Garrett
@garrett
If you could speak English, Chinese and Spanish then you could basically talk to 50% of the people on Earth No better 3 language combo
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
Add in Ancient Greek and you'll get a great bang for your buck on wisdom: Homer, Thucydides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle
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Garrett
@garrett
Feels like AI could just translate anything that's not a living language Feels kinda like a waste of time to learn any non-living language unless you're a historian or its essential to your line of work
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
This is a very big question – whether all ideas are translatable. In my experience there are certain topics that are so deep that understanding them is about struggling with them – in many cases, struggling with the fact that your own language/culture has no clean equivalent for the term you're thinking about. The Greek words "logos" and "phusis" were like this for me. I think translation is sufficient for many of concrete things and ideas, but for certain fundamental ones, I don't think anything will ever replace the individual learner's need to grapple with source languages. (Greek being just one of them. We should also look into Nietzsche's German, Rousseau's French, etc) (All this being said, I think AI is an incredible tool for grappling with other languages. I use it with Greek etc)
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