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Viliam comments on Open Thread May 23 - May 29, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What if Mary is Chinese? :P
I mean, what if there is a person not understanding Chinese in a room, operating the Chinese symbols they don't understand, according to formal rules that make no sense to them. The system already "knows" (on the symbol level, not the person who operates it) everything about the "red" color, but it has never perceived the red color in its input. And then, one day, it receives the red color in the input. If there is an unusual response by the system, what exactly caused it? (For extra layer of complication, let's suppose that the inputs to the "Chinese room" are bit streams containing JPEG images, so even the person operating the room has never seen the red color.)
To add more context, what if the perceived red object is a trolley running down the railway track...
See also: Can Bad Men Make Good Brains Do Bad Things?. That's a JSTOR article which won't be accessible for most readers, but some kind person has copied out its content here.
[EDITED to use a slightly better choice of some-kind-person.]
What if the Chinese room is operated by trolleys running on tracks and the signaling system works by putting some (smaller) number of fat people and some (greater) number of slim people onto appropriate tracks? X-0
...and then one day you find a giraffe on tracks.
Reminds me of this.