Fame has this mystical quality of turning shit into gold. I think this is what the alchemists were looking for all the time.
Often the difference between something being profound or crazy is the person saying it.

The difference between great and mediocre contemporary art is the artist who made it. — ovdtogt

Yes and makes us wonder if we're mistaking one for the other in every possible way which I think can happen in only 2 ways and what a coincidence that number 2 means shit.

"Prediction" seems a wrong concept to apply to language. I thought that was an astrologer's domain. Language is about information isn't it and while that maybe useful to make predictions, language itself is solely about transmitting information and so your version of "mirroring" seems a bit off the mark. Perhaps you'll enlighten me. — TheMadFool

When writing "predict", I actually thought of using the word "evaluate", but it simply felt a little off. I agree that I probably should have used "evaluate" or "judge" instead. What I meant was: "If you consider something to be someway, because you are someway, you are using mirroring." In our communication we need a way to evaluate what someone means with their language and we usually use a lot of mirroring to make our evaluations.

Yes and makes us wonder if we're mistaking one for the other in every possible way which I think can happen in only 2 ways and what a coincidence that number 2 means shit. — TheMadFool

It shows that the need for Gods persists in modern society.

I think your op should read 'Why aliens will never learn to understand' our language. For understanding precedes speaking.
Every new born child is an alien.

I agree with you that we lack a good definition for general intelligence. But as my example of a thing that is clearly as intelligent as us but can't predict all our associations demonstrates, even our intuition doesn't agree with the Turing test as what is intelligent. We need to keep working to understand what intelligence is and as I currently see it, the way the Turing test is used in this work and in things like AI development, it diverts us into a path that is harmful. It is quite obvious that a transistor based general intelligence doesn't need to be able to speak any language in an indistinguishable way from humans and that that would be an inefficient and unnecessarily complex way to program general intelligence - yet people tend to see that as an important goal right now. Harmful, I say! — Qmeri

Whether or not a particular Turing test is appropriate in a given situation is largely a question concerning the breadth of the test. For example, if testing whether a computer 'really' understands Chess, should the test be very narrow and concern only it's ability to produce good chess moves? or should the test be very broad to even include the ability of the computer to produce novel metaphors relating chess to the human condition?

Personally, I don't interpret the spirit of the Turing test as making or implying ontological commitments regarding how AI should be programmed or trained , or as to how intelligence should represent sensory information with language, or even as to what intelligence is or whether it is ultimately reducible to metrics. Neither do I understand the spirit of the Turing test as being prescriptive in telling humans how they ought to judge a participant's actions. Rather I understand Alan Turing as very modestly pointing out the fact that humans tend to recognise intelligence in terms of situationally embedded stimulus-response dispositions.

In other words, the specifics of what goes on inside the 'brain' of a participant is considered to be relevant only to the functional extent that the brain's processes are a causal precondition for generating such situationally embedded behavioural repertoires; the meaning of language and intelligence being undetermined regarding the implementation of stimulus-response mappings.

Indeed, an important criterion of intelligence is the ability to generate unexpected stimulus-responses. Hence any formal and rigid definition of intelligence solely in terms of rules, whether internal in describing computational processes inside the brain, or situationally in terms of stimulus-response mappings, would be to a large extent an oxymoron.

Indeed, an important criterion of intelligence is the ability to generate unexpected stimulus-responses. — sime

The slug that crawls over my carpet and leaves a trail behind in the morning is intelligent because I haven't been able to find out where he hides himself. Or maybe I am just dumb.

It shows that the need for Gods persists in modern society. — ovdtogt

For a good reason or bad?

For a good reason or bad? — TheMadFool

Do we take aspirin for a good reason or bad? Both I think. Good that we have it, bad that we need it.

Do we take aspirin for a good reason or bad? Both I think. Good that we have it, bad that we need it. — ovdtogt

If given a choice would you adopt atheism because of the bad reasons or become a theist for the good reasons?

If I could, I would prefer to believe in a benevolent God.

If I could, I would prefer to believe in a benevolent God. — ovdtogt

:up:

If I could, I would prefer to believe in a benevolent God. — ovdtogt

Wouldn't that be great? Like having super powerful parents. Anytime you need something you can go and binge off them and stay a child for the rest of your life.

One interesting thing if you watch people talking on the telephone is how they cannot help gesturing and communicating with their face and eyes to the interlocutor who isn't there. And the gesturing in a stifled form gets through, just as 'acting' in a radio play gets through to the listener; the hearer can recognise, for instance, the stilted delivery of someone being inexpressive because they're on a crowded train at the other end of the phone-line.

↪aporiap I'm actually talking about fluent conversation here - like what would pass a Turing test. But I do agree, that while it would always be slow and awkward, we could use the pre-existing words and phrases to communicate about things common for us. A lot of time would be used to deal with all the extra wrong associations and unmeant ways of approaching the common subjects, but some of our associations would be common and useful. In anything complex it would be much more useful to use something without mirroring. — Qmeri

Why couldn't you have fluent conversation? I mean, as humans, we can appreciate how valuable a bone-toy is to a dog, how a nest is essential to the life of a bird. Surely, if we could converse, we could comment about those things even though they aren't associations held in common with us. We can see and understand associations that are unrelated to us. Why couldn't a hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial capable of learning about us do the same, and why couldn't we do the same with them?

By the title of this thread, I thought the OP was going to be a rant about illegal immigrants :lol:

The main reason we have not been able to replicate human conversation with computers is because we use mirroring in human speech. This means that we trust that our phrases cause almost the same associations in the minds of the participants of the conversation — Qmeri

You're kinda hitting on the reason we have communications problems with other humans: different mental associations. I'd say that no two people have the exact same associations, not when even moderately complex concepts are involved. The more unlike the people are, the less effective the communication. I agree that with aliens, the differences would be stark. On the other hand, it seems that some communications would be possible - I'd expect there'd still be recognizable referrents to objects and actions, and the relations between them. Discussion of art or politics would probably be hopeless.