Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 June 13

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June 13

Robot or not?

Hello, are you a real person or are you a robot? It's a question we all ask, right. Like when you get a phone call, there is either a recorded voice or a real person. Sometimes the person sounds like they are real when they really aren't. Just don't trust anyone unless you know them. Am I the only person who asks this question? I don't know, but I need answers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.34.144.150 (talk) 02:00, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

You're not the only person who wonders that. Broadly speaking, lack of faith in the truth of existence has popped up many times in philosophy; see, for example, simulation hypothesis and Solipsism. Or, if you prefer the more concrete, there's brain in a vat. There's some neat stuff here. If you prefer the psychological to the philosophical, there's Solipsism syndrome and Derealization. We're not robots here on the RefDesk, though we may or may not be dogs. Matt Deres (talk) 03:08, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

It's actually not that hard to tell a real person from a recording. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

The Turing test is not specifically to determine whether a computer is able to fool an interrogator into believing that it is a human, but rather whether a computer could imitate a human. CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test to determine whether or not a respondent is human. DroneB (talk) 10:31, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

CAPTCHA typically seems to be a test to determine whether I visualize things or interpret images (or questions) the same way as whoever designed the CAPTCHA. Iapetus (talk) 08:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree. It seems to use particularly low quality images, leaving an awful lot open to personal interpretation. HiLo48 (talk) 09:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Which is of course the whole point of it. 131.251.254.154 (talk) 14:34, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

What? To annoythe crap out of me becasue I can't figure it out, and head off to some other website? HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

On Wikipedia the CAPTCHA consists of two words. The letters are often so deformed that the CAPTCHA can only be solved by having regard to the meaning of the words - the right interpretation is the only one which makes sense. 2A00:23C0:8601:4501:980A:A922:1FFF:F590 (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

If only the English language was so logical..... HiLo48 (talk) 22:26, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

It's a technique used in crosswords. The Daily Telegraph Quick Crossword had a link between the answers to the first two clues, e.g. Across: 1 Good, 2 Morning, etc. I checked this morning to see if they still do this, and they now often link the third answer as well (the change happened around end 2016). Picking up Tuesday's paper I saw Across:7 Watt, 8 Sup, 9 Dock, (What's up, Doc?). I can only recall seeing this phrase as an appendage to Baseball Bugs' signature. Does it have history (like "Play it [again], Sam", for example)? 81.139.244.251 (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

"'What's up Doc?' is a very simple thing. It's only funny because it's in a situation. It was an all Bugs Bunny line. It wasn't funny. If you put it in human terms; you come home late one night from work, you walk up to the gate in the yard, you walk through the gate and up into the front room, the door is partly open and there's some guy shooting under your living room. So what do you do? You run if you have any sense, the least you can do is call the cops. But what if you come up and tap him on the shoulder and look over and say 'What's up Doc?' You're interested in what he's doing. That's ridiculous. That's not what you say at a time like that. So that's why it's funny, I think. In other words it's asking a perfectly legitimate question in a perfectly illogical situation." source: Chuck Jones on Bugs Bunny's catchphrase "What's up Doc?" DroneB (talk) 18:22, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

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