this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2026
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Wikipedia Chinese room. It's pretty airtight at the moment.
Chinese room is not at all airtight. We don't know what it means to have emotions so we can't prove a Chinese room can't have emotions.
This is not what the Chinese room is about.
In this context the question is whether a Chinese room can suffer. We can't show a human isn't a Chinese room, humans can suffer so we can't show every Chinese room doesn't suffer.
The Chinese room argument is about understanding, not emotions. There is a large body of literature on the use and evolutionary benefit of emotion. While you can make an analogy to see if a system can have emotions the link between understanding is not trivial. For example, animals show emotion but don’t have the same understanding that a human may have. I don’t think you need to have understanding to have emotions. So the Chinese room argument is shoe horned in without making it clear what your argument is.
The discussion was about suffering which I take to be an emotional response. The comment I responded to seem to say a "chinese room" argument was a unassailable argument without elaborating why. The only way I make sense of that comment is that the author thinks it's already proved that a Chinese Room can't experience emotions.
Yes, the Chinese Room argument was originally about understanding but I don't see how that enters into this discussion.
Emotions? i was confident that the Wikipedia article alone would grant you understanding, and for that, I have replicated the very situation I wanted you to learn about. This situation is my fault.
We don't? That's news to me. Sorry for your loss, or happy for you, or whatever
You can't prove a human isn't a Chinese Room.
Humans have emotions.
So either Chinese Rooms can have emotions or we are unable to show whether Chinese Rooms have emotions.
Either way, the Chinese Room isn't enlightening on the question of AI suffering.
Looking around, it seems we don't know whether a Chinese Room can have emotions, which suggests that we don't understand what it means to have a emotions.
Not really. Chinese room has the conclusion pre-fabricated and tries to construct any sort of pseudo-scientific, fantastical philosophical dressing for some shred of legitimacy. It has absolutely no relation to the real world.