Apropos of the curse, an explanation that I heard from a reasonably famous Scottish stage actor:
Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time.
So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.
I’m a lawyer (but not your lawyer, not this kind of lawyer and not in your jurisdiction). Based on what I can recall from law school:
> Can an AI model intend harm?
No. The last time we attributed liability to non-human things was the deodand of the Middle Ages.
> Can a company, or company employee, intend harm by creating an environment that would knowingly encourage (but not force!) an AI model to do harm?
Absolutely. This is why we have the concept of recklessness. If you shoot a gun into a crowd without regard for whether it hits anyone, you’re getting charged with some crime whether it hits someone or not.
There is also a major difference in the common law between criminal liability and tort liability. Criminal liability generally requires a combination of mens rea (intent) and actus reus (actually committing the crime). Liability for a tort, which is where you harm someone in a way that falls short of being a crime, does not require mens rea. The OG tort is negligence, where you harm somebody by forgetting to do, or deciding not to do, something you ought to have done to protect that person from harm.
Even if AI companies somehow escape criminal liability for their cyber-shenanigans, any court in a civilised country would be happy to find them liable in tort for damage to computer systems.
As you can probably tell, I think the common law is already more than equipped to deal with AI technology based on well-established principles.
> The last time we attributed liability to non-human things was the deodand of the Middle Ages.
I can think of a couple of counter examples:
Civil asset forfeiture: your property is charged with the crime, you have to petition the government to get it back or else they sell it at auction.
Similar: When products deemed unsafe are ordered to be destroyed; it’s the same end effect as the deodand although liability sits with the manufacturer.
> None of these necessarily imply the speaker has actually done something wrong
You’d be surprised. The culture of kidzukai has two core tenets:
(1) You must anticipate and cater to the other person’s every need and whim. If you fail you must apologize.
(2) You must not allow the other person to do (1) for you instead of you doing it for them. If you fail you must apologize.
This means that every interaction between people who are even slightly close to each other in the social hierarchy is 3D chess which always ends in one or both of you apologizing to the other.
p.s. Gomen kudasai is “please permit me” to enter your house, not really an apology like gomen nasai.
Venezuelan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, who grew up around these glaciers, wrote a poignant lament[1] in anticipation of this day. The gist is that at this point the only thing to do is to grieve for the world we have already lost. I don't think there's anything else to say.
Y cuando el momento llegue, honremos nuestras heridas /
Celebremos la belleza que se aleja hacia otras vidas /
Y aunque la pena nos hiera, que no nos desampare /
Y que encontremos la manera de despedir a los glaciares
(When the moment comes, let us honor our wounds / celebrate the beauty that goes off to other lives / and although the sorrow stings, I hope it will remain / and that we find a way to say goodbye to the glaciers)
It is not a matter of being able to convey a meaning in your language. It is about the story behind what a phrase comes to be in another language. Because of semantic domains and history and culture and all that, the story that comes with it can certainly not representable in a translation.
To claim a language is perfectly fine to represent any concept and hence the use of any other language is some sort of negative trend, is to deny the richness in other cultures and histories, almost to the point of being racist.
The worst thing about this kind of people is their urge to feel obligated to share.
A google image search for "木漏れ日" gets me about 50% beams and 50% patterns on the forest floor, so I don't think the difference is as clear cut as all that. But even on that basis, we then have two words--sunbeams for the beams and dappled light for the pattern--where the Japanese have only one. By the logic of the usual breathless linguistic fetishism that we see everywhere online, that means English has twice the reverence for the natural world that Japanese has.
but it may very well be seen as a mark of English pragmatism, or other more fitting attribution of archetypes, in return.
Interpretations of cultural origins of expressions in either language and romantic admiration for the shapes that words take is neither meant as a qualification of the speakers, nor is the fascination for one culture automatically meant to be entitled or hostile towards another.
You may very well admire the poetic yet observative nature of Japanese composita, as well as take delight in uncommon, inventive and elegantly rythmic English idioms. You may as well interpret freely what you see in them. All without putting one above the other, or regarding them as competitors.
why do you assume that people made shit up? Maybe they learned it from somewhere? Maybe the "romantic and emotional love of nature" exists and there no need for anyone to "accuse" something to be it. You don't sounds like someone who can speak Japanese (or any foreign language really), so why do you think your theory is more plausible than that of people who do?
Sorry to nitpick, but not really. If we're being literal it's "honorably rushing about on your horse": chisō describes the work that had do be done to prepare the feast, running here and there to gather the ingredients. The "sama" doesn't mean Mr., it's just another honorific tag like go-/o-.
>Whether the translation is accurate to the source material is irrelevant; the readers literally can't tell and don't care
As a professional translator, I cherish those readers. They have the good sense to trust me to do the technical part (understanding the original) and only criticize the artistic part (producing a beautiful derivative work).
The worst readers are the ones who have some knowledge of the source language, and rush to nitpick the technical decisions without considering the artistic ones. They are the literary equivalent of those "fans" who will watch a stunning film adaptation and then go home to complain about the colour of Gandalf's shoes or the width of a sand worm's molars. Ultimately, readers of this type are all ego, more concerned about being right than about whether the work is good.
The very best readers, of course, are knowledgeable in both languages and understand that "equivalence" goes far beyond what is written in the dictionary. But as you say, they don't need the translation!
Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most popular play, cause it’s got sex and blood and poetry all over, a really tight plot, and it’s not too long. It is pretty well guaranteed to fill a theatre. Also, every actor knows the script so you can find a cast in no time.
So if your current play is not selling a lot of tickets and is about to be cancelled, the theatre is going to put on Macbeth right after you to try to make its money back quickly. That’s why thespians hate to hear the name ‘Macbeth’ — because if there’s talk of that play going about, you could be out of a job next week.
reply