Comment by eli_gottlieb
6 hours ago
Ok, but when you're reading Homer or Socrates or the Bible (we're relatively sure it has several different authors), you're still engaging with a communal tradition of fellow readers who, in large part, define what it actually means to understand the text. If you read the Odyssey and decide it was actually about Pokemon, you're misreading it.
> you're still engaging with a communal tradition of fellow readers
Inasmuch as you’re reading translations upon translations, sure. But none of that is necessary.
(One could credibly argue that engaging with an LLM is engaging with, in a sense, its training corpus.)
> If you read the Odyssey and decide it was actually about Pokemon, you're misreading it
If you can stand by your reading based on the text, I say go for it. It doesn’t work in your example. But there are plenty of cases where what was once an against-the-grain interpretation dived into and out of the mainstream.
> Inasmuch as you’re reading translations upon translations, sure. But none of that is necessary.
No, even if you read in the original language. Languages are living, communal things.
> Languages are living, communal things
Dead languages [1] absolutely exist.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language