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T1: Don't be silly. How can you draw something logical from something material like a verbal expression? |
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T2: We can't, but perhaps they can. They showed us their Encyclopedia Antipodiana: written expressions representing words were related to written expressions representing inferences. |
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T1: That is the way books think. But that is exactly why books are not human beings. As far as I can see, they store propositions, inferences, and so on, in a Third World, which is neither physical nor psychical. |
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T2: If you are right, we don't stand a chance. Third Worlds are even less explorable than minds. But you used a very illuminating word. They "store." There is a place where they store something. Computers! |
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T1: Fantastic! Instead of talking to them we must talk to their computers. In giving software to their computers they should have simulated the way they thinkif any. |
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T2: Sure. But how can we talk to their computers? They are far more sophisticated than ours. To talk to them means to simulate their way of thinking. We cannot design a computer which simulates the Antipodean way of thinking because we need it precisely to discover their way of thinking. |
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T1: A vicious circle, indeed. But I have a plan, listen. Put me in a dummy computer, and I'll start a conversation with one of these lousy Antipodean machines. You know Turing's second principle: a human simulates successfully an artificial intelligence if, put in touch with a computer which does not know with whom it is speaking, after a certain time the computer believes that its interlocutor is another computer. |
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T2: Okay. This is the only chance we have. Be careful. Don't be too smart. Remember that you are only a computer. |
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Here follows the proceedings of the conversation between Dr. Smith, Dpt. of Cognitive Sciences of Svalbards University, in plain clothes, and Charles Sanders Personal, Antipodean Computer (hereafter CSP). |
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Smith: Do you understand the sentence Every Antipodean has two legs? |
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CSP: I can interpret it. I can provide you with analytical paraphrases of it, translations in other languages, equivalent expressions in other sign systems (I also have a graphics program), examples of other discourses that start from the background assumptions that Antipodeans are two-legged, et cetera. I call all these alternative expressions interpre- |
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