Time to think of a new name? Like we dont call Brazilian nuts by their “other” name anymore.
Edit: oh, I cant compare those?
Well how about a different term that has fallen out of use: “sitting Indian style”. Yea we dont call it that anymore, even if it was common childhood name. We grow up, we recognize that unnecessary racial assignment is a racist.
So, no, I dont think the defense of “thats just we called it as kids” is a valid reason to keep saying it today. Youre just perpetuating “thats just how people talked”, “its from a different time” normalization and casual racism.
The original thought experiment was about Chinese, so it’s more of a reference than deliberate racism. It’s a famous philosophical debate about whether A.I. can be conscious, or if it just simulates understanding.
Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese.
Searle goes on to say, “The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.”
That’s really a flawed analogy, though. In this analogy, the man isn’t passing the Chinese Turing Test – the program is passing the Turing Test. The man is just the hardware that the program is running on.
It’s not a question of whether the man (the hardware) has any understanding. What you want to know is if the program has any understanding. Honestly, it seems like deliberately muddying the issue by proposing this hypothetical ‘intelligent hardware’ and using it to distract from the actual question about the software’s intelligence.
If I’m running a supposedly ‘intelligent’ AI on my 3090, you can’t refute that by pointing out that the 3090 is not intelligent on its own, without software.
In this situation, neither the hardware (man) nor software (program / instructions) has any understanding. The man is blindly following instructions, while the program is simply… instructions. Searle was trying to highlight that neither understanding nor consciousness arises automatically just by having a fancy and convincing output generator.
Another nice, more recent quote:
I demonstrated years ago with the so-called Chinese Room Argument that the implementation of the computer program is not by itself sufficient for consciousness or intentionality. Computation is defined purely formally or syntactically, whereas minds have actual mental or semantic contents, and we cannot get from syntactical to the semantic just by having the syntactical operations and nothing else. To put this point slightly more technically, the notion “same implemented program” defines an equivalence class that is specified independently of any specific physical realization. But such a specification necessarily leaves out the biologically specific powers of the brain to cause cognitive processes. A system, me, for example, would not acquire an understanding of Chinese just by going through the steps of a computer program that simulated the behavior of a Chinese speaker.
It’s not my analogy, I take no credit for it. If you follow the link to Stanford Philosophy, there’s plenty of discourse; including pretty much every counterargument possible. It’s an interesting read.
Telephone is where you start with a short phrase and whisper it into the next person’s ear. Then that continues for everyone, and what the last person says out loud has nothing to do with the original statement.
Your defense is “thats just what they called it back then” as though were forced to keep calling it the same thing today. Pass, lazy justification for casual racism.
Like, shocker, people 40-50 years ago we pretty loose with racist caricatures…
A mention of Chinese ethnicity or language is not racism you doofus.
As to your other mentioned example, ‘sitting indian style’ is racist because
A) indian as a reference to native americans is a racist term
B) it codes behaviour to ethnicity and thus serves as grounds for stereotypization
While referencing a Chinese room is not racism, as Chinese is a perfectly valid ethnicity, and they do have rooms in China. Additionally its a reference to a thought experiment, where the Chinese part refers to Chinese characters. Would ‘the hanzi script mandarin room experiment’ be more accurate? Not even necessarily, seems most people use hanzi writing interchangeable with the term ‘Chinese characters’
In conclusion: Youre too stupid to understand the nuances of this and therefore probably shouldnt get into discussions of racism with other people.
It’s not racist lol. In case you need a refresher on the definition of racism:
discrimination, prejudice, or violence against people because of their race
There’s no prejudice or discrimination at all. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the culture or language. It could really be any language that the person in the room doesn’t understand, like Klingon, Latin, or whatever. Save your energy for actually racist phrases like “Chinesium” etc
That’s not really a fair comparison, because “Chinese” is not a slur; it’s the preferred adjective (just like “Brazilian”).
I do think it’s a bit racist though, because it specifically exoticizes/others Chinese people/things.
I once knew a Mexican girl who went by “China” (“Chinese” in Spanish) because she was born with blonde hair, which makes no sense except that “Chinese” is used as a synonym for “weird”.
![I mean ... what are we doing here? [instachaaz]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9c19bb81-be5a-4782-89da-82b4737b9147.jpeg){kind=link}
The joke is that the ten bullet points at the end are completely different from the ten bullet points that started it all.
It’s a game of Chinese-room whispers.
That sounds racist… right?
Time to think of a new name? Like we dont call Brazilian nuts by their “other” name anymore.
Edit: oh, I cant compare those?
