Bugmaster comments on The flawed Turing test: language, understanding, and partial p-zombies - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 17 May 2013 02:02PM

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Comment author: Bugmaster 12 August 2013 03:18:56AM 0 points [-]

I'm perfectly content to posit an artificial system capable of understanding Chinese and having a meaningful conversation. I'm unable to conceive specifically of a GLUT that can do so.

I don't think it's that hard to conceive of. Imagine that the Simulation Argument is true; then, we could easily imagine a GLUT that exists outside of our own simulation, using additional resources; then our Chinese Room could just be an interface for such a GLUT.

As you said though, I don't find the proposal very interesting, especially since I'm not a big fan of the Simulation Argument anyway.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 August 2013 05:53:55AM 0 points [-]

I find I am unable, on brief consideration, to conceive of a GLUT sitting in some real world within which my observable universe is being computed... I have no sense of what such a thing might be like, or what its existence implies about the real world and how it differs from my observed simulation, or really much of anything interesting.

It's possible that I might be able to if I thought about it for noticeably longer than I'm inclined to.

If you can do so easily, good for you.