Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxll.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!gummo!whuxlb!pyuxll!ech
From: ech@pyuxll.UUCP (Ned Horvath)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Prejudice and Frames, Turing Test
Message-ID: <403@pyuxll.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Aug-83 02:00:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxll.403
Posted: Thu Aug 25 02:00:58 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Aug-83 04:48:57 EDT
References: <4474@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: American Bell, South Plainfield NJ
Lines: 29

The characterization of prejudice as  an  unwillingness/inability
to  adapt  to  new  (contradictory)  data  is  an  appealing one.
Perhaps this belongs in net.philosophy, but it seems to me that a
requirement  for  becoming a fully functional intelligence (human
or otherwise) is to abandon the search for  compact,  comfortable
"truths"  and  view knowledge as an approximation and learning as
the process of improving those approximations.

There is nothing wrong with compact generalizations: they  reduce
"overhead" in routine situations to manageable levels. It is when
they   are   applied   exclusively   and/or    inflexibly    that
generalizations  yield bigotry and the more amusing conversations
with Eliza et al.

As for the Turing test, I think it may be appropriate to think of
it  as  a "razor" rather than as a serious proposal.  When Turing
proposed the test there was a philosophical argument raging  over
the  definition  of  intelligence,  much  of  which  was outright
mysticism. The famous test cuts the fog nicely: a device  needn't
have  consciousness,  a  soul,  emotions -- pick your own list of
nebulous terms -- in order to  function  "intelligently."  Forget
whether it's "the real thing," it's performance that counts.

I think Turing recognized that, no matter how successful AI  work
was, there would always be those (bigots?) who would rip the back
off the machine and say,  "You  see?  Just  mechanism,  no  soul,
no emotions..." To them, the Turing test replies, "Who cares?"

=Ned=