Occam’s Razor does not cut here.
For years my friend Bernard-Henri Not Levy has been railing that Occam’s Razor–the principle that the simplest explanation is probably the best–does not work in the Philippines. He is terribly disappointed that no one disagrees with him. Now he goes around railing that we fail the Turing Test, and if no one has disagreed with him it may be because no one is sure what the Turing Test is.
Occam’s Razor Does Not Cut Here in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.
June 6th, 2008 at 08:37
I can understand the Razor thing, I sorta think it like that for a long time now (though I call it “Occam’s Hair-Gro”), but the Turing Test? Does this mean Filipino humans, when made to chat alongside non-Filipino humans, sound like old-school teletype machines? Ouch.
But that’s just from my own computer geek interpretation of the thing.
June 6th, 2008 at 14:31
hi..this is totally unrelated to the post but i know that you’re an avid tennis fan so i just wanted to ask if you know whether the french open is being broadcasted in any of the channels here in the phils?…thanks!
June 6th, 2008 at 18:54
Now he goes around railing that we fail the Turing Test…
Wait, what? You mean other people could tell we’re really mindless machines?
June 7th, 2008 at 12:45
The Turing Test: a test that determines whether a computer can sufficiently pass for a human using a human judge. Not to be confused with a reverse Turing test which uses a computer as a judge. An example of the latter are those captchas seen when one signs up for an email service using Yahoo.
For a country that makes up the highest percentage of Friendster users, the Philippines is relatively ignorant of IT concepts.