For shame. I assumed you were talking about Leia.

'"'That would be #2 "Ignore the premise that the CR supports and pick on the illustration'"

Those who use analogies should be prepared to defend them. I admire the craft displayed in the creation of the Chinese Room scenario. It seems on the surface to be a well-intended thought experiment for the purpose of shedding light on whether Artificial Intelligence is possible. Upon closer examination, the conclusion forced by it is foregone, and it serves primarily to insult the author's opposition.

A better thought experiment would be to replace the human with a black box that behaves exactly the same. For some reason, the presence of a human in the room incites an emotional response. Stripped of the author's semantic legerdemain, it is no longer so certain that the room does not "understand Chinese".

In any case, I target the premise directly. The premise, as I understand it, is that the "Chinese Room" does not understand Chinese, and that's it's absurd to suggest that a room could do so.

However, that fails to take into account that, in the Chinese Room scenario, the human occupant is part of the room, and by all accounts understands Chinese. Ignoring this is like removing the hardware from a workstation enclosure before benchmarking it.

Ultimately, the measure of "understanding Chinese" is being able to carry on a meaningful conversation in Chinese. The alternative is to define thinking as "something humans do". If that's your perspective, I'll grant nothing but a human will ever be able to perform actions that by definition can be performed only by a human. (I suspect that even if our intellect is surpassed by machinery, homo sapiens will remain unsurpassed in its tautological vanity.)

Would you say that a Chinaman's brain does not understand Chinese, since there's no Chinaman inside his skull to understand Chinese for him?

Wikipedia lists five categories of replies to the Chinese Room scenario. You only listed 4. The omission is left as an exercise for any interested parties.

Doug Hofstadter refutes it by pointing out that no human could ever perform the actions attributed to the human in the Chinese Room. I believe he also (it's been a while since I read "Le Ton beau de Marot") goes on to mention that the analogy is dishonest, by virtue of an inclusion of a human in the room.

If the instructions in the book suffice to understand and reply to the room's input, then there is no need for a human to occupy the room. The legerdemain is offloading the capability of reading the book and arranging the characters to this human occupant.

If, after a long, meaningful conversation via written Chinese, the door to the Chinese Room were broken down to reveal no one inside, it would be hard to refute the idea that the room "understands Chinese".

The point of the Turing test is that whether or not the machine is "really" intelligent does not matter- it is debatable whether humans are, in fact- but rather, that "the proof is in the pudding", or, as I prefer, "stupid is as stupid does."

There has never been a Jainist theocracy, so I'll consider your rebuttal mere conjecture. I'm sure that if a Jainist government ever committed genocide, the true Scotsman would make an appearance anyway.

To my knowledge, every religion that has had power has abused it.

For what it's worth, cursory googling reveals that Jainism is historically a religion of the upper castes, and that Jainism perpetuates a caste system.

I find it instructive to reframe discussions regarding belief in god as discussions regarding belief in unicorns.

"Not believing in Unicorn/unicorn(s) is not the the same as believing there is/are no Unicorn/unicorn(s)." is thus easily revealed as the semantic niggling that it is. Either there's unicorns or there ain't; if there are, you believe in them.

Also, Christianity in the U.S. only seems benevolent to the extent that it does because Christianity's become a toothless tiger after 200+ years of secular legislation forcing Christians to treat other human beings like human beings. Christianity, or any other religion, unchecked would be indistinguishable from radical Islam given free rein. The pretense of infallibility leaves no room for civil liberties.

In keeping with the article's theme, let's all laugh at historical Islamic hubris: 12th century Muslim sultan tries to demolish the Great Pyramids; fails.

There is also a theory that using the right hand for complex tasks allows primates to cradle a baby nearer to their heartbeat with their "dumb" hand.

I heard of it in a book of Asimov essays. Somewhere in The Roving Mind, if I remember correctly.

It takes less time to read a dollar amount than boilerplate.

And it's more likely to be seen in the ad than on the tv station's website. Not that it couldn't be posted both places.

Cut them some slack, CNN is pretty good.

"How much someone is being paid to say something seems like an important factor when weighing what is being said."

That got scrambled between brain and NIC. It's been a long night, what can I say.