The author’s take on the Turing Test is a common misconception - Turing did not propose that the machine fool a human into believing that it was human, but rather that the machine fool a man into believing that it was a woman.

The author’s reference to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and Turing’s Halting Problem are also misguided: humans are in no way immune from such logical traps (“will your answer to this question be negative?“)

This argument seems flawed to me. Even if there are theoretical limits to how fully a computer program can analyze another, it does not immediately follow that this means a computer program is incapable of determining if another computer program is in fact a program running on a computer.

I don't need to fully understand all the ins and outs of the Linux source code to determine it's code, and that the code runs on a computer. I don't see why that would be different for a program.

Am I missing something?

Despite wanting to say "stopped clock wrong twice a day" I think he's right to conclusions. I might differ to reasons because my principle position is the lack of induction, and therefore inductive reasoning. Self recognition wasn't high on my list of reasons but I may reconsider.

Also, like lots of autodidacts out of his field, he overrated the Turing test. It's a thought experiment, its not real. We don't lock Chinese philosophers in caves Jared.

See how easy that was?

----

For further reading, consider the excellent <https://www.amazon.com/World-Appears-Journey-into-Consciousn...>