Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!kth!draken!tut!hydra!kreeta!grano
From: grano@kreeta.cs.Helsinki.FI (Juhani Grano)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Turing Test and Subject Bias
Message-ID: <1120@hydra.cs.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 6 Jun 89 22:34:35 GMT
References: <3018@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1108@hydra.cs.Helsinki.FI> <3039@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Sender: news@cs.Helsinki.FI
Reply-To: grano@cs.helsinki.fi
Organization: University of Helsinki, Finland
Lines: 34

In article <3039@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
:The quality of a Turing test depends on the quality of the observing
:subjects.  This is not true in the same way, or to the same extent,
:for proper experimental investigations.  The bias here lies with the
:experimenter and the sample (both are revealed in replications, or
:results).

I agree.

:The issue for the Turing Test is: what is an acceptable sample?

I think anyone can see that e.g. statistically satisfactory sample of
testees yieds null result; that is, something so general that it says
nothing. Turing must have realized that! (no sources, sorry, I just
think so :-))

:If Turing didn't want to pin down intelligence, he should have used
:another word.  I do not accept your version of history.  Sources?

I haven't read the original paper, but according to a book of mine
(sorry again, it's finnish..) "Turing wrote, that the idea was to make
questions about the intelligence of machine uninteresting, NOT respond
to them." That also sounds reasonable to me - Turing wasn't an idiot.

:In Turing's day, it was not as unreasonable to think of 'intelligence'
:as an out-there in-agents property.

If I understood that...where is your sense of history? Take a look at
any book on the history of philosophy and see what's been said about
intelligence. Forty years is not that much...

------------------------------
Kari Grano				University of Helsinki, Finland
email to: grano@cs.helsinki.fi		Department of CS