Comment by latexr
3 hours ago
> At the very least you can test for the sort of intelligence that is present in humans but absent from calculators and cleanly separate the two.
But you can only do that now, in hindsight. Before calculators, one could argue being able to do math was a sign of intelligence, but once something new comes along which can do math in a non-intelligent way, you can realise “ah, right, my definition was incomplete/incorrect, I need something better”.
> Foul food tastes different.
You’re right, that was a bad example.
> You come across a shiny piece of yellow metal that you think is gold. (…) He's nothing more than a mad man rambling about a distinction he made up in his head.
No, that is not right. Fool’s gold is a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite
It’s not the same as gold and you can test for it, but that doesn’t mean you know how to do it. Yet it’s perfectly possible that by being exposed to the real and fake thing you’ll get a feel for each one as there are subtle visual clues. It doesn’t mean you can articulate exactly what those are, yet you’re able to do it.
It’s like tasting two similar beers or sodas. You may be able to identify them by taste and understand they’re difference but be unable to articulate exactly how you know which is which to the point someone else can use your verbal instructions to know the difference. That doesn’t mean the difference isn’t there or that you can’t tell, it just means you haven’t yet found yourself the proper way to extract and impart what you instinctively understood.
>But you can only do that now, in hindsight.
No you could always do that. The meaning you take from it is up to you but you could always separate humans and calculators.
>No, that is not right. Fool’s gold is a thing.
I know what fools gold is. I used it for contrast. Fools gold can be tested for.
>but that doesn’t mean you know how to do it.
It doesn't matter. If you claim it exists but you don't know how to do it and you can't point to anyone who can, it's the same as something you made up.
>It’s like tasting two similar beers or sodas. You may be able to identify them by taste and understand they’re difference but be unable to articulate exactly how you know which is which to the point someone else can use your verbal instructions to know the difference.
You are still making the same mistake. Two similar beers or sodas taste different. No one is asking you to come up with a theory for intelligence. All you have to say here is the equivalent of "It tastes different" and let me taste it for myself. But even that much, you can not do. So why on earth should I treat what you say as worth anything ?