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Comment by margalabargala | Hacker News Reader

Having or not having a book is absolutely fuzzy. If you have a translation, do you have the book? Even if, like the Odyssey, there are hundreds of wildly varying translations? What about an abridged copy? What about the Sparknotes version? If you have a copy of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, do you have a copy of Pride And Prejudice? Certainly more so than if you have neither.

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>If you have a translation, do you have the book?

No, you have a translation.

>Even if, like the Odyssey, there are hundreds of wildly varying translations?

Precisely why translations are not considered equivalent to the original text.

>What about an abridged copy? What about the Sparknotes version?

An abridged copy is not a copy of the unabridged version.

>If you have a copy of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, do you have a copy of Pride And Prejudice?

No.

I'm honestly surprised these were the questions you chose to ask, when you could have asked what if you have 90% of the pages, or what if most of the pages are missing pieces because the book was shot with a shotgun, or what if the book was scanned and OCRed and all the "rn"s were replaced with "m"s and all the lower case Ls with ones. Hell, is a scan of the book close enough to having the book, or is it far enough that one can no longer be said to have the book anymore?

My opinion is different from yours.

If I have a translation of a book, I think I have more of that book than if I had nothing at all. It's fuzzy.

You don't have the book, you have someone else's interpretation of the book's contents, re-expressed into a language you can read. Both steps can involve a loss or distortion of information, either because the translator doesn't fully grasp the original language or context, or because in the re-expression they chose to leave out details that were relevant to you. The more distant the original language to yours, the more translation involves interpretation, too. A translation is really not too different from a commentary; it's just a different text.

That sounds to me like fuzzily having a version of the book. That is, it's more like having the book, than having nothing would be.

You seem to be arguing that a translation, etc is not literally having the book, which is something that has always been my stance as well.

You're trying to use the Socratic method to show that the havingness of the book is a spectrum, and I'm taking the position of a hardliner who considers that "having the book" means having the original string of symbols from beginning to end, and anything besides that is not having the book. I'm trying to show you that your line of argumentation is uncompelling to such a person.

I was never using the Socratic method. I was asking rhetorical questions, and then gave the (my) answer at the end.

We just have different opinions about what it means to have a book. I think that having a copy of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" is more like having a copy of "Pride and Prejudice", than having no book at all is like having a copy of that book. You disagree and that's fine.

Asking rhetorical questions as a form of argumentation is the Socratic method.

If one is using the Socratic method, rhetorical questions are one tool they might employ.

The reverse is not true. Just because someone asks a rhetorical question, does not mean they are using the Socratic method.

I agree having a book is something fuzzy, I for instance consider that if i have even one word from a book, then i sort of have that book, idk it’s not black and white there are shades of grey!

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