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Article 6303 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Turing Test is not a Trick
Message-ID: <1992Jun18.164543.42825@spss.com>
Date: 18 Jun 92 16:45:43 GMT
Article-I.D.: spss.1992Jun18.164543.42825
References: <60807@aurs01.UUCP> <1992Jun12.190924.36762@spss.com> <491@tdat.teradata.COM>
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In article <491@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) 
writes (quoting me):
>|If we're trying to define or detect
>|intelligence, I am not willing to restrict it to the ability to communicate
>|by teletype;
>
>I tend to agree in pronciple, but we still need to be careful about what we
>include, and what weighting we give it.
>
>|I also want to look at complex sensory processing,
>
>Still too vague, does E.T. have to have eyes?, or wwill sonar do, or niether?
>Does its language *have* to be sonic, or can it be, say, photic?

The senses can be as off-the-wall as you like.  However, I doubt that 
intelligence could evolve in a creature without complex sense perception, 
and I think it's likely (or at least can't be ruled out a priori) that
complex sensory processing is a part of intelligence.

>|intonation,
>
>Why should E.T. physiology be capable of anything resembling human intonation?

Looking at it another way, how can you look at human verbal communication,
which is a complex of words, rules both strict and flexible, intonation
of many kinds (stress, speed, voice quality, pitch, accent), gesture,
facial expression, and inference, and abstract out only the purely verbal
exchanges as worthy of study and indicative of intelligence?

I'd be quite surprised if alien communication were significantly less
sophisticated and multi-channelled.  

>|nonverbal behavior,
>
>Again,we need to be more specific, and try to make sure the required non-
>verbal behavior is atually relevent to 'intelligence'.

Just to give one example, watching an alien successfully repair its broken 
space scooter would give you good prima facie evidence for its intelligence,
even if it never uttered a word (besides a photic obscenity or two).

>|social interaction, creativity, and more.  
>
>These are good (especially since I believe intelligence evolved in humans
>largely for due to the requirements of social interactions).

Yes, I think this point gets lost sometimes in discussions of the Turing Test.
To me it seems only reasonable, if intelligence evolved at least in part
to facilitate social interaction, to search for intelligence by observing
social interactions.  The Turing Test, which some folks have described as
simulating a hermit in a cave, doesn't strike me as a good way to do this.

>As may be clear now, I consider it an important criterion for any *reasonable*
>test of 'intelligence' that it be able to pass an non-human extreterrestrial,
>even if it has a significantly *different* biology than a human.

No disagreement here.  


