The point is that there is no objective measure one can use and the definition at any given time is dependent on the cultural and societal context.

Something that might have been considered pornography 100 years ago might be considered tame today.

▲

roenxi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It goes a bit further than that. If there isn't a somewhat objective definition then you can't ever be sure that two people are talking about the same thing. Sharing the same context isn't enough to reliably get a convergence of beliefs about whether something falls into a category. And it is a mistake to start legislating about it because the laws are going to be meaningless.

▲

detourdog an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“I know it when I see it” has the flexibility to adapt with social norms.

▲

TomGarden 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What I mean is that throwing up your hands and saying 'I know it when I see it' is entirely pointless. There's a reason scientific papers have an (often long) section for definitions.

▲

danaris an hour ago | parent [-]

It's not pointless.

It's acknowledging that this is a place where rigid, universal definitions, that include everything that is X and exclude everything that is not X, are not possible. That human judgement is necessary to determine what is or isn't X.

This doesn't mean that we have no guidelines whatsoever for how to recognize X. We can list qualities that a robot either must have, or should probably have, and anything that definitely doesn't have them probably isn't a robot, and anything that has enough of them probably is a robot.

▲

TomGarden an hour ago | parent [-]

I just don't think we'll be able to agree (and that's okay). I'll just put my thoughts here, not expecting that you'll meet me anywhere.

Human judgement in itself is not uniform or defined enough for it to be useful, but dispersed and more random than just situational. And yes, universal definitions in general are extremely rare outside of a subset of definitions in hard sciences. The only reasonable thing we can do is agree on a definition in a certain context, ie definitions in a scientific paper or in a conversation. But 'I know it when I see it' or some vague idea of human judgement doesn't even work as a definition within a defined context, and therefore doesn't help us find common ground or make a conversation useful. Which is why I characterize it as a thought-terminating cliché.

In a way, this entire back-and-forth is an example of us 'knowing what a thought-terminating cliché is when we see it' which unsurprisingly, to me, is unhelpful.

	▲	amanaplanacanal 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Common speech is slippery, definitions change over time, and the only way we can define words is to see how people use them. In technical context we do define words so that everybody knows what we are talking about. A good example is the use of the term AI, and how we use it in CS vs how the general public understand it.