Chinese whisper
Complete tangent but outside of the commonwealth, this game is referred to by the much less racist moniker “telephone”
I figured he was talking about Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment. Searle sucks though, so that’s probably also racist (in addition to being stupid.)
In 2024 it is, at the very least, extremely uncomfortable to read Searle describe Chinese writing as “meaningless scribbles”, “formal symbols”*, “squiggle squiggle”, and “squoggle squoggle”. Basically taking Chinese, ignoring the fact that it’s a real language used by real people and is not alien nor inscrutable nor mathematical, and using it as a prop to purposefully obfuscate a thought experiment.
But that’s like, just my opinion man.
* The paper never seems to get around to calling English letters symbols I wonder why.
the other thing about this that’s often come to mind for me is that the “who” picked in such things tends to be telling of the speaker, and of their perception of “impenetrable”
relatedly, a somewhat common phrase around this side of the world is/was “it’s greek to me”. I don’t know the history of why it came into public lexicon around here (whether it was imported or grew locally), but been curious.
which leads to my sidebar and sneer: it’d be nice if it were easier to research things like this, and good god the modern internet makes it hard to do that. holy fuck what a tsunami of dogshit. and then fucking LLMs and openai come around, going “HOLD MY BEER”. le sigh.
the reason to pick Chinese may be racist (possibly due to the writing system looking complicated) but the thought experiment itself doesn’t have racist connotations imo, and i don’t think it’s stupid either. doesn’t have to involve Chinese or a specific language at all.
it’s a logical question to ask: if i can mimic speaking in a language to a point that it convinces native speakers, but don’t understand what I’m saying myself, am I considered a genuine speaker of that language? does what i say matter or have any value?
well it appears like you’re posting english, but actually you’re posting nonsense
so the answer to your question is no
Scientists: weird, we didn’t slip this piece of paper saying “mansplain the chinese room thought experiment” through the door, and yet that’s all the room seems to want to do. I guess we just have to conclude the room is an idiot?
Thank you for explaining that. I, an American, have never heard the term “Chinese whisper”, but I’ve definitely heard of the telephone game.
It’s much more awkward as a subject of the crown. I tried explaining the game “telestrations” as pictionary + chinese whispers before I had this knowledge. I didn’t know!!! It’s even right there in the name!!! I swear I’m not racist!!!
(Note: I am of chinese origin and have heard my extended family mangle messages through the telephone. So both names are real to me)
As a white British dude the problem is that “Telephone” is an Americanism, so I think the solution is that we find an entirely new name to describe speech-like yet utterly incomprehensible-to-the-listener noises that’s completely devoid of cultural appropriation. I suggest “This is all Trump to me”. The game could be “Trump Tweets”.
