Thought today's smbc comic was too funny not to share. Source
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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I don't understand the punchline
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Seems like a pretty stupid argument. If I sat in a room and wrote what a native speaker told me to write, I wouldn't understand the conversation, but the native speaker would. How is that different than doing what an LLM says?
Yeah. It basically states that because all your neurons and synapses in the human brain follow quantum physics and can be simulated by a formal program, and do not know what they are doing or know meaning, humans are not sentient but merely simulate being a mind.
It's really infuriating how one of the dumbest and self evident fallacious thought experiments gets so famous. Because idiots keep repeating it like the sub-sentient LLMs they are.
Because that is what we are really learning from LLMs. It's not shocking that LLMs aren't sentient, it's shocking that we now know what minds can talk seemingly intelligent without having to be sentient. Which explains the current state of the world.
The argument predates LLMs by decades, and in other forms it has existed for centuries. It doesn't directly corellate to modern LLMs. It is an example of how a mechanism could mimic human intelligence without actually being intelligent. It's a thought experiment. LLMs are not lookup tables, they are neural network based statistical models, but a similar argument can be made.
That's essentially just a lookup table with variant outputs.
or a lossy compressed lookup table.
Is there any actual material difference between what they're describing (the computer equivalent of a philosophical zombie, I would say), and a true agi? Their point seems rather vacuous to me (all I did was read the Wikipedia article).
๐คท ๐โ
You have a cat. The cat meows at you. You do nothing. The cat keeps meowing at you. You offer it food as a guess. The cat stops meowing.
The next day, the cat starts meowing at you again, but slightly different. You give it food. It keeps meowing. You give it a belly rub, the cat stops meowing.
You have inadvertently learned the correct response to two types of cat meows. However, you do not speak cat. Nor does the cat speak human. You are just giving a response it expects for a given input.
Also doesn't cat only meows when trying to communicate with different species? They are not speaking cat either, they are just hoping you pick up what they want. (in this case it actually shows intent, something a LLM or said chinese room is not capable of doing)
The difference between this and the Chinese Room is that you are attempting to understand what the cat is saying, and making a response that both you and the cat understand. You are attempting to communicate. The Chinese Room is many people who do not understand the input, do not understand the output, and have neither the capability nor the will to do either.
...but does the system that is the Chinese Room (the entire system taken as a whole) understand Chinese?
Any given sufficiently small piece of your brain does not understand English, does no individual neuron in the language center of your brain understanding English mean that you do not understand English? If that understanding is held in the organization and structure of the brain but not in the individual parts, then why can't the Chinese Room understand Chinese despite no individual component understanding Chinese? That's a surprisingly difficult question to answer in a coherent fashion without asserting that knowledge in an organic brain is magical in some fashion, and nothing else counts.
Wait until you consider the concept of philosophical zombies, which is all about pointing out the edges and contours of the hard problem of consciousness. The starting point of that discussion is essentially "Is someone who responds exactly like a regular person would but has no actual subjective experience conscious?" and gets stranger from there.
I always thought it was a bit tragically amusing that LLMs can fool people so readily, because it was essentially proof that P-zombies can exist. And we invented them.
As for the Chinese Room and understanding Chinese, my argument has always been that the chart contains an understanding of Chinese - but as the chart itself cannot think, it does not understand Chinese in the way a person does, and as each person who is in the Chinese Room does not - and cannot - glean meaning from the input they receive or the output that they send out, they have no understanding at all. Understanding also implies being able to adapt the knowledge to new situations, and as the chart that drives the Chinese Room is immutable and cannot accomodate novel scenarios, it does not understand Chinese.
How is that not communication? I know at least 4 different vocalizations for my cats corresponding to different needs/wants. To say that's not intelligence or communication is very short-sighted, in my opinion.
then I dont get the chinese room experiment either
In the second scenario, there is no โnative speakerโ that is telling you what to write. There is a list of instructions that you are following that is the same as the instructions that the computer was following with the first scenario.
The argument is that if, by following the exact instructions that the computer is following, you still do not understand the Chinese conversation, why would you say that the machine understands?
I havenโt thought about the idea enough to say I agree or disagree, but I hope I understood your comment and that the explanation helps.
I'd like to add a rebuttal I tend to agree with: You're only a component of a larger system, and the whole system (you + the room + your list of instructions) does encode some understanding, otherwise a chinese speaker wouldn't be able to interact with the room in any meaningful way.
In almost any system, you can look at a specific part and argue that part doesn't fulfill a property that the entire system taken as one does.
It's still the same argument. If the conversation is carried on your end by a bunch of if-else instructions, there's no consciousness to be found.
Yes, I think it proves that understanding does not require consciousness.
So you're saying that my program that does
if obj isinstance cat: obj.pet(), understands what a cat is?No, and if you want to discuss the philosophical idea, please don't waste my time with dumb questions.
But in this case you is unnecessary if a mechanism can perform that part, and understanding then completely doesn't rely on consciousness. This is a bit weird way to think about it, but it seems to be a semantic difference
No, you're still a necessary part of the system, since otherwise there is no interaction possible. And yes, I don't think understanding relies on consciousness.
Where is the semantic difference?
Difference in if that is required and if โunderstandingโ is a quality that a system can have. For instance I feel that a gravity coin sorter is made with understanding but does not have understanding
It's not really possible to give a concrete answer without a concrete definition of "understanding". But unless you assume supernatural explanations, either systems must be able to "understand", or humans are also incapable of "understanding", since we ourselves are physical systems too.
I get the example and agree that such a coin sorter does not meaningfully have an understanding of gravity. But IMO it does have a (minimal) understanding of the different coins you're sorting, since it contains a mechanism for differentiating between their sizes.
Imagine we replaced the gravity mechanism with a bunch of actuators controlled by organic neurons, which are connected to something like an eye. The neurons fire and cause the actuators to sort the coins. Now, if say the neurons just react to brightness levels it'd be hard to argue there's an understanding. But if the neurons are part of a real human brain, they can definitely understand the coins etc. and sort based on their understanding.
As you take away more parts of said brain, when does it lose the understanding?
A lot of things seem trivial with 50+ years of hindsight.
Even then, most people right now still don't grasp the nuances of the debates around machine intelligence that have been occurring for the past hundred years.
If you got a spare minute and then 600 of those you could read Peter Watts Blindsight, the main viewpoint character is basically a chinese room which is not a spoiler but an important keypoint of the whole story. Its also sci-fi and a bit weird
While we are at it, there is this page that is an interesting display of the making of a fan movie trailer https://blindsight.space/
Excellent book. Highly recommend. Crazy world building.
I think you grasp the point, it is exactly what an LLM does
God AI โphilosophersโ are such a wanky bunch. And apparently racist to boot!
racist? I missed something?
The room being Chinese adds nothing to the thesis. Itโs just Chinese because the guy who wrote it thought Asia was mystical and mysterious.
God is a thinking being, but he/she (it?) is being an ass to the angel implying that they're a computer.