Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Computing Machinery and Intelligence 67Man by telepathy or clairvoyance gives the right answer 130times out of 400 cards. The machine can only guess at random andperhaps gets 104 right, so the interrogator makes the rightidentification.” There is an interesting possibility, whichopens here. Suppose the digital computer contains a randomnumber generator. Then it will be natural to use this to decidewhat answer to give. But then the random number generator willbe subject to the psychokinetic powers of the interrogator.Perhaps this pschokinesis might cause the machine to guess rightmore often than would be expected on a probability calculation,so that te interrogator might still be unable to make the rightidentification. On the other hand, he might be able to guessright without any questioning, by clairvoyance. With E.S.P.anything may happen.If telepathy is admitted it will be necessary to tightenour test. The situation could be regarded as analogous to thatwhich would occur if the interrogator were talking to himselfand one of the competitors was listening with his ear to thewall. To put the competitors into a “telepathy-proof room” wouldsatisfy all requirements.ReflectionsMost of our response to this remarkable and lucid article iscontained in the following dialogue. However, we wish to make ashort comment about Turing’s apparent willingness to believethat extrasensory perception might turn out to be the ultimatedifference between humans and the machines they create. If thiscomment is taken at face value (and not as some sort of discretejoke), one has to wonder what motivated it. Apparently Turingwas convinced that the evidence for telepathy was quite strong.However, if it was strong in 1950, it is no stronger now, thirtyyears later – in fact, it is probably weaker. Since 1950 therehave been many notorious cases of claims of psychic ability ofone sort or another, often vouched for by physicists of somerenown. Some of these physicists have later felt they had beenmade fools of and have taken back their public pro-E.S.P.pronouncements, only to jump on some new paranormal bandwagonthe next month. But it is safe to say that the majority ofphysicists – and certainly the majority of psychologists, whospecialize in understanding the mind – doubt the existence ofextrasensory perception in any form.