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This reminds me of Borges’s short story Pierre Menard, author of the Quijote in which a 20th century author called Pierre Menard steps in the shoes of Cervantes so much so that he actually re-writes Don Quijote, line by line, not because he wants to copy it, but because it makes sense to him at the moment when he writes it. A bit difficult to explain but it’s a must-read! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the...


Well, that seems intriguingly topical in the current era of LLMs & occurrences of their verbatim reproduction of training data... :)

Perhaps it's not mindless reproduction of the training data, rather, entirely mindful reproduction... :D

The Wikipedia page notes:

"Pierre Menard is often used to raise questions and discussion about the nature of authorship, appropriation, and interpretation."


> Borges wrote the story while recovering from a head injury. It was intended as a test to discover whether his creativity had survived the severe septicaemia that had set in after his head wound became infected.

I never knew that part. Adds a whole new dimension to the narrative when you think about it.




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