Pozorvlakpozorvlak@mathstodon.xyz
Aug 26, 2026, 11:18 AMI keep seeing people cite Searle's "Chinese Room" argument approvingly. This is annoying, because it's an incredibly dumb argument that relies on
- sleight-of-hand between the program and the CPU executing it
- overindexing on the details of 1950s machine-translation efforts
- ignorance of how computers actually work, and
- xenophobia.
For a longer and more detailed evisceration, please see Mark Rosenfelder's 2002 essay https://www.zompist.com/searle.html (now with 2026 update on how LLMs affect the picture! TL;DR they do not make Searle's argument look any better).
