[HN Gopher] Exactitude in Science - Borges (1946) [pdf]
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Exactitude in Science - Borges (1946) [pdf]
Author : jxmorris12
Score : 77 points
Date : 2026-01-26 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kwarc.info)
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| RansomStark wrote:
| I can't get enough of Borges.
|
| His way with words and way to highlight to absurdity of
| situations is first class.
|
| My favorite is the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.
| It's a critique of the classification used by the Institute of
| Bibliography which he considered nonsensical. He claims to have
| found the list in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia:
|
| - those belonging to the Emperor
|
| - embalmed ones
|
| - trained ones
|
| - suckling pigs
|
| - mermaids
|
| - fabled ones
|
| - stray dogs
|
| - those included in this classification
|
| - those that tremble as if they were mad
|
| - innumerable ones
|
| - those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
|
| - et cetera
|
| - those that have just broken the vase
|
| - those that from afar look like flies
| bobson381 wrote:
| It's such a wonderful thing to be reminded of how silly it is
| to take language seriously. IMO it's prickles and goo[1] all
| the way down - and the prickles help us share meaning and
| exchange information, but there is no project of exactitude to
| be completed.
|
| The hubris it takes to maintain the view that we can just keep
| figuring things out if we are rational enough is also sometimes
| overwhelming to me. It's not that we can't understand things
| better through analysis, just that it sometimes seems foolish
| to me to try to get _all of it_ through system-2 type behavior.
| We will always miss something crucial[2].
|
| [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU
|
| [2]:https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-
| call...
| mkoubaa wrote:
| An algorithm written in a well specified language with
| precise semantics might have bugs. A "logical" argument made
| with natural language is orders of magnitude less precise
| bobson381 wrote:
| What I've always wondered, though, is whether that lack of
| precision is what allows for meaning to arise in the first
| place. In the gap between language and - this - .
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Read Wittgenstein
| colechristensen wrote:
| If you haven't run across it yet you would enjoy _Borges and
| Me_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borges_and_Me:_An_Encounter
| divbzero wrote:
| The most avid members of the Cartographers Guilds had even
| proposed a Map of the Empire several times larger than the Empire
| itself to depict microscopic details that would otherwise be
| invisible. Such proposals were considered the peak of academic
| excess after the Study of Cartography fell out of favor.
| bobson381 wrote:
| I do sometimes wonder if we will get "detailed enough" vector
| embeddings in LLMs to bring the grain of resolution down below
| human perception - like having enough bits to fully capture
| what's on tape in audio world. Maybe this is never possible,
| and (I hope) some details are unresolvable, but it will be
| interesting to see.
| pixl97 wrote:
| LLMs are already used in signal processing so the idea is
| explored.
|
| Simply put anything that can be encoded is a language, so you
| just need sensors to capture and classify the incoming data
| and build that into a model. The real question is post
| training the model to behave correctly as these places are
| far less explored than things at the human scale. RLHF may be
| a poor choice because the models may see actual behaviors
| that humans don't and humans will discount it as being
| incorrect.
| storystarling wrote:
| I suspect the curse of dimensionality makes this an
| optimization dead end. You hit prohibitive latency limits on
| retrieval long before the resolution approaches human
| perception. Even with current dimensions, the trade-off
| between index size and query speed is already the main
| constraint for production systems.
| anthk wrote:
| That wil be doable some time with computers :)
| johngossman wrote:
| "I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says,
| 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. People
| ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6."
|
| Steven Wright
|
| Though it's not as funny without his delivery
| zubiaur wrote:
| Ficciones is full of mockings of intellectualism. I Particularly
| like the critique on the critical philosophical work of Menard's
| Quixote. Where Menard, the subject of the story, carefully writes
| parts of a novel that is word-for-word a copy of Cervante's
| Quixote, but shaped by Menard's intellectual efforts, one is to
| draw the opposite appreciations than from the one written by
| Cervantes.
|
| His stories are such a strange read. The plot, the characters,
| the mentions, all feel almost secondary to the feeling they
| evoke.
| lkm0 wrote:
| Menard's Quixote is also one of my favorites. I feel it
| illustrates almost in a mean way the futility and arrogance of
| analyzing a work through its author's life and intention. I'm
| not knowledgeable enough to know if this kind of literary
| analysis was still popular in Borges' time and place, but in
| France up to the early 20th century, an influential critic
| called Sainte-Beuve was claiming with great success that any
| work could be entirely (and scientifically) analyzed and
| elucidated by interviewing the author's friends, partners, by
| sniffing out their secret habits and what not -- and I assume
| Borges must've been aware of it, having been educated in early
| 20th century French-speaking Switzerland. If I had another life
| I'd probably do another PhD thesis on Borges vs Sainte-Beuve.
| Fun fact: Marcel Proust was so mad at Sainte-Beuve that it got
| him out of his writer's block; In Search of Lost Time is an
| anti-Sainte-Beuve essay that got out of hand.
| zubiaur wrote:
| Fascinating. Borges is not shy in mentioning his admirations,
| and what he was exposed to. I like that he leaves
| breadcrumbs, or whole loaves, pointing to what he likes. It's
| an interesting way to thread into literature.
|
| I envy a bit those , who, like you, had such exposures. It's
| such a fascinating world, which I used to scoff at when I was
| younger. But it's a healthy envy. I feel happy for those who
| choose to developed such capacities, and it inspires me to
| try to develop them for myself.
|
| I think I've still got the time.
|
| Thanks for your reply.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| I remember a PostSecret from many years ago that was a picture
| of the title plate of Ficciones, and the "secret" was somebody
| saying they wished that they could have just one night in front
| of a fire with a bottle of malt whiskey and the person who
| introduced them to that work. I had never read Borges before,
| but I liked that sort of a feeling a book could create, so I
| trudged to the bookshop and found a copy, and then settled into
| a corner of a cosy pub (I live in England), not far from a fire
| and a golden retriever, with a pint of ale and settled in.
|
| Changed my life, when it comes to literature.
|
| The feelings you get from that work are hard to describe, but
| unique and engaging and marvellous. But when you step back and
| look at it from a critical reading, it's all a bit odd and
| silly and mocking.
|
| There is no writer I want in my pocket more than Borges though,
| particularly when it's dark and cold outside and the fire is
| burning, and a friend who also appreciates him is nearby to
| discuss.
| fbn79 wrote:
| "The House of Asterion" is the most beautifully written thing I
| have ever read.
| https://klasrum.weebly.com/uploads/9/0/9/1/9091667/the_house...
| sylos wrote:
| Holy cow, that was amazing.
| Eliand wrote:
| The last words almost make me cry everytime I read them. It's
| such a beautiful tale.
| internet_points wrote:
| I read that after seeing it was a forgotten inspiration for
| Piranesi: https://www.betterreading.com.au/news/author-
| related/susanna...
|
| (And probably House of Leaves)
| RationPhantoms wrote:
| It was lost on me at first because I had none of the
| background, it's now beautiful in hindsight with the context.
| profsummergig wrote:
| I think it's a message about how science is really about
| effective sampling.
| moss_dog wrote:
| While we're Borges-posting, I recommend "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis
| Tertius"
|
| https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content...
| kej wrote:
| This seems like a good place to ask: I have a memory of a longer
| story along very similar lines. Maps are made that are
| increasingly larger, but in the version I'm remembering the maps
| are in a room of a palace or something?
|
| Does this ring a bell to anyone?
| moss_dog wrote:
| Maybe Eco's "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the
| Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1"?
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