Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!jqb
From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: Bag the Turing test (was: Penrose and Searle)
Message-ID: <jqbD0GJ3J.BKn@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <CzFr3J.990@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <3bu0gs$fff@sun4.bham.ac.uk> <jqbD0DG73.4uu@netcom.com> <D0GFxv.5zL@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 20:18:55 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <D0GFxv.5zL@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>Another problem, most often ignored by people pulling out of their sleeves
>the HLT example (see "merely" above) is a complexity of a search algorithm
>in this case. considering size and dimensionality of the database. Note 
>that it has also to include past history of the conversation and a decision 
>process which branch to take (this decision process would be a reflection of 
>a "personality"). Personally I do not see any guarantee that a program 
>utilizing HLT would be any simpler than a program generating the conversation.
>Regardless, I do agree that stress on "how" is a mistake. Hans Moravec
>argued this very convincingly in terms of optimization.

All you really need is a state table.
Current state + input utterance = response + new state.  Any finite interaction
can be mapped as a DSM.  And any old algorithm can be mapped into data
representing the contents of a Turing tape.  Then the algorithm, as opposed to
the data, consists simply of an interpretor for the tape.  The point is that
algorithm and data can be traded off; this is a very simple principle of
Computer Science that HLT arguments ignore.  What matters is the relational
complexity, not how much is captured in data and how much in algorithm.
Scrambling the entries in a HLT would break the relational chains, or produce
relational chains that are not related to human experience and knowledge,
and thereby would fail the test.  The intuition that an HLT cannot be
conscious indicates to me that this intuition, like so many intuitions about
complex and subtle  matters, is wrong.  Arguments that
"P -> intuition violation, therefore ~P" are invalid and should be abandoned.
Such "thought experiments" can only be used to indicate, abductivily, that
there *might be* an argument; they cannot be presented as arguments themselves.
-- 
<J Q B>
