On 2/12/2014 8:24 AM, Ørjan Johansen wrote:
On Wed, 12 Feb 2014, omd wrote:
I'm somewhat skeptical of the word "organism".
If it has to be biological, then just say "human", there's no
guarantee hypothetical space aliens or AIs would be considered
organisms anyway. :)
[snip]
/me wonders whether speculating about Tines is too silly for the New
Agora. Or is that the Old Agora?
Humans may not be very good at formulating classifications that are
meant to separate themselves from unknown unknowns, without
discriminating on the basis of biology. Trying too hard might either
create a distinction too hard to check over email, or accidentally
exclude biological humans that should intuitively be included.
Greetings,
Ørjan.
This is the point of the Turing Test, actually. A method of determining
if something is sentient or not over a text interface. Though I suppose
in the normal TT at least one person needs to know who is and isn't a
machine.
