Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Gender Turing Test

From COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE By A. M. Turing

"The new form of the problem can be described' in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either 'X is A and Y is B' or 'X is B and Y is A'. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?

Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's {p.434}object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be

'My hair is shingled, and the longest strands, are about nine inches long.'

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as 'I am the woman, don't listen to him!' to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks."

Here Turing goes off to talk about computers but has his belief that you cannot tell gender differences ever been proved? If a man and woman cannot be distinguished then there must be no fundamental difference, other then physically, between them.

While I am on the subject I saw a program once where two cops went on instant messenger pretending to be children to see if any perverts would try it on with them. This would seem to prove that there is little psychological difference between children and adults because over instant messenger an adult can successfully convince another adult that he is a child. However it is possible to pretend to be someone who knows less then you. If I was pretending to be a dog or a chimp it would be hard for you to prove I was not over IM. If however I pretended to be Einstein you would quickly figure it out, especially if you were a physicist. So its possible to pretend to know less then you do but not to know more, particularly to someone who knows the answers to the questions they are asking.

There are lots of things that every physicist knows that I do not so I would fail a “physicist” Turing test. But are there things that everyone of a gender knows that the other gender does not? Can we in one simple experiment test whether different genders really come from the same planet?

Here is what I need
1. You to take part in the experiment

2. You to think up some good gender defining questions.

Questions like

1. How would you defend your house from a swat attack? Men could answer this.

2. What is the longest you have worn a pair of underpants for? If number of days is greater then four the person is a man.

3. When you bleed are there ever black clumps in it?

4. What is a good thing to say to a man in the urinal next to you? Men will answer "nothing".

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