Recently I described a possible alternative Turing test that looks for certain non-person like behavior. I’d like to try it out and see if it is robust and has any value.
Here is some data represented in an ordinary control chart.
It’s easy to see there is a recognizable pattern here. The line follows a downward trajectory till about observation 16 then it meanders around till about observation 31. At which point it begins an upward track that lasts till almost the end of the chart.
The data in question is real and public but obsolete. I won’t say what it’s source is right now to avoid any bias in your attempts see if we can infer design. I can provide the actual numbers if you like.
The question before the house is. Is the clear overall pattern we see here a record of intention or does it have a “non-mental” cause?
Using the criteria discussed in my “poker” thread I would suggest looking for the following behaviors and excluding a mental cause if they are present.
1) large random spikes in the data
2) sudden changes in the overall pattern of the data that appear to be random
3) long periods of monotony
4) unexplained disjunction in the pattern.
I have some other tests we can look at as well .
What do you say design or not? Are you willing to venture a conjecture?
peace
You really do need to step up your game if you want to participate we covered this long ago.
We can never prove that other minds exist but we all know they do.
We know lot’s of things we can’t prove but we get along just fine
peace
It attempts to identify and eliminate non-mental behavior and by process of elimination seek to infer a mental cause behind the process
No you attempt to build an algorithm if you wish. But what we are really trying to do is eliminate any behavior that is algorithmic.
No the experimenter recognizes the pattern and recognizes that it does not exhibit any “non-mental” behavior then infers design.
This is simply a detailing systematizing of the common sense process that we use all the time.
Positive proof is impossible due to the problem of other minds. Then again positive proof is not necessary. We get along just fine with out it
let me know if you have any more questions
peace
Following rules are what algorithms excel at following the unexpressed spirit behind the rules is what persons do best.
Of course this “mental” ability can at times have catastrophic consequences but it’s the price we pay to be able to navigate new situations that are impossible to program for in advance
peace
The point is to attempt to develop a alternative Turing test that will be useful in all sorts of processes not just those that involve verbal communication.
That it might also be helpful in looking at things like evolution is just a bonus
peace
Sir, I asked a question. The question was How. You are not answering.
How?
How?
How?
Is it? How? And what’s the name of “the common sense process that we use all the time”?
Sure, but first answer the How question.
I have a ton of curiosity about minds and persons. I just don’t think it is possible or at all helpful to define them with mathematical precision.
I’m very curious about my wife but I don’t try to reduce and specify her essence in that way. To do so would be to exclude the very things that I find interesting about her in the first place
check it out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkfkJCyqCBc
peace
The professional poker players identified a number of non-personlike behaviors in the bot that they were facing. We are simply looking for those sorts of behaviors in the processes we are examining
It does not have a name as far as I know.
But it’s what we do when we determine whether we are dealing with person or a non-mental process.
Does that help you to understand the How?
peace
This has exactly nothing to do with your own test.
We are not examining a process in your test. It’s a graph.
So, I think I am being totally fair when I say you don’t have a test here. You only assume that you have a test and that by some magic it says something about something. Sorry, but it doesn’t.
I understand that there is no How to whatever you are doing here. You have no test, no exercise, no method, no definitions of anything relevant to anything.
Neither of those excerpts support your claim that “a software system is not and will never be a person”.
It’s a hard problem but you haven’t shown it to be impossible in principle.
Do you understand the difference between evidence and proof?
peace
Well put. The topic is fascinating but without operational definitions the discussion is nothing but hand waving.
This reminds me of the homeopath who was challenged to subject his nostrums to double-blind testing. His response was “Oh, we tried that, but those tests don’t work.”
Rigorous operational definitions are only counterproductive to people who want to don’t want to risk disconfirmation of their claims.
Not really, you apparently believe that you already know that there’s something necessarily mysterious that essentially separates human minds from manufactured items.
It isn’t. The problem is that you want to implicitly define “minds” as what can’t be replicated by machines (I doubt that digital machines can ever truly replicate human minds through and through, but that’s because human minds aren’t simply digital entities). That prevents one from asking the questions that are relevant to getting to the issues of “minds” vs. computers.
Glen Davidson
Indeed I do. Your quote from Nissan was neither with respect to your claim.
Digital machines can model non-digital processes though. I suspect that the first general purpose AIs will come either from that kind of modeling or from ever increasing augmentation of human brains.
asserting is not demonstrating. The behaviors that I listed in the OP are simply a rephrasing of those the players identified.
The graph is a visual representation of data taken from a process.
Again asserting is not demonstrating.
I use this sort of thing all the time to look for mental behaviors in processes. Ive been successful on more than one occasion.
If you think that I’m wasting my time to do so you need to explain why.
Again asserting and repetition is not demonstrating.
You need to explain why what I’m doing is not useful.
Better yet you need to come up with a Turing test for processes that don’t involve verbal communication that works better that the one I’m trying to develop.
as they sometimes say in the gambling world put up or shut up
peace
If the data points are just outputs of some parameter or a statistical representation of several parameters measured at regular time intervals, why are there straight lines joining them?
Exactly. And we need a demonstration, right? Then why do you keep asserting and never demonstrate anything? To begin with, define your terms so people can see what the hell you are aiming to demonstrate, if anything.
And there’s a world of difference between staring at a graph and observing a process, such as moves in a poker game, You have not understood the importance of this difference.
To make it “easy to see there is a recognizable pattern here.” Duh.
