[anigbrowl]

But it's garbage. The whole proposition is that if we reduce the human to the role of an automaton (while still retaining our prior knowledge of their humanity) we can get out of explaining how this perfect Chinese conversation-system is supposed to work by saying 'ha, there was a human in the machine the whole time!' - an extremely obvious bait-and-switch.

Also, reflect on the fact that while this isn't supposed to work in real time, the thought experiment calls for the human to be able to operate this conversation-machine by following the exhaustive instructions but without absorbing any information about the system they're operating, such that if they are let out of the Chinese room and handed some Chinese text on paper, it will supposedly be meaningless to them.

The whole idea has so many inherent flaws that I'm perplexed that it was ever taken seriously.