The Chinese room argument is a parlour trick that uses scale as a distraction. It posits a person in a room manipulating symbols to produce intelligent seeming outputs. It says, see, it’s absurd to think a person in a room with a stack of symbols could emulate intelligence.
But let’s say the room contains many billions of people, it is the size of a planet, and it contains racks of many trillions of symbols, and it spends millions or billions of years to produce an output. That’s more like the scale of a sophisticated computer system, or a brain.
Does that sound much like a man in a room with some symbols? No. Does it sound like that could do complex calculations and produce sophisticated and perhaps even intelligent outputs? Well, given enough time and scale, yes why not?
The Chinese room is pure misdirection and it amazes me anyone falls for it. There’s really no actual argument there.
But let’s say the room contains many billions of people, it is the size of a planet, and it contains racks of many trillions of symbols, and it spends millions or billions of years to produce an output. That’s more like the scale of a sophisticated computer system, or a brain.
Does that sound much like a man in a room with some symbols? No. Does it sound like that could do complex calculations and produce sophisticated and perhaps even intelligent outputs? Well, given enough time and scale, yes why not?
The Chinese room is pure misdirection and it amazes me anyone falls for it. There’s really no actual argument there.