It took me years to realize that my agreement with the Chinese Room argument was due almost entirely to how convincing Searle sounded standing in front of a classroom, and to his skill at appealing to both common sense and vanity. The argument was flagged as correct and cached, acquired a support structure of evasions and convenient flinches, and so it remained, assumed and unquestioned.

I wish I could remember an exact moment of realization that destroyed the whole thing, roots and all, but I don't. I suspect it was more of a gradual shift, where the support structure was slowly eroded by new ideas (i.e. I started reading LessWrong), and the contradictions were exposed. Until one day it came up in a discussion and I realized that, far from wanting to defend it, I didn't actually believe it anymore.

I should probably go back through my class notes (if I can find them) and see what else I might have carelessly cached.