h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Serles scenario could work but I'm not sure that it necessarily would work, I think in order to consitently fool the observer the instructions would have to be so complete and elaborate that it would in effect have to be an AI program the fact that, as you point out, any use of analogy would stump a computer is an example of how the turing test would work.

I guess I'm just not clear on how the chinese room would work, if the questions were simple with no ambiguity fine but how would IT cope with analogy or philosophy.

I think it all works off teh fact that the Turing Test is a series of questions that look for certain responses in the computer. The chinese room is hypothetical so the instructions can be really complicated. Basically, the point is of awareness. The responses sho a knowlage of chinese but the person in teh room has no actual awareness of what he's writing, he is just running pre-programmed responses of extreme complexity. Of course then you wonder wheather thats all we do and usually have to have a lie down.

The disproof of Searle's argument would probably to pass as a question in chinese the translation of Searle's Argument, and ask the question:
"to what extent is this argument valid?"

If the person in the chinese room *can* answer convincingly - as we are now - then the instructions, which are deterministic, *can* grasp the use of analogy. If the person in the chinese room cannot answer convincingly, then the Turing Test is a valid means to distinguish between real and fake intelligence.