The Transgender Turing Test

[CJ]

Hi all,

No, it's not a new pop music group. I've been following with a lot of interest the various "gender differences" threads. The following occured to me. Can you tell if you're speaking with a man or a woman, when you have no proof that the person is of the sex they claim to be? and, if so, how can you tell?

From Wikipedia: The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence", it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appear human. In order to keep the test setting simple and universal (to explicitly test the linguistic capability of some machine), the conversation is usually limited to a text-only channel.

Now, it's my thinking that it can be fun to slightly modify the Turing test so as to apply it to online conversations in order to determine if a person is functionally a woman or a man. In other words, to test a man's or a woman's capability to perform "man-like" conversation or "woman-like" conversation. The reason I'm curious about this is that I know people on the internet often pass themselves off as someone (or something) other than who and what they are. A cursory glance at the Yahoo profiles of many TG's, for example, will show that many males list themselves as females. Sometimes, males will also impersonate women in chat rooms. Usually, they're soon found out. My question is, why? Why are they found out? What is it that gives them away? Can we tell who's a man and who's a woman if we only have access to their minds (through their words)? Again, if so, how, exactly, can we tell? If we cannot tell, say, that a woman is really a man (when we're engaged in an online chat with the person), then that man has passed the Transgender Turing test.

My prediction, despite all the talk about the similarities between men and women, is that few people could successfully pass the test. Please, remember: this is all in good fun and it's not meant to be taken seriously. It's just a thought experiment.

Love,
CJ

[Beauty]

Just a friendly reminder to be kind to the host of the thread.

She posted this is fun so please keep the spirit light so this isn't moved to Mordor. Pleeease.

Great thread CJ!!!

Beauty

[Lydia]

Hi CJ,

You hit on a point that I have been curious about [or: about which I have been curious].

Reading a lot of the mail on this forum, I have pondered the question: if I didn't know the sex of the writers, could I guess whether they were genetically male or female? I get a sort of gut feeling from many of the posts, that the writers are female - but some male - and some are ?. I tried to see if it was the writing style (aside from content) that was the criterion that I used, but I could not pin down anything specific.

For example, I could swear that Elizabeth and Julie M. were females. You, CJ, are an enigma. Your last post above, BTW, feels definitely male. Ask me why, and I can't say - at least not without further study.

Is it possible that the choice of adjectives, for example, could be a clue? Or is it grammatical construction, i.e., more use of the passive voice?

In any case, I am proposing more questions than answers.

Thanks for the start of a fascinating thread. I'll be watching.

Love,

Willy

[Curly(SO)]

England beat South Africa by 77 runs...

[Beauty]

:: tries to run after you but collapses from laughing ::

ROFL!! ROFL!!

[Celia]

I suspect that most folks would, indeed, fail. But would they if they had sufficiently studied, practiced, and were in a proper state of mind? I don't think your TTT is as fundamentally difficult to pass as the TT.

-Celia

[Curly(SO)]

I only posted that because when I was leaving work today, three male members of staff were eagerly discussing it in the corridor. I had to smile to myself, I have NEVER heard a group of women discussing cricket

[TamaraSegunda]

If the topic is relatively neutral, I'll confess that I can't easily tell the gender of a written communication. For example, none of the posts preceding this one struck me as either male or female. I understand that many women are as likely to be as analytical and as intellectually complex as any male, and without any visual or aural cues, it can be hard to tell.

On the other hand, if the topic becomes more stereotypically male or female, then I think that the writer may be more likely to transmit hints to his/her gender. If someone goes into great detail to describe the technical differences between two types of firearms, for example, I'm going to guess that person is male. If a writer details specific examples of situations or problems related to child rearing, I'm going to guess it's a female. And yes, I realize I could be wrong in either or both cases.

Oddly enough, if a writer makes too liberal use of "feminine" sentence structure, word order, or vocubulary, I'm likely to suspect it's a man trying to imitate a woman. On the other hand, hyper-masculine stuff in a message never makes me think it might be a female posing as a male, unless there is some egregious mistake (say mixing terminology from two different sports). Of course, that's just one more double standard.

It would be nice if there were some structured examples where we could all test our speculations. Even so, there's a lot of food for thought here. Thanks, CJ, for another fascinating thread.
..........Tamara Segunda

[Loretta Ann]

Curly Did you notice that Starting pitcher? Isn't he just something else? Did you hear his little speech? Doesn't he sound so romantic?

[Curly(SO)]

Darlene, you are bad! No, I haven't heard him, but just checked out the pictures, that blonde tousled look is kind of cute, but no, not my cup of tea



(Sorry CJ, didn't mean to hijack your thread )

[Loretta Ann]

Hi Curly,



Love Darlene.

