Re: [s-d] About A Nomic

[comex <comexk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Cassie Bayer <kisse.bnomic@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So, either the Turing Test for humans is tautological, or it's outside the
> domain of the function.  It all depends on how f(x) is defined.

As the rule refers to "the Turing Test", we need exactly one
definition.  The obvious reference for this is Turing's paper,
Computing Machinery and Intelligence.  A copy of it can be found here:

http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.php

The paper starts by introducing a test between a man (A) and a woman
(B), and then states:
{
We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the
part of A in this game?' Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often
when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played
between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can
machines think?'
}

The format of the questioner's identification is given earlier:
{
The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object
of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other
two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and
Y, and at the end of the game he says either 'X is A and Y is B' or 'X
is B and Y is A'.
}

So we're both wrong: in the original Turing Test, the questioner knows
which machine and which human (really, woman) are in the test, and
must state which is which by actually identifying them.  This results
in a totally different conclusion.  If we allow a human to be a
machine (this is supported by hyperliteralism as well as, perhaps, the
paper itself, which refers to a 'human computer'), there is no
semantic problem in allowing em to be A; the questioner's job is
still, after interrogation, to state "A is X and B is Y", or vice
versa, where X and Y become the identities of the two humans.  The
"imitation game" then might become something completely different,
depending on whether the questioner knows X or Y, etc.-- we could
require A to be a man and get right back to the original test, but
there's no reason there couldn't be two women-- and the Turing Test
for a human is not a tautology, but it is certainly _possible_ for a
human A to pass this test.
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