🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep14.144957.28355@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>No.  The main problem lies in the impossibility of constructing a table
>sufficiently comprehensive.
[various practical difficulties deleted]

Are these practical difficulties really relevant?  My point is that the
essence of a certain limited form of the Turing test is captured by a
lookup table (whether it can be implemented in our physical universe or
not), and that many (not necessarily including myself) have an intuition
that such a simple structure cannot be conscious.  If you have no such
intuition, then forget the example.

Evan Hunt has also objected to my lookup table, but his objections I think
are met by my clarification of the data structure, with perhaps a few slight
additional modifications to take account of time elapsed between exchanges.
Problems such as simulating interrupting one another, or pausing between
sentences, can be eliminated by imagining that the Turing test is
administered by passing notes between the examiner and the subjects, who are
assumed to be located in different rooms.

I should perhaps add a disclaimer that I'm not either a physicalist or a
dualist, so please don't think that I'm taking sides on this issue---I just
wanted to clarify a few things because I find the arguments interesting.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949