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Comment by _xnmw | Hacker News Reader

No, you're misunderstanding the Chinese room argument completely. It's not about scale, it's about the concept of "understanding" something. Here's another version that might make sense to programmers. I know Python, and I can read/write/compile Python code in my head. My computer's REPL can also read/compile Python code by following a detailed set of pre-programmed instructions to convert it to machine code. Nevertheless the computer does not "understand" Python, it cannot write Python code in response to any problem, nor does it "understand" Python the way a person does. It is not a programmer, and a programmer "understands" the language and can produce new creative meaningful output, and doesn't merely follow instructions.

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The catch in your argument is that from the outside, you manipulating code and your computer manipulating code are indistinguishable. You say the only difference is that you understand, whereas the computer doesn't. However, from the outside, there is no difference between a statement print("I understand this") running on you or a computer.

What you are stating is the entire point of the thought experiment.

Cool, there are at least five different 'that is the whole point' takes on what the Chinese room means in this discussion. Also, I disagree with your take on it, that's not at all the point.

The fact that you’re saying “from the outside” is literally the point. Outside implies an inside implies dualism. Hence the thought experiment. If there was no outside the thought experiment inherently wouldn’t be.

Easy there with the words. Just because there's two of something is hardly an argument for a (mind-body) dualism [1]. Is the dichotomy cats vs dogs then proof for said dualism as well? How about vanilla vs chocolate? What do you make of the existence of a (six sided) die then?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism

smh, have a good one.

> Outside implies an inside implies dualism

Well, unless with dualism you just mean that there are two, you are simply mistaken. Just because my car has an inside and an outside, and I cannot determine the state of its gearbox from the outside w/o the car telling me, does not mean that this implies a ghost in the machine. Far from it.

It seems like the Chinese room argument is incompatible with a materialist world view. To a materialist, what could the brain be but a computer? Some sort of physical process is taking place inside that is is processing information, and at some level of abstraction that process will look like "dumb" symbolic manipulation. Yet we achieve "understanding"

Yes that is the point. The Chinese room is a thought experiment meant to prove dualism.

No it's not. Searle is explicitly not a dualist.

He thinks conciseness is a physical property. It's not clear to me why he thinks only brains, or maybe only living things, can have this property.

He makes the analogy that a weather simulation in a computer can't make anything wet so therefore a computer program can't have a thought. My take is that when we think about rain we don't get wet either. Human minds are the same sort of thing as the weather simulation, not the same sort of thing as the weather. For me thoughts are simulations, or models, or operations on models, and that those activities are tractable to computation.

How do we know that what we achieve is different from what the Chinese Room achieves?

Doesn't that beg the question?

Nothing about materialism implies lumping organic and inorganic substances into a catchall term "computer" leads to greater understanding of how either works.

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