A New Turing Test

Anyone familiar with this blog will have figured out by now that I am a stickler for elegant and correct prose, even if my writing rarely measures up to my own exacting standards. Until a little over a year ago, I taught philosophy in a large university. As such, I would often receive e-mails from my students. Reading students’ e-mails, as well as their term papers and exams, was always exquisite torture for a man of my rather rarefied literary tastes. Reflecting on this torture recently led me to thinking about Turing’s Test. You're scratching your head. Don’t worry. I’ll explain the connection.

Alan Turing (1912-1954), the great father of computer science, first proposed his test in a paper entitled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (Mind 59 (1950), 433-460). He wanted to address the question, “can machines think?” He seems to have thought that if a computer could fool a human interrogator into thinking it was human, then the question could be answered in the affirmative.

There are many versions of Turing’s test, but the most basic idea goes like this. Imagine yourself (the interrogator) place in front of an interface, say a computer monitor, connected to an agent. You pose questions, and on the basis of the answers you receive, after you are satisfied enough to make a judgment, you are to guess whether your interlocutor is a human or a computer. This is one trial. After repeated trials, the computer’s score is to be determined by the percentage of trials in which you wrongly guessed that the computer is a real person.

Turing thought that if a computer passed this test, it was for all intents and purposes a human mind, and that, therefore, the machine could think. He further predicted that by the year 2000 such a machine would be built. Despite many attempts, that prediction has so far proved to be wrong, though such a machine may exist in the future.

There have been many criticisms of the Turing Test. For one thing, it seems to confound intelligence with simulated intelligence. This is, perhaps, a result of the crude psychological behaviourism that was fashionable at the time that Turing wrote. In any case, I do not intend to go over the finer philosophical implications of the test.

Instead, by reflection on my former students’ communications, I am brought to consider a different implication of the Turing Test. Rather than expecting computing technology to come up to our standards of rationality, I think Turing neglected to consider another possibility, which is that human rationality might someday sink to the level where human discourse becomes indistinguishable from crude technology. I am thinking here of those e-mails I used to receive from my students, begging for an extension or a grade reappraisal, which I was unable to decipher because they were written in an inchoate pidgin, an impoverished amalgam of bizarre grammar and orthography, and text-messaging contractions.

Given that I could not understand many of these e-mails (nor in many instances could I understand their term papers), I see no reason why a machine need have any fear of failing to “measure up” — if that is even the right phrase — to such a low standard of discourse. Indeed, if things get any worse, a computer that generated random strings of characters and spaces could not fail Turing’s Test. I had to wonder myself sometimes if the e-mail I was reading had been generated by a human or a virus-infected computer.

The Donation of Constantine

For those not familiar with it, the “Donation of Constantine” was a forged decree, purportedly by the Emperor Constantine (“the Great”), granting dominion of the Western Roman Empire to Pope Sylvester I in 4th century. If the decree were genuine, subsequent Popes would thereby have inherited dominion over the territory by right of succession according to the Roman Civil Law. The Donation was used to legitimate Papal authority in Western Europe, trumping the authority of kingly rulers.

The Donation was fraudulent and was known to be so by the 15th century. Nonetheless, even if it had been genuine, the Church should have been wary of relying on it.

Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator of Judea who handed Jesus over for execution, was portrayed in the Scriptures as a man ruling without right in a foreign land. Whatever putative political legitimacy he might have claimed derived ultimately from the Emperor at Rome — the same source from which the Catholic Church claimed to derive its similar powers via the Donation. Therefore, if Pilate lacked right and authority, then so too must the Church of Rome.

However, let us assume that the Church was willing to grant the legitimacy of Pilate’s imperium over Judea, an imperium granted by the authority of the Emperor. If the Church had inquired from whence the Roman emperors themselves derived their authority, they likely would have found that it was based on usurpation and tyranny. If Constantine's title was acquired by usurpation, either his own or his predecessors', he could not have passed good title of his realm to the Church, for the obvious reason that he lacked good title himself.

Rumblings in Persia

Is it possible, despite the reticence of the mainstream media to admit as much, that President Obama is capable of the occasional misstep?

Recent events in Iran are exciting, to say the least. It is widely believed that last week’s presidential election in that country was rigged. This is by no means a unanimous opinion, but I, for one, am inclined to believe it. I saw four different opinion polls in the days leading up to the election. Of those four, only one pegged Mr. Ahmadinejad as leading, and even then it was by a mere percentage point. All the rest had Mr. Mousavi leading by a significantly larger — though still quite small — margin. In any case, given that there were four candidates running, a further run-off vote was to be expected. And yet, presto! Ahmadinejad ended up with an astonishing 60% of the vote, rendering a run-off unnecessary. No foreign observers were allowed to scrutinize the voting, and the votes were counted in record time, despite a remarkably high voter turnout. In my opinion, it all gives off a rather ripe odour.

