Voight-Kampff Test
Updated 2026-08-03
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A fictional assessment device from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, adapted for Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner. An interviewer poses questions designed to provoke empathy and records involuntary responses such as pupil dilation and capillary reaction. The premise is that intelligence can be simulated while affective response cannot, so empathy becomes the discriminating criterion. Real-world analogues include polygraph testing and empathy research in affective neuroscience, both of which face the same difficulty of separating genuine response from learned control.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Evaluation shift: judge a human-like system by empathic response rather than answer correctness. - Interview probe: watch genuine physiological or emotional fluctuation when a candidate hears about others' hardship. - Defense line: ask what remains distinctive about humans once intelligence stops being a moat.
Anchor fast decisions
Answers can be produced by retrieval and imitation, so verbal performance no longer distinguishes an agent that understands from one that predicts the expected reply. Involuntary responses such as pupil dilation are harder to stage because they bypass deliberate control. When a stimulus engages real empathic concern, the body reacts before the mind composes a response, which is why the test reads the timing and texture of the reaction rather than its content.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runnerverified
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