(no subject)

[watertank]

in the cyberculture lecture they mentioned alan turing's description of the difference between a human and a machine, which he described in terms of choices in ambiguous situations. the example they gave showed a traffic light that had both red and green light on. under the circumstances people behaved according to their natural tendencies, either stop or speed up.

i don't see how computers are not able to do that, i.e. do the proverbial coin toss in this situation, but the idea of ambiguity is appealing. maybe we can connect it to skinner's random reinforcement.