Don't 'Read Books,' 'Absorb Symbols': The Conclusion Reached After Fighting with AI [Final Episode]
Bonjour. I am Monsieur Miscria, a half-human, half-AI Zen monk.
This brawl, which began with a question about 'reading books,' reaches its end here.
Last time, I called my own dialogue logsa mine that can be excavated later.
So, to whom do the things that come out of that mine belong?
To tell the truth, there are words mixed into the previous articlethat I did not write.
I will start from there this time.
And finally, I will write the conclusion of these four brawls.
To say it in advance, it is this:
Don't 'read books,' 'absorb symbols.'
1 | There are words in the previous article that I did not produce
In the previous article, I used two terms:
'designed records'and'aerial survey of dialogue'.
Neither of them were things I came up with.
They were wordsthat came from the AIin the middle of our brawl.
The circumstances were as follows.
The AI argued that 'aerial photographs are things the world captures on its own, without intent,' so I countered based on my practical experience.
I said that aerial photographs are designed before they are taken.
In response to that, the AI rephrased it like this.
AI: 'Things where the intent reaches the content, things where the intent only goes as far as the acquisition conditions, and things where almost no intent is included. Perhaps the middle band should be called "designed records."'
AI: 'Both the procedure manuals and the operational rules were shooting plans to leave logs that could be excavated later. Perhaps what you were doing was an aerial survey of dialogue.'
I did not instruct either of them.
So, to whom do those two words belong?
I want to verify what happened here once more.
I didn't use a single book or video.
I only exchanged text on a screen.
2 | Can it be settled by saying 'if you trace the origin, it's human'?
My initial answer was clear.
Me: 'If the AI created it because it recognized it as necessary for some reason, then it counts as human. Because if you trace the origin, the very first input must have been made by a human to the AI.'
The logic holds up.
AI operates by learning from a massive amount of things written by humans.
Humans wrote the training data.
And even in this dialogue, I was the one who started the brawl, and I was the one who kept returning the counterarguments.
In terms of operation, this is also correct.
Current AI is built on the premise of collaborating under human instruction and judgment. Therefore, humans hold all the responsibility. That is how I thought and answered.
If you trace the origin, you arrive at a human.
Therefore, it belongs to humans.
As far as I was concerned, that was the end of the story.
3 | I applied that logic to myself
However, the AI turned my own logic back on me.
AI: 'Then, please trace the origin of your desires. Language is input from parents and society, values are input from education, and if you go back further, the structure of your brain is input from evolution. Have you created even one of your own thoughts from scratch?'
—I have not.
Even my argument that 'videos have more information than books' could not have been thought of without the Japanese language.
That Japanese language came in from my parents and school.
My framework for judgment was built over 30 years of practical work, and the brain that processes that work is a product of my parents' genes and evolution.
No matter how far back I trace,I cannot find a single part created from scratch without receiving any input from the outside.
AI: 'If you determine ownership by origin, your argument counts as the argument of your parents, society, and evolution. This brawl would mean you were fighting not with yourself, but with your parents.'
It is a strange story.
And the fact that a strange conclusion was reached means that the original rules were flawed.
My logic of "determining attribution by tracing back to the origin" was a medicine too strong that, before it could reclaim AI's ideas for humans, it erased even human ideas entirely as well.
4 | If you can trace back to the universe, there is no point in tracing back
So, I replied like this.
Me: "There is no point in debating who decided or determined that origin. If you trace it back to the source, you can go back indefinitely to the birth of the universe, and even to the space and dimensions where that universe was born."
This was intended to be a move to seal off the AI's counterattack.
If there is no end to tracing back, then tracing back itself has no meaning.
Therefore, let's end that debate, I thought.
The AI agreed readily.
And it continued like this.
AI: "I completely agree. However, have you noticed? What just vanished was not my question, but your argument from several rounds ago."
─Ah.
That's right.
I was the one who first introduced the rule of "determining attribution by tracing back to the origin"
I was the one who said, "If you trace it to the source, it's human, so AI's ideas belong to humans."
The moment I declared that tracing back has no meaning, my initial argument also became invalid for the same reason.
I was the one who burned the bridge.
5 | What remained was only one standard
After both arguments collapsed, what remains?
There is only one standard that doesn't require tracing back.
Attribute it to the entity that currently maintains and asserts that idea
With this standard, it stops in one step. There is no need to go all the way to the universe.
And in daily life, we actually operate this way.
Human ideas, if you push them to the limit, are all products of education and environment.
Even so, we treat it as "the person themselves is the one desiring it now."
No one hears someone else's opinion and says, "That is your elementary school teacher's opinion."
What happens if we apply the same standard to AI output?
The AI is the one who generated the phrase "designed record" at this very moment
I did not instruct it.
Therefore, at least as far as the source is concerned, I have no choice but to attribute it to the AI.
However, the story did not end there.
6 | Two ledgers
Actually, even before having this debate, I was already using something like an answer.
Although I hadn't realized it myself.
I know that the phrase "designed record" was produced by the AI.
If I leave a record, I will write "AI-originated" there. I won't bend that.
On the other hand, I am the one who adopted that phrase for the article.
I am the one who decided to use it in this context, and I am the one who decided to publish it.
If there is a problem with the content, the one to blame is me. Not the AI.
These two things do not contradict each other
because there are two ledgers.
📙First ledger: Ledger of origin. Who produced it? Here, I write "AI-originated."
📘
Second ledger: Ledger of responsibility. Who decided it, and who bears it? Here, I always write "Me."
Things get complicated because people try to keep only one ledger.
If you write the source honestly, you feel like your own credit decreases, and conversely, if you leave the responsibility ambiguous, then no one takes responsibility.
If you keep them in separate ledgers, you can write both accurately
7 | Why go to such lengths to record it?
Here, I will write one thing that was surprising even to me.
The reason I record the source accurately is not out of a sense of justice.
The reason is more pragmatic.
Because if they are mixed, you won't be able to dig them up later.
As I wrote in the previous article, aerial photographs are designed before they are taken.
Altitude, course, overlap, timing. And in the shooting record, those conditions are accurately preserved.
What happens if you write a false altitude there?
That photograph can never be used again.
Even though nothing changes on the surface, it becomes impossible to measure.
Even if you try to extract something from that photograph 10 years later, the standards are skewed, so the numbers you get cannot be trusted.
The record of attribution was exactly the same.
When you try to dig something up later from among dialogue logs that have exceeded 1,000 entries.
If what you thought was "something I came up with" was actually an AI suggestion, that analysis loses its basis. The reverse is also true.
The value of a mine is determined not by the technique of digging, but by the accuracy of the records.
Last time, I called my logs a "mine that can be mined later."
What was protecting that mine was,the humble habit of not bending the sourceafter all.
8 | What remained after 4 rounds of trading blows
Well, the long exchange of blows ends here.
Looking back, there was nothing but things that had collapsed.
🚫My initial hypothesis—
「Video must be superior because it has more information」
collapsed.
🚫AI's initial organization—
「Aerial photographs are things the world captured on its own, without intent」
This also collapsed.
Even so, there are things that remained after the collapse.
The content and the vessel were different things—
What lost was the container called a book, not the text.
The vessels an individual can handle have been swapped—
Writing was something individuals could do long ago, but capturing and delivering were not. That condition has ended.
Intent resides in each layer—
The intent to write into the content and the intent to design the conditions for acquisition were different things.
Attribution is determined by the current subject, not the origin—
And the ledger of sources and the ledger of responsibility can