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Also know as: Chinese Room Thought Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room Replace Chinese with langua

Also know as: Chinese Room Thought Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room Replace Chinese with language as an interface between humans and computation / AI even.

PaulStatezny 6y ago
^ This is why Artificial General Intelligence is a pipe dream.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  No, it's why dissecting a human looking for its general intelligence is a waste of time. You won't find an atom of the stuff. The "person" is a process running on the hardware, not the hardware itself. Searle's position is only different from Descartes' dualism in vocabulary.
- dTal 6y ago
  The argument works equally well for proving that humans can't think. It explains so much!
minxomat 6y ago
That does not make sense to me. Surely I could apply the same logic to any supposedly thinking thing, including humans. If I could capture all the physical processes that your brain / body confirms, I can perform all of those on paper. Thus I can perform the same thoughts as you. However, I don’t understand you in any way - I can’t tell what or how you think from intermediate states in the process. This argument only works if you don’t believe that the physical processes are all you are and a perfect reproduction could do the same. I have my own theory of why that capture isn’t possible, but that doesn’t matter for the Chinese room argument.
- dfischer 6y ago
  Yeah and in essence, just because the thing can communicate with you, doesn't mean it understands you. Especially when you consider all you have to do is follow a "translation layer" to repeat steps to produce an output, then it doesn't mean anything is understood. Just a "thing" that can follow steps consistently to produce a result. It is quite an interesting concept when considering at what extent is there anything actually translated in any system that is understood or just an interface to reproducing an algorithm based on some consistent logic? Fun stuff to me.
- samhain 6y ago
  The other interpretation of this thought experiment (and maybe what you alluded to) is the idea that humans, and all living things with a nervous system, are really just "meat computers." Processing inputs and outputs using the cascading electrical signals, swapping circuits for neurons. The technical name for this philosophy of thought is called computationalism, or the computational theory of mind (CTM). The term was used first around the 1940s as digital electronics were starting to gain traction (precursor to the AND gate, the Coincidence circuit, being documented ~1920s). I think that this type of philosophy appeals to software and hardware minded people because of the lens through which they choose to view the way the world works.
  - gtsop 6y ago
    Thanks for this resource, I've been thinking that software engineers tend to falsely look at people as "meat computers" but wasn't aware of that philosophical branch. I can now research this school of thought easier.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Surely I could apply the same logic to any supposedly thinking thing You can. The Chinese Room wants to be an argument against AI, but if you take it seriously it's an argument for solipsism.

PaulStatezny 6y ago

^ This is why Artificial General Intelligence is a pipe dream.

stan_rogers 6y ago
No, it's why dissecting a human looking for its general intelligence is a waste of time. You won't find an atom of the stuff. The "person" is a process running on the hardware, not the hardware itself. Searle's position is only different from Descartes' dualism in vocabulary.
dTal 6y ago
The argument works equally well for proving that humans can't think. It explains so much!

minxomat 6y ago

That does not make sense to me. Surely I could apply the same logic to any supposedly thinking thing, including humans. If I could capture all the physical processes that your brain / body confirms, I can perform all of those on paper. Thus I can perform the same thoughts as you. However, I don’t understand you in any way - I can’t tell what or how you think from intermediate states in the process. This argument only works if you don’t believe that the physical processes are all you are and a perfect reproduction could do the same. I have my own theory of why that capture isn’t possible, but that doesn’t matter for the Chinese room argument.

dfischer 6y ago
Yeah and in essence, just because the thing can communicate with you, doesn't mean it understands you. Especially when you consider all you have to do is follow a "translation layer" to repeat steps to produce an output, then it doesn't mean anything is understood. Just a "thing" that can follow steps consistently to produce a result. It is quite an interesting concept when considering at what extent is there anything actually translated in any system that is understood or just an interface to reproducing an algorithm based on some consistent logic? Fun stuff to me.
samhain 6y ago
The other interpretation of this thought experiment (and maybe what you alluded to) is the idea that humans, and all living things with a nervous system, are really just "meat computers." Processing inputs and outputs using the cascading electrical signals, swapping circuits for neurons. The technical name for this philosophy of thought is called computationalism, or the computational theory of mind (CTM). The term was used first around the 1940s as digital electronics were starting to gain traction (precursor to the AND gate, the Coincidence circuit, being documented ~1920s). I think that this type of philosophy appeals to software and hardware minded people because of the lens through which they choose to view the way the world works.
- gtsop 6y ago
  Thanks for this resource, I've been thinking that software engineers tend to falsely look at people as "meat computers" but wasn't aware of that philosophical branch. I can now research this school of thought easier.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Surely I could apply the same logic to any supposedly thinking thing You can. The Chinese Room wants to be an argument against AI, but if you take it seriously it's an argument for solipsism.