Still, it is possible that Ahmadinejad won, and that the polling somehow simply failed to track the real voter preference. Unfortunately for Ahmadinejad and Iran’s despotic “Guardian Council” of clerics, even if Ahmadinejad did win, he has in another sense now lost. The Guardian Council announced that although it would sanction a limited recount, it would not nullify the election results even if evidence of fraud is found. By taking this stance — which I understand they have subsequently softened — they thereby lost any remaining claim to democratic legitimacy. They revealed how little respect they have for their own “democratic” process, flawed though it is (for example, the Guardian Council vets all candidates before they are allowed to run).

While history is being written on the streets of Tehran, President Obama’s voice has been cautiously muted, not venturing to do what, for example, Nicolas Sarkozy has done in calling the election a “fraud”. Now, I know that Mr. Obama has his reasons for adopting a quiet approach. He has had a long-standing policy of rapprochement with Iran, hoping to engage them in dialogue, a hope which he fears will be scuttled if he sticks his nose in Iranian domestic affairs. He reasons that, due to the troubled history of US-Iranian relations, it is best that the US stay out of the fray, lest it be accused of meddling.

Unfortunately, the US is already being accused by the hardliners of meddling, and they always have been and always will be accused of meddling, because it’s all the hardliners have. They will make this accusation regardless of how the US conducts itself. So, Mr. Obama, you may as well go ahead and meddle.

As much as it pains me to admit it, Mr. Obama’s critics are correct: the people on the streets in Iran could use the world’s moral support in their courageous effort to effect change. To fail to stand with them looks dishonourable and cowardly.

There is a parade that is already underway in Iran. I would advise Mr. Obama to get in front of it before he’s too late.

That Dread May Be Disinterested

June 16, 1755
Sir,

You will pardon me for taking this Opportunity to subjoin a few Remarks that I neglected to include in my last [“Of an Argument That Death Is Not to Be Dreaded,” June 17, 2009 — Ed.]. I therein played the critick Part in showing how from the Fact that we dread not the Time before we were born, it does not follow that we therefore shou’d feel no Dread at the Prospect of a coming Time when we shall cease to be.

‘Tis to be remark’d that when we speak of a Man’s dreading something, that which is dreaded needn’t be an Object of direct Interest to that Man who dreads it. In short, Sir, Dread may be disinterested.

Even if it were the Case that our Souls no longer exist after we are dead (an Assumption by no means congruent with the Doctrine of our most holy Christian Religion), and that therefore we will not be able to experience the Loss of that Life of which we so much wish to remain in Possession, yet we may still dread such a Loss, just as we may dread the Prospect of many a Thing which concerns ourselves not in the least.

Do we not feel Horror when we see portray’d upon the Stage Queen Gertrude’s mistaken draught of Poison? Do we not feel a momentary impulse to stand upon our Seats and exclaim “Stop, dear Lady! Pray, do not drink!”? How is it, then, that we may take such interest in a Character, whose Death we can have no personal Interest in, whose Loss we can have no true Reason to grieve, and whose very Existence is owed to a Poet’s Fancy?

In short, if I am not an insensible Brute, I am capable of dreading not only the Prospect of my own Demise, but also the Demise of others, even those unrelated to me by Blood, Interest, or Affection. It is this very Propensity to experience Sentiments in a disinterested Fashion that is the Foundation and First Principle of our Nature as moral Beings.

You see, Sir, that I may dread the loss of my own Life in the same way that I may dread the loss of Life of another. The two kinds of Dread are Wares that come out of the same Shop. Thus, if I may be brought to doubt the Genuineness of the one, why may I not also be brought to doubt the second? In neither Case will I directly experience the Loss; nonetheless the Dread of that loss is very real, and we shou’d shun as monstrous a human Creature who was incapable of dreading the Death of his fellow Man, or of regretting it after it hath come to pass.

There may be other very good Reasons for regarding our Mortality with a philosophical Equanimity. But to lose this sensitive Faculty of disinterested Concern for the Welfare of ourselves or others is to make ourselves morally unfit for the Company of our Fellows.

I am, Sir, your humble Servant, etc.

Jos. Darlington, Esq.
Darlington Close,
Horton-cum-Studley, Oxfordshire.