http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/the-culture-that-is-china-austria.html
I am very much enjoying and being intrigued by "The Most Human Human" by Brian Christian. It's his examination of, and participation, in a Turing contest. Alan Turing was a British logician and computer scientist who said that a computer would be as good as a person if written communication to and from the machine was judged by people to be coming from a person. That is the Turing test and contests are held to see what computer programs can fool the judges. At the same time, humans are asked to communicate with the judges so there will be the possibility that the messages are indeed from a person. A human participant can and has been judged to be a computer in some of the years.
Christian participates with the goal (I think, I am only in the beginning of the book) of being judged the most human human. He did plenty of study and preparation to achieve that goal and the book describes the many fields of thought and people he interviewed to try to figure out the best way to show he was a human with just typed words. For example, he researched speed dating, where people are typically face-to-face but have only five or so minutes to say who and what they are to another, who may be interested in further contact.
Some researchers in this area have found that if humans get into a typical nasty mode of speech, frequently coming out with statements such as "What, are you stupid?" or "Try not to be an asshole", it is easier for machines to be judged human in such exchanges. They found that the childish sort of "I didn't!", "Did so!", "Didn't!", "Did!", "Didn't!", "Did!", "Didn't!", "Did!", … is quite easy to mimic. They call such talk "stateless" meaning it is very shallow and easily mimicked by machine. Each response depends only on the previous response, nothing more.
So what does all this have to do with the Chinese copying European towns? It's the reactions that interest me. As the commenters linked above pointed out, it could be taken as a compliment if somebody wants to build a replica of your picturesque little town. It could be taken as a threat. A threat, in fact, to your very identity, your being. You are a citizen of Hallstatt, aren't you? What if some Chinese person is living in a house identical to yours? Who would that make you be? Outrageous!
