🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep15.184735.19327@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
<In article <1992Sep15.164552.12331@galois.mit.edu> tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
<>Superintelligent aliens land on earth and, suppressing snickers,
<Now how can they be considered superintelligent if they suppress snickers?

Because they come from the Milky Way, of course.

<>Humans: Well, if it wasn't just a black box, we'd swear there was a human
<>...
<>                     It certainly passes the Turing test.  We're inclined
<>        to say that it's conscious.
<>Aliens (guffawing): Oh, really?  Well, as a matter of fact, the black box is
<>        just a lookup table!  What do you think of THAT?
<
<See what I mean about the military approach.  Apparently these guys
<didn't even test for secret information channels into the box, such as
<would be needed to constantly update the tables.  Either that, or their
<questioning was so inept as to not discover the inability of the device
<to keep tolerably abreast of current affairs.

I note that you have deleted the section where I outline that the
black box acts as if there is a human being trapped inside, with life
support systems.  We can add a few details: that the simulated human
being is prevented from obtaining input other than through the
typewritten messages, and hence can't learn about current affairs
otherwise.  The aliens then only have to know about issues prior to
the (simulated) kidnapping of the human being.

Really, I don't see what your objections are driving at.  Do you have
the intuition I'm trying to illustrate or don't you?  If you don't, then
let's just forget about this example.

<>1. Well, who cares if it's a lookup table?  It passes the Turing test, so
<>   for all intents and purposes it's conscious.
<
<Anybody jumping so quickly to this conclusion could probably be fooled
<today by a stage magician equipped with suitable radio transceivers to
<install in the black box and a cadre of remote assistants to actually
<participate in the TT dialogue.

The interrogators think of this, and after conducting some experiments on
the box discover that the surface of the black box either absorbs or reflects
all forms of incident EM radiation.
-- 
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