, unlike dancing which arguably doesn't have a method (I'm not taking sides on that, I just interpreted the problem to be to assume dancing hasn't got a logical method to it).

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

AGorilla 16y ago

I don't agree that people react to good dancing. They react more to physical attractiveness, confidence, image, and drink buying. Think of Napoleon dynamite at the end of the movie. He's an amazing dancer but he would likely get a lot of WTFs in a club situation.

hugh3 16y ago

First, he'd need to figure out what is a "good" and "bad" reaction, which is mostly about reading very subtle expressions. The whole thought experiment is a bit weird, because the range of dancing skills on display in the typical nightclub in all the parts of the world I've been to recently is really not that large.