Hacker News Reader

Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

> It’s roughly coterminous with the age of the novel: starting with Don Quixote; maybe starting to collapse with Pierre Menard, who could produce a word-for-word replica of Don Quixote that was an entirely different text, simply because it was written by Pierre Menard and not by Miguel de Cervantes.

Pierre Menard was not a real person, but a fictional character in a book by Jorge Luis Borges.

It really tanks the trustworthiness of the article to find obvious errors like this, when the article as a whole depends on numerous literary references to back its arguments.

(I have made the same complaint before: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747352>)

View on HN

Do you think its possible that this is in fact a reference to Borges' story and its themes, to postmodern literature in general, or is that somehow out of the question to you?

Also why is "trust" at stake here?

This response is a quite poignant emphasis to the author's conceit honestly. We really cant just read anything anymore, its always some call to action, its always something being spoken at you which necessitates rebuttal or appeal to loftier ideas outside the text. The essay is dying along with everything else it seems.

> Do you think its possible that this is in fact a reference to Borges' story and its themes

I considered the possibility, but the reference was made so matter-of-factly, and the reference did not seem to support the argument if you knew it was a fictional character.

> Also why is "trust" at stake here?

Because the internet is full of ignorant ramblings (moreso with the LLMs), and you have to be aware of it and detect it in order not to fill your own mind with irrelevant nonsense.

I'm pretty sure Sam Kriss knows Pierre Menard is a fictional character dude. He's using the story to make a point about how we've thought about originality in different ages. The idea is that an oral society couldn't come up with a story like Pierre Menard, not that the story is literally true.

I (and I assume most people) don’t know who Sam Kriss is, and the reference was seemingly made as if Pierre Menard was a real person, as it otherwise would not make sense to reference him in that context.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com