On: The Google Way of Science - The Growing Importance of Data

[hugh]

Well,

(a) You can't prove or disprove a riddle

(b) The Chinese Room isn't a riddle, it's a thought experiment

(c) You can't prove or disprove a thought experiment

(d) You might be able to prove or disprove the point that Searle was trying to make by using the Chinese Room, except his point was about consciousness (or even Consciousness), not about machine translation, so ultimately the parenthetical statement seems to be pretty meaningless no matter whether you make it "proof" or "disproof"

[tyn → hugh]

Searle expands on consciousness in his chinese room paper but the main point of the thought experment is that you can have a conversation that sounds intelligent without having any understanding at all of what you say and what you are being told (in other words: passing the Turing test does not imply intelligence).

[hugh → tyn]

You're probably right, it's probably more about intelligence than consciousness (I haven't read it for a long time).

Anyway, it's certainly not about machine translation.