Again it is impossible to disconfirm a claim about minds. That is because it’s possible for a entity to be indistinguishable from us but to have no subjective experience at all.
There is no risk on either side of the argument there never can be.
Don’t worry you are safe.
I think that it might be helpful for you to repeat this to yourself a few times. Communication might be better if you could just relax
I’m not going to prove that God exists or that robots are not persons. All I’m doing is looking for a way to help us with the design inference
peace
But it’s a content-free artefact if they are point measurements.
Oops! Missed the irony! 🙂
because they follow a temporal sequence. Observation 2 happened after observation 1 etc
peace
As I said. That’s no justification for joining the dots with straight lines. It suggests a path between point measurements that isn’t warranted.
Prove it.
Sorry, you are wasting my time if you can’t see the glaring problem when you present a methodology to infer the products of a mind, and at the same time say that there is no way we can know if any minds besides our own exist at all.
I’m bowing out.
you do if you are going to claim anything.
what have I asserted with out demonstrating?
Do you not honestly not know what a mind is?
quote:
The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
end quote:
from here
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mind
here is the definition of algorithm for good measure
quote:
A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.
end quote:
from here
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/algorithm
peace
You are wasting our time if you don’t understand the difference between know and prove.
If you are unable to make this sort of simple differentiation It’s probably good that you bow out
peace
If the straight lines result in a picture of Donald Duck we can infer design 🙂
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/
peace
Do you think that line charts and control charts are not useful ways to look at processes?
If so perhaps you should make that case in other places than here. It would up turn quite a bit of the way we do root cause analysis and by extension science as a whole
peace
Man, I never even used the word ‘prove’.
You know, you would get a lot more traction here if you tried to listen to what people are trying to tell you. I’m not the only one pushing back on what you write.
Both content-free and context-free. Exercise: Find the designer.
At the university we had this “exercise”: One crocodile is swimming downstream. Another crocodile is swimming towards the river bank. How many apples are in the basket?
That’s just a description of what philosophical zombies are. It provides no support for the idea that they could actually exist.
I see your link and raise it with
The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies
Patrick,
Ninja’d 🙁
You provided references, you win.
Not at all. I just pointed out the lines are meaningless on your chart, if, as you confirm, the points represent measurements at time intervals.
It’s not about whether they can exist it’s about whether I can conceive of their existence I can.
If you think they can’t exist please detail the behaviors that we can use to infallibly distinguish between zombies and persons.
Be specific and we will incorporate it into our test 😉
peace
Erik,
🙂
I can if you like reproduce the chart with out the lines as long as you understand that the points are temporally sequential.
The lines are there as a matter of convention the pattern is there with out them
peace
All,
If you don’t accept the possibility of philosophical zombies it simply means that we can in principle prove that a computer is conscious or that God exists.
I’m fine if you want to go that route. It only makes my test more objective.
Please specify the behavior(s) we can use to infallibly distinguish mental from non-mental entities and I will incorporate it into the test
peace
The task at hand is examining your claims.
For example, you assert that you have a test or exercise here. You don’t.
My knowledge of minds etc. cannot help when you have no clue what your own test is about. You are changing the terms so liberally that everything looks interchangeable.
At first, “Is the clear overall pattern we see here a record of intention or does it have a “non-mental” cause?” Do you know the difference between mind and intention? More importantly, do you understand why the difference is relevant?
It’s one thing what a mind is, but quite another what a mind does. And it’s altogether a third thing how to verify whether a process is caused by a mind or not. A graph does not give you that, certainly not without definitions and explanations about what is being presented.
We don’t even agree if there is a pattern there and you refuse to demonstrate it. That’s why this thread is standing still while generating lots of mindless noise.
Indeed, please do it. Without these definitions you don’t have a test or exercise or whatever you call it.
That’s your job, which is why people have been asking you for your operational definitions.
No, you said “Again it is impossible to disconfirm a claim about minds. That is because it’s possible for a entity to be indistinguishable from us but to have no subjective experience at all.” That’s a claim about whether they can exist, not whether you think you can conceive of them existing.
To support your claim you need to demonstrate that such things could exist. You haven’t done so.
I’m not surprised that Dennett would write that, given that his “explanation” for consciousness is that it’s an illusion.
Still, I think the more important fact is simply that one can’t look at behavior that is similar to ours and assume that subjective experience necssarily accompanies that behavior. That’s assuming the answer for what is actually in question. I do tire of hearing of “zombies,” to be sure, since it’s really about not assuming that one already knows the answer to the question, and the rest is pretty much useless blather. But it still does make the reasonable point that you don’t get to assume the conclusion you want (Dennett should learn).
Glen Davidson
So what you have is 65 numbers representing some parameter or statistical assemblage of parameters measured at equal time intervals. I’d agree with others above and say there’s no way to conclude anything on this amount of data without more context. I’ll look in again when you post your answer.
wait a minute,
I don’t think it’s possible to come up with behaviors that infallibly distinguish mental from non-mental behaviors I’ve made that very clear
Are you really going to claim it is possible AND that it’s my responsibility to demonstrate that it’s possible?
really??
peace
no way to conclude anything
really?
Can you not even conclude whether the pattern in the data exhibits the behaviors I listed in the OP?
peace
Your test is supposed to test that. Quote from an earlier FMM, “mental processes. You know the ones we are looking to identify in the test”
Then I asked how does your test identify that. It should be clear that without operational definitions you cannot say whether or not your test identifies anything and, if it does, you don’t know what it is.
What is the purpose of what you’ve posted in this thread?
I never made the first claim.