23 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Chinese Room Argument
Suppose that I'm locked in a room and given a large batch of Chinese
writing. Suppose furthermore (as is indeed the case) that I know no
Chinese, either written or spoken, and that I'm not even confident that I
could recognize Chinese writing as Chinese writing distinct from, say,
Japanese writing or meaningless squiggles. To me, Chinese writing is
just so many meaningless squiggles.
Now suppose further that after this first batch of Chinese writing I am
given a second batch of Chines... 1 
notes
notesAn argument against the possibility of AI, replacing a computer with an english-speaking human being performing english-instructions on chinese symbols and outputting results. This is like a computer, which does not understand the symbols it is manipulating, but the results look intelligent.
11 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Power of the Chinese Ideogram
As everyone knows, the Chinese do not have letters, as we do, but symbols for whole words. This has, of course, many inconveniences: it means that, in learning to write, there are an immense number of different signs to be learnt, not only 26 as with us; that there is no such thing as alphabetical order, so that dictionaries, files, catalogues, etc., are difficult to arrange and linotype is impossible; that foreign words, such as proper names and scientific terms, cannot be written down by so...
1 
1 Phonetic alphabets change over time as the sounds of the language drift, by decoupling the sounds of the language from the alphabet, the Chinese have produced a written language that can survive thousands of years.
