here’s a lovely thought experiment called The Chinese Room posed by John Searle: Imagine a room with a slit in the door. You don’t speak Chinese, and someone on the other side of the slit speaks Chinese and wants to have a conversation with you. You have a big book of rules that tell you what to say next in response to what the person on the other side is saying. You don’t understand the conversation, but you can follow the rules and keep the conversation going. From the perspective of the person on the other side, it seems like they’re having a perfectly normal conversation with someone who speaks Chinese. But you don’t understand what they’re saying. You’re just following the rules.