X-Message-Number: 4329
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 20:49:37 -0700
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS The Turing Test

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In  #4320   Wrote: 

             >I merely say that, until we know the nature of feeling and
             >consciousness in  mammals, we cannot ASSUME that inorganic       
             >computers--intelligent or not--can  ever be conscious.
             
I merely say that, unless you ASSUME that the Turing Test is true
you will never have a theory of consciousness, at least not one
you could place the slightest confidence in.

            >John himself admits that the Turing Test is not infallible. 
            >But if there were a genuine tautology,the TT WOULD be infallible.

How do you figure that? All TRUE mathematical equations are also
tautologies but that doesn't mean their truth is immediately obvious. 
It may take a lot of study before you realize that A and B are exactly 
the same thing but once you do there is no doubt, IF A and B are the same 
THEN A = B. 

             >"intelligence"--or degree of intelligence--is not
             >necessarily easy to judge. 

Exactly, and that's what I mean when I say the Turing Test is not
perfect. You could say the most brilliant thing conceivable but
if you say it in Chinese I will not be able to recognize it's
intelligence. On the other hand, IF we take it as given that
something is acting intelligent THEN that thing is intelligent,
no ifs ands or buts. IF something acts intelligent THEN  it is
intelligent. I will admit that it's logically possible that it's
still not conscious but there is no doubt about it's intelligence.

            >John has also contradicted himself by saying, on occasion,
            >that he knows intelligence when he sees it, even if he can't     
            >define it; and on the other hand admitting that he has sometimes 
            >been mistaken.

If it's a contradiction to say that I sometimes make mistakes then I 
plead guilty  to contradiction.

            >John seems to think the internals have so little likelihood 
            >of being  relevant or useful that we should ignore them, 
            >and this I find VERY hard to understand

If you just want to determine IF something is conscious then
studying internal mechanisms is not important because behavior is
the final arbiter. If something is acting as intelligent as you
are but your theory of inner mechanisms says it's not conscious
then your theory is bad or at least incomplete. If you want to
determine WHY something is conscious then studying the inner
mechanisms and their relationships to behavior is vital.  
                           
           >How do you test a theory of consciousness? There are many
           >possibilities.

Many? I can only think of one, and for it to work an assumption must be made.

          >One of the most obvious is to look for correlations between
          >a human subject's reported feelings 

And that's the assumption, "REPORTED" feelings. You observe that
the nerves in his mouth stimulate the muscles in his tongue to
make a noise that to you sounds similar to "I am happy" or "I am sad". 
The trouble is, you take it as a given that if he's made of meat 
he is telling the truth, but if he's made of silicon and reports the
exact same thing he is lying, but that's just what your experiment 
is trying to prove and can not be a given.

          >in an experimental situation and his concurrent physiology
          >or brain states as determined by EEG-type or NMR-type (or        
          >something better) scans; then you use one to predict
          >the other and see how well it works. 

I think you've outlined a very sound procedure for studying
conscious, It's just how I would do it, and it's pivotal
assumption is, of course, that the Turing Test works.

          >But if we are on Cryonet, we are probably more alike than
          >different, and we share many goals.

ABSOLUTELY! Our philosophical differences are tiny and our goals
nearly identical compared with the average man on the street. 
I'd also like to say that when somebody , like Mr. Ettinger debates 
a point with intelligence and spirit, my regard for him only increases.


Michael Riskin <>  Wrote: 
 
     >behaviour is not the same as being. 

Maybe not, but behavior is the only thing we can study, the rest
is religion. Was Albert Einstein intelligent or did he just act
intelligent? Suppose I examined an X ray of Einstein's head and
used a theory of intelligence and consciousness I dreamed up to
interpret it. I state that although Einstein wrote, talked and
acted brilliantly, REALLY, he was an idiot. There are 2 possible
conclusions you could draw.

1) My theory is correct and Einstein should have been committed
to a home for the feeble minded.
2) My theory is utter garbage and I should be committed to a home
for the feeble minded.

I have a hunch that you would consider #2 the more likely
possibility.

            >Obviously part of the problem is having an agreed upon
            >definition of intelligence.

A very small part of the problem. I've never seen a good
definition of intelligence and don't expect to see one anytime
soon, but the concept is not nonsense. We all make judgments
every day about who is very intelligent and who is not. All I ask
is that you play by the same rules when judging a machine.   

           >Does intelligence mean choices? Free will? Or is that irrelevant?

I don't see any room for free will other than as a feeling of
choice. We have this feeling because we don't understand 
ourselves very well so we don't know how we will react in certain
circumstances . When we finely do react to the novel circumstance
we conclude that we have made a "choice". 

I think the heart of the question of the Free Will can be found
in the un- controversial statement "Everything, EVERYTHING,
happens because of cause and effect OR it doesn't happen because
of cause and effect". If it has a cause its deterministic. The
cause may be pressure ,anger,  gravity, reason, electromagnetism
,pain ,chemistry , love, ESP, influences from parallel worlds or
devil demons from Pango Pango,  it doesn't matter. The point is
it has a cause.

If something has no cause ,it is  by definition, random. It has
no plan, no rule , no method, no aim. This would not be a bad
description of the opposite of intelligence or will. If you can
find a pattern in it then its predictable, deterministic, and
can't be random and must have a cause. 

This doesn't mean freedom is not important. We certainly have
wishes, desires and emotions. The ability to do what you want to
do, without interference, is what makes life worth living, it's
just that there is a reason, a cause, that we want to do one thing 
and not another.  

                >It is easier to discuss what something seems like than
                >what it really is.

Yes, but you don't go far enough. In the final analysis, all we
can do is remember what our senses picked up and spin theories to
explain them. Even then we're assuming our memories are accurate.
As to what really, really, "IS", I have no idea. 

               >The former is therefore far more popular.

Indeed, impossible tasks are seldom popular.


   John K Clark       

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