Well how about a different term that has fallen out of use: “sitting Indian style”. Yea we dont call it that anymore, even if it was common childhood name. We grow up, we recognize that unnecessary racial assignment is a racist.
So, no, I dont think the defense of “thats just we called it as kids” is a valid reason to keep saying it today. Youre just perpetuating “thats just how people talked”, “its from a different time” normalization and casual racism.
The original thought experiment was about Chinese, so it’s more of a reference than deliberate racism. It’s a famous philosophical debate about whether A.I. can be conscious, or if it just simulates understanding.
Further reading
That’s really a flawed analogy, though. In this analogy, the man isn’t passing the Chinese Turing Test – the program is passing the Turing Test. The man is just the hardware that the program is running on.
It’s not a question of whether the man (the hardware) has any understanding. What you want to know is if the program has any understanding. Honestly, it seems like deliberately muddying the issue by proposing this hypothetical ‘intelligent hardware’ and using it to distract from the actual question about the software’s intelligence.
If I’m running a supposedly ‘intelligent’ AI on my 3090, you can’t refute that by pointing out that the 3090 is not intelligent on its own, without software.
In this situation, neither the hardware (man) nor software (program / instructions) has any understanding. The man is blindly following instructions, while the program is simply… instructions. Searle was trying to highlight that neither understanding nor consciousness arises automatically just by having a fancy and convincing output generator.
Another nice, more recent quote:
It’s not my analogy, I take no credit for it. If you follow the link to Stanford Philosophy, there’s plenty of discourse; including pretty much every counterargument possible. It’s an interesting read.
Wow, thank you for this! Never knew about this one. Why the heck did anyone downvote your helpful comment?
I remove my own upvote from my comments lol
That’s not what Chinese whispers is, though.
It’s what I grew up calling telephone.
Telephone is where you start with a short phrase and whisper it into the next person’s ear. Then that continues for everyone, and what the last person says out loud has nothing to do with the original statement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game
Your defense is “thats just what they called it back then” as though were forced to keep calling it the same thing today. Pass, lazy justification for casual racism.
Like, shocker, people 40-50 years ago we pretty loose with racist caricatures…
A mention of Chinese ethnicity or language is not racism you doofus.
As to your other mentioned example, ‘sitting indian style’ is racist because
A) indian as a reference to native americans is a racist term
B) it codes behaviour to ethnicity and thus serves as grounds for stereotypization
While referencing a Chinese room is not racism, as Chinese is a perfectly valid ethnicity, and they do have rooms in China. Additionally its a reference to a thought experiment, where the Chinese part refers to Chinese characters. Would ‘the hanzi script mandarin room experiment’ be more accurate? Not even necessarily, seems most people use hanzi writing interchangeable with the term ‘Chinese characters’
In conclusion: Youre too stupid to understand the nuances of this and therefore probably shouldnt get into discussions of racism with other people.
Lotta words to say you just wanna be racist.
Really not beating the ‘too stupid to comment on the issue’ allegations with that comment sweaty
Not really beating the casual racist with your flippant insults and uncivil responses.
This reminds me of my ex’s mom describing someone as Mexican, then asking “Is that racist?” Well, now it is, Karen (her actual name).
Any mention of an ethnicity other than white isn’t racist. You’re racist for thinking it is.
It’s not racist lol. In case you need a refresher on the definition of racism:
There’s no prejudice or discrimination at all. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the culture or language. It could really be any language that the person in the room doesn’t understand, like Klingon, Latin, or whatever. Save your energy for actually racist phrases like “Chinesium” etc
Okay buddy. Weird hill to die on.
It’s also called the telephone game but that doesn’t work with the Chinese room pun.
That’s not really a fair comparison, because “Chinese” is not a slur; it’s the preferred adjective (just like “Brazilian”).
I do think it’s a bit racist though, because it specifically exoticizes/others Chinese people/things.
I once knew a Mexican girl who went by “China” (“Chinese” in Spanish) because she was born with blonde hair, which makes no sense except that “Chinese” is used as a synonym for “weird”.
it’s also the common name of the language, which is probably what the experiment was actually referencing
I’ve always seen it referred as ‘Chinese Whispers’.
Before that it was called ‘Russian Gossip’.
ive only ever seen it called a game of telephone idk where the racial part came from
It was telephone for me growing up in 90s Western Canada.
Broken telephone is what it sounds like you guys are talking about.
90s, eastern Canada
Different names in different places. I grew up calling it Chinese Whispers.
Ugh, my gram does. We pick them out of the holiday but mix now
Do Chinese whiskers have braces?
Do Siamese sisters get whiskers in stasis?
I hope researchers somewhere are quantifying exactly how different they are.