Who Were the Sea Peoples?

In response to post like this one , I have been asked again and again questions like "Why do you deny the possibility that machines might be able to think?" This is rather stunning to me, as I have posted numerous times, on this very same blog, my affidavit that I do not now, and never have, denied this possibility for even a second! I have posted the example of a thermostat turning up the heat because it "feels cold," not because I deny the possibility that the thermostat feels cold, but because I want to see if my AI enthusiast correspondents are willing to be consistent, and admit that their thermostat might truly feel cold, just as their Turing-test-passing machine might truly be conversing. I am, in fact, perfectly willing to contemplate the idea that atoms are held together because electrons "feel attracted" to protons: such geniuses as Gottfried Leibniz , Alfred North Whitehead , C.S. Peirce , and, more recently, my friend David Chalmers , have...

You have to hire a Croatian translator. Two candidates for the job show up to interview, me, who knows not a word of Croatian, and my friend Neil, who is Croatian. You begin to interview us, but I have brought a trump card: I have along my attorney, Elen Touring, who says, "Wait a second, this is not fair to my client: Mr. Ganic here simply looks much more Croatian than Dr. Callahan, and so you must interview them blind. In addition, since Mr. Ganic sounds more Croatian, and you only need to have someone translate written material, it is only fair that you can't hear them either. You must test them both, behind curtains, without knowing which is which. So we both are concealed in curtained rooms. In Neil's, he translates Croatian text to English "by hand." But in mine, I just type it into Google translate on my phone, and write down the English output. When you judge my output superior, Attorney Touring insights you must hire me. Someone may wish to point...