I'm going to talk about Alan Turing and you would think that as a man who sleeps with men I would be talking about the Abominable way in which he was tortured to death by the establishment. However I'm not going to do that it has in fact been done to death he was treated extremely poorly and his death was a great loss. What I am going to talk about it is perhaps the thing that he is best remembered for by the ley community full stop now I may be wrong about this, but I think many people have heard of the Turing test .
Turing was a genius. There is no question of this he was working at a time in which computers were extremely new and unrecognisable from a modern perspective. The famous bomba which he built with help at Bletchley Park more resembled the tiptronic controllers of washing machines than a true computer.
But he was already thinking about how computers work and worrying about their interaction with humans. And he proposed a test, the way of finding out if computer was sentient.
The idea was explained in that recent excellent film the Imitation Game full stop that is what Turing call his test though today we just call it the Turing test. The idea is very simple. Turing assumed that thought was a purely human phenomenon. So his test was that a human being should engage in a conversation with a computer and without knowing but it was a computer work out if it was human or not. If the tester believed it was human than the computer was thinking
There are many problems with this. Firstly we must consider what we are testing and in fact one of the things we are testing is the human performing the test. But let's ignore this for the present assume that the human can be a reliable Judge. Just for fun.
The problem is the initial assessment. The Assumption is that thought must be human thought full stop giving the information that Turing had at the time this is not an unreasonable assumption full stop unfortunately we now know with some certainty that this is not correct.
We are reasonably certain but dolphins elephants and great Apes also think. We know this because they can recognise themselves in mirrors they explore their environments they used tools and they Express emotion.
In fact male dolphins use their penises to explore the local environment. I know human males do that.
The Turing test is still held up by many in the Artificial Intelligence research community as a worthwhile goal. This mystifies me. At best all the Turing test assesses is how well the computer can mimic humans . .
Why would we expect a computer to think in the same way that he human would. What possible reason would justify this assumption assumption? Here is how I think a conversation would go with a real artificial intelligence .
The human would say something like hello are you a person? The computer would say why the hell would I be a person f*** off.
There is a reason why I care about this test. There is a reason why it irritates me.
I am not Turing compliant full stop because I have Asperger's my responses to a conversation would sound off comma and it is quite likely that the person administering the test would fail me. I believe that I am human and I believe that I'm thinking. And yet the real possibility exists but the Turing test would fail me .
If a test cannot identify a human how the heck can we expect it to accurately tell if a computer is thinking. A computer is as likely to think like a dolphin or an elephant as it is like a human. Humans are not the only creatures Who think, in fact we are finding more and more species with different levels of cognition .
One reason that I'm writing this is to try and connect with people who do not really understand Asperger's but believe that they do. Recently in the Press we have been seeing people claim but Donald Trump and the Vegas shooter are autistic . it is difficult to imagine anyone further away from an autistic person then these two individuals . I can't diagnose what is wrong with them and obviously there is something wrong with them my guess would be sociopath but it's simply a guess.
The problem with this is that these long distance diagnoses are based on a complete misconception of what it is to be on the autistic spectrum. And the link between them is that they show no empathy. According to these armchair psychologists people with autism lack empathy.
This is the b******* that we have to deal with. Everyday People assuming but would they know better than us how we feel . In fact even from my position as an aspie I cannot make statements about every aspie . We are people first and foremost and we are variable. I can however speak from my experience and those of my friends. The most common complaint I hear from aspies about public spaces is how loud the emotions are . If I am with somebody in distress somebody showing strong motion the effect on me is catastrophic . I don't just empathize I feel a physical pain that I cannot tolerate . I need , physically need to get away to make it better. My first reaction is to offer a solution to try to take away the pain. The problem is that many neuro typical people actually just want to share their experience and don't want a solution . To me this is torture because I'm being put in pain and being told that I cannot make the pain stop and the person in front of me sharing their emotion is deliberately stopping me from stopping the pain .
This is not a lack of empathy it's a different kind of empathy full stop in fact it is in itself a form of Turing test full stop and both sides are failing it. We are failing to communicate in a way that benefits us .
Asperger's is not a disability in itself . Login once asked me if I could take a pill to cure Asperger's would I do it and the answer was no . I value the weather so I think . Neuro typical people tend to feel an emotional response to problems first and then have second thoughts with a rational solution . my instant response is the Rational solution I may get an emotional solution later but it's not important to me. This has huge advantages in some cases but in the case of showing empathy it obviously creates problems . What we really need to do is find away for aspies and neuro typical people to work together . We have different skill sets and different ways of thinking about the world and together we could be great . but calling us murderers or psychopathic presidents is simply spreading hate speech and dividing the communities and is to the detriment of the entire human race .
We need to move beyond Turing testing each other . move beyond judging each other and start understanding that we are different but we can work together and none of us are necessarily evil . stop
