IUBio

A Cyborg Bill of Rights

Malcolm MacLeod mmacleod at tms-co.com
Wed Jul 22 02:00:40 EST 1998


Rick Harker <aibrain at usa.net> wrote:

> Malcolm MacLeod & Others wrote: 
No, they didn't.  It wasn't a group effort.  

I've snipped most of your comments, because they are based on
your *complete* mis-understanding of what I wrote, or even
the meaning of the statements I was responding to.

For instance:

> > YOU didn't pass the Turing test!

> Do you know this for a fact? Arthur, have you taken a test. 

Yes, I know it "for a fact".  If you had even the dimmest concept of
what the _Turing test_ IS, you would have understood the joke.

Don't ask Arthur if he has "taken a test".  You don't *take* the
test.  You *give* the test.   Furthermore, it is not an  academic
test with multiple choice answers.  It is a *completely subjective*
test, without any possibility of objective validation.

Get it?  It's not a *real* test.  It's a philisophical concept.
You can't get a framed certificate proving you passed it.
It is a logical contradiction for a human to *not* pass it.

But you didn't bother to look up "Turing Test", right?.

------

But for those who do know what it is:

Responding to this post has sharpened one or two thoughts:
If I wrote a program to show that software can pass the Turing
Test, the best proof of the software would be to have the program
posting and replying to Usenet messages.

It would have flaws, of course.  Some of the sentences would not
really make sense.  And the *replies* created by the program would
not show a natural human response.  It would just post more of the
same- slightly different wordings of the same generated gibberish.

Does this sound familiar?  I can think of three posters in three
different newsgroups that fit this pattern.  One of them is this
"mentifex" identity.  Hmmm...

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  That includes me.
For me, this "mentifex" poster doesn't pass the Turing Test.
 
I could be wrong.  It's not a crime to guess wrong.





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     All I want for Xmas is a box of Smurfs and a mallet.
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