Symmetric Chaos
Fractal King
 Gender: Male
Location: Ko-ro-ba |
The Chinese Room
This is a famous thought experiment, originally about artificial intelligence.
A man sits in a room. He has a book (or a pdf. file on a computer if you wish) that has all the rules for Chinese without any explanation of what they mean, simply in the form "if you see this symbol write this symbol but not if...."
People give him pieces of paper with sentences in Chinese. He writes what the book tells him and the people have deep conversations on a variety of subjects. Philosophy, science, religion, sex, sports.
Now: Does the man speak Chinese? Does the book?
If it's the book then presumably the book learned from the writer. Is the book the writer's mind then?
What do we have to change about the book for us to be able to say the man speaks Chinese? (ie the directions might be "if you see X and Y then say either A if you believe in god or B if you don't")
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
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KMC Community Forums
Oct 17th, 2011 04:14 AM