[Violet]

I find this somewhat ironic because, in his original article outlining the Turing Test as the ultimate authority on whether a machine can or cannot think, Alan Turing set readers up for the idea by first describing an 'imitation game' in which a male tried to fool the judge into thinking he was female. He then went on to the scenario with the machine trying to convince the judge it's human.

If a male can successfully persuade someone that he's female, does that mean zie is female?

And what if a judge in the Turing Test thinks that a human is a machine?

[Sally]

Hi CJ,

I didn't write the following article, but when I showed it to my wife, I asker her if she and I spoke a different ' language ' and as she walked away laughing she said, "We speak the same language but you only hear whereas I listen."

Men and Women speak two different languages.
........................................................................

On the Fridge, my wife and I have a "Wants List".

This lists various items we want, some long term, some short term.

Finished Basement, Digital Camera, New curtains for the bedroom, etc. These are all the sorts of things that are on the list.

This weekend, I was looking at the list, and noticed that a Shed was on the list. We had plenty of room in the garage for all those shed type things, so I wasn't sure why she had added it to the list.

I asked her why, and she said "So that both cars can fit in the Garage." I do some rough mental calculation in my head, and estimate that this should be feasable, with some rearranging.

So, I spend a couple of hours sorting and moving, pushing and draggng everything in the Garage into position, so that her car and my truck will both fit inside. Its crowded, but everything is eventually crammed into place and organized.

One important detail: The Contractor who build our house was an idiot. Thus, the garage is incredibly short on one side. The Truck will only fit on the longer right side of the garage, so the car must go on the short side. This leaves her less than 4 inches on both the front and back bumpers.

Of course, its tricky to park under these circumstances. So, I rig up the classic tennis ball on a string, which will strike her windshield, telling her exactly when to stop moving forward.

We try this a few times, and it doesn't work that well, because the car rolls forward as much as 3 inches after you put it in park. When you have a 4 inch clearance at most, that's not a lot of wiggle room to work with.

I'm racking my brain, trying to think of alternate solutions. There are those parking mats ou can put in place, to keep you in one spot. There are sensors that light up green/yellow/red to warn you how close you are to the wall. There are even laser lights to tell you exactly when to stop, all sorts of solutions.

I mention a few of these ideas to my wife, and she says, "Its not worth the trouble". I say "What do you mean? You said wanted both vehicles to be parked inside."

Then, we get to the root of the problem. She never wanted both vehicles inside the garage. She just felt bad that I had to park outside.

Thus, in her mind the Shed idea was a way for me to not have to go out in the cold or rain and scrape off my windshield every morning.

I had assumed all along that this was something she wanted done. Instead, she was just thinking of me.

Of course, if she had come out and said all of this from the beginning, I would have simply said I don't mind parking outside. Especially since it meant spending a good chunk of free time sorting and organizing the garage.

But now that I've already done all this, I'm not letting the work go to waste. I'm getting one of those parking mats or something, and she will be parking on the short side of the garage sooner or later.

The Moral of this Story: Never assume you actually know what your wife means by something, even after she explains it to you the first time.
...................................................................................................

Kind Regards,

Sally.

[Kerri]

CJ,
Its easy to tell a man from a woman.

Men make sense and women cant talk when their hands are tied together!
Men think about what they say, women talk faster than I can think.
Men get to the point, women can speak for hours about nothing.

My wife and I have seperate phone accounts, I spend in a year what she spends in a month.

Men can be aggressive, but women go straight for the jugular.

On a trip to the shops, it taks a man one visit to one shop to buy one shirt. It takes three women a day to think about buying a shirt.

I think it would be easy to tell them apart, set me the test!

tara

Kerri

[Sally]

I know this is nothing about anything much, but it hit my funny spot regarding misunderstanding what was being said.

A little old woman arrived home from church to find her house was being burglarised. As she entered her house she saw this burglar standing with his back to her putting her silverware into a sack.

She crept up behind him and yelled, " Stop. Acts. 2:38"

It may sound a strange thing to say, but if you look up Acts 2:38 in the Bible it says, ' Turn from your sin'.

The burglar stopped dead in his tracks and raised his hands, while the little old woman calmly rang the police and explained the situation.

After the police arrived and the Sergeant was cuffing the burglar, he said," Why'd you just stand there, after all the lady just yelled a Scripture at you?"

"Scripture?" said the burglar, " She said she had an axe and two .38's"

Kind Regards.

Sally.