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I'm just sick to death of John Searle's forty-year-long refusal to understand computers. That prick thinks you can yank out your CPU to interrogate it, and if it doesn't know what a web browser is, it cannot possibly have rendered this webpage. It's the software, stupid. Software does the work. This was what Church & Turing were on about, back in nineteen-thirty-fuck-you.

If your grand thought experiment begins with demonstrable understanding of Chinese, in a room containing a book and a dude, and it's not the dude - understanding still occurred. There's a Chinese guy outside the room, and as surely as if the room contained a second Chinese guy, the system within the room understands Chinese. But there's just Jim and a book. Either Jim or the book understand Chinese... and it's not Jim. Take all the time you need.