Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

The Turing Test is an evaluation computation developed by scientist Alan Turing in 1950. In his article, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Turing began with a question: “Can machines think?” (595). In his designed test, an evaluator engages in a text conversation with a human and machine and attempts to tell which is artificial intelligence (AI). If the evaluator cannot tell, then AI has reached a tier on par with a human’s cognitive ability. Hofstadter explores the history of AI to the point of the book’s publication and argues that there is a difference between being able to produce a result (such as that constructed by AI computation) and understanding the result.

Contrafactus

Achilles and the Tortoise watch a football game at the Crab’s house with another friend, the Sloth. The Tortoise and Achilles arrive at the same time, having ridden together on a tandem unicycle, leaving from the same point. The characters watch the football game on television. The Crab tells his guests that if they do not like the outcomes of the game, they can fiddle with the television dials and change the results. The Sloth argues that being able to change the outcome of the game renders the entire activity pointless.