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Article 6603 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Turing Test Myths
Message-ID: <BILL.92Aug12122254@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 12 Aug 92 19:22:54 GMT
References: <2838@ucl-cs.uucp> <1992Aug11.143819.22170@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
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	<1992Aug12.063425.13479@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
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In-Reply-To: marky@dip.eecs.umich.edu's message of 12 Aug 92 06: 34:25 GMT

marky@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Mark Anthony Young) writes:

   > No confusion on my part, I assure you.  I quote:
   >
   >	We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes
   >	the part of A in this game?"  Will the interrogator decide wrongly
   >	as often when the game is played like this as he does when the
   >	game is played between a man and a woman?  These questions replace
   >	our original, "Can machines think?"

Okay, I was wrong.  It was me who was confused.  But it's hard for me
to believe that Turing actually realized what he was saying when he
wrote this.  Suppose it turned out that interrogators could
distinguish between men and women 100% of the time, and they could
also distinguish between men and computers 100% of the time.  Would
this imply that computers think as much like men as women do?
Obviously not.

I believe that, given an hour of interrogation, I would have a better
than 90% probability of distinguishing between a man and a woman.  I
might be right, or I might be wrong, but it doesn't seem reasonable
that the question whether I'm right or wrong has anything to do with
the question whether machines can think.

	-- Bill


