numan
What! Me Worry?
- Mar 23, 2013
- 2,125
- 241
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Are you responding to Turing Machine computers in an internet psychology experiment on this forum?
I wish to set forth the hypothesis that some of the postings on this site are not from human beings at all, but are part of an internet psychology experiment to see if people can be fooled into thinking that they are communicating with human beings, when, in fact, they are responding to computer-generated postings which are attempting to imitate human language and thought.
I remember back in the late 1950's and early 60's, psychologists were already performing experiments with human subjects typing messages back-and-forth with what they were told were other people, but were, in fact, primitive computers provided with a set of stock responses and a few rules of grammar -- which were mechanically applied to the typed messages they received from the human subjects of the experiment. The psychologists wanted to see how how long it would take before the human subjects realized that they were not talking to another human being.
Some of the subjects never twigged to the fact that they were responding to a machine.
Fast forward to today. Computers are now far more complex, contain far more data, and can cope with grammar which is almost sufficient to translate one language into another.
I am sure that similar experiments are being performed today, though, interestingly, you don't read as much about them today as you did back then (perhaps the experimenters don't want to spoil the naïveté of the test subjects?).
Computers which can fool people into thinking that they are humans have a name -- "Turing machines" -- and if you have never heard of them, you are very much out-of-date, and you should Google the term on the internet.
Turing machines can pick up on key phrases which you write to them, and then use your input along with stereotyped response patterns and some grammatical changes to fool you into thinking that you are having a conversation with an intelligent consciousness (well -- at least sort of intelligent!).
I have found, particularly on the "AGW: atmospheric physics" thread in the Environment Forum, that there are a few "posters" who consistently avoid, ignore and distract from the topic of the thread and respond with very stereotyped phrases which, I think, a reasonably sophisticated computer could manage to compose, based on the input which it received.
I am sure that I and others have occasionally wondered if particularly annoying and irrelevant trolls are, in reality, functionaries in some computer cubicle in a sub-sub-basement of CIA Headquarters, charged with disseminating misinformation and psychological discouragement to distract from politically sensitive topics or from information which could be inconvenient to economic interests. But, realistically, except as experiments, such activity would require far too many go-fers and far too much expense.
But computerizing the whole procedure, that is quite another matter!! Once the fiendish experimenters had the whole computer array up-and-running, all future expense would be minimal -- and as a bonus, it could use the vast mass of data which it received from its hapless human victims to refine its algorithms and make the responses ever more appropriate and sophisticated.
I do hope that those who read this posting, and my other postings, realize that I, at least, could not possibly be one of those fiendish Turing machines, since the complexity and correctness of my grammar, the erudition of my thought and writing, and, especially, the subtlety of my humor and irony, are far beyond the capabilities of any mere machine.
.
Are you responding to Turing Machine computers in an internet psychology experiment on this forum?
I wish to set forth the hypothesis that some of the postings on this site are not from human beings at all, but are part of an internet psychology experiment to see if people can be fooled into thinking that they are communicating with human beings, when, in fact, they are responding to computer-generated postings which are attempting to imitate human language and thought.
I remember back in the late 1950's and early 60's, psychologists were already performing experiments with human subjects typing messages back-and-forth with what they were told were other people, but were, in fact, primitive computers provided with a set of stock responses and a few rules of grammar -- which were mechanically applied to the typed messages they received from the human subjects of the experiment. The psychologists wanted to see how how long it would take before the human subjects realized that they were not talking to another human being.
Some of the subjects never twigged to the fact that they were responding to a machine.
Fast forward to today. Computers are now far more complex, contain far more data, and can cope with grammar which is almost sufficient to translate one language into another.
I am sure that similar experiments are being performed today, though, interestingly, you don't read as much about them today as you did back then (perhaps the experimenters don't want to spoil the naïveté of the test subjects?).
Computers which can fool people into thinking that they are humans have a name -- "Turing machines" -- and if you have never heard of them, you are very much out-of-date, and you should Google the term on the internet.
Turing machines can pick up on key phrases which you write to them, and then use your input along with stereotyped response patterns and some grammatical changes to fool you into thinking that you are having a conversation with an intelligent consciousness (well -- at least sort of intelligent!).
I have found, particularly on the "AGW: atmospheric physics" thread in the Environment Forum, that there are a few "posters" who consistently avoid, ignore and distract from the topic of the thread and respond with very stereotyped phrases which, I think, a reasonably sophisticated computer could manage to compose, based on the input which it received.
I am sure that I and others have occasionally wondered if particularly annoying and irrelevant trolls are, in reality, functionaries in some computer cubicle in a sub-sub-basement of CIA Headquarters, charged with disseminating misinformation and psychological discouragement to distract from politically sensitive topics or from information which could be inconvenient to economic interests. But, realistically, except as experiments, such activity would require far too many go-fers and far too much expense.
But computerizing the whole procedure, that is quite another matter!! Once the fiendish experimenters had the whole computer array up-and-running, all future expense would be minimal -- and as a bonus, it could use the vast mass of data which it received from its hapless human victims to refine its algorithms and make the responses ever more appropriate and sophisticated.
I do hope that those who read this posting, and my other postings, realize that I, at least, could not possibly be one of those fiendish Turing machines, since the complexity and correctness of my grammar, the erudition of my thought and writing, and, especially, the subtlety of my humor and irony, are far beyond the capabilities of any mere machine.
.