Blockhead lookup-table thought experiment enters the AI consciousness debate

examachine · x · 2026-10-24

In a thread with Anil Seth, user examachine invokes Ned Block's "Blockhead" thought experiment, rooted in the 1956 Shannon–McCarthy objection to the Turing test: a simple system with an astronomically large lookup table could pass the Turing test by pure behavior, arguing that internal mechanism matters when judging intelligence and consciousness.

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