"is there a difference between sentience and beating the Turing test"

Late again to the party
While I don't agree that 1981 was the best music year, I will agree with just about everything else in this installment. You had me at "Rickey Vincent".

Then that gives the machine a distinct advantage, because I imagine the empathy human beings have allows them to anticipate and finish each others's sentences and thoughts in ways that a machine just can't. My evidence is the ridiculous things google tries to "complete" my search terms with.

I did a bit of the old Academic Challenge in high school (actually I lettered in it) and the buzzer is actually a large part of the strategy. Interestingly it accounts for why male players tend to do better than female players—males are less reticent to interrupt before the question is finished. I read about this…

"because I want to know what happens next"

Is that all you got?

I dated a Dryad once. Her bark was worse than her bite.

Vampires are boring
And this sounds like 'The Golden Compass' for grown ups.

(ha ha successful "not firsties"—have a ball)
I know I'm not the first to question the desire for immortality but I really don't see the attraction. Every now and then you hear about some medical breakthrough and how it's "the cure for aging" or "the key to longevity" and all I can say is why? Death is the price you…

Or conversely, said to themselves, right on!

The last things that made much of an impact on the US were 'Another One Bites the Dust' and 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'. Queen's relative lack of success in the US was conspicuous in that they were always turning up for things we didn't know they belonged at. They were huge at Live Aid and everyone I knew was…

OP—This business of nomenclature is anything but consistent—for example, Norwegians are from Norway but Glaswegians are not from Glassway. And while I'm at it, if a youngster is a person who is young, and an oldster is a person who is old, what does that make a hamster?

Once A Mormon Girl, I think the point I was making is how long institutionalized racism remained an aspect of mainstream Mormonism—and how much residue of it remains. I make no claims for Catholicism, or any denomination of the big three religions for racial tolerance, although clearly some have been more progressive…

Awesome! And featuring snail combat!

Comments with the mother commence
According to the pictures of her when she was in high school in tghe 50's, my mom looked like Liz Taylor once. She never looked like that in my life time, but I totally get why my father asked her out (they met at high school graduation rehearsal). Now commence with the mother…

Kjb1—wasn't one of the racial discriminations that Blacks couldn't achieve that highest level of heaven? That's no way to market your God.

One of the worst tropes in contemporary Horror movies is using a flash forward (or a flashback) to buy yourself a gory jump scare in the the opening scenes (even sometimes under the credits). It's especially bad if the scene ends with someone waking up from a nightmare, especially if that person will end the film as…

I agree with the idea that I'll quit a movie before I'll fast forward through it. That's like skimming through slow parts in a book—how can you know what you're missing? But if I'm watching something and by a certain point it's not got its hooks in me—I'll just switch it off. It doesn't take much to imply that things…

"Why waste time with sub-par Hollywood schlock when there's so much more that can be gained from watching good-to-great films"

As Voltaire says, "The perfect is the enemy of the good"
Then is "Not Bad" the enemy of the "Truly Awful"? I'm reminded of 'The Visions of Tondal' an early French manuscript that detailed a vision of Heaven, Hell and what would come to be known as Purgatory. In it that last concept (which the church hadn't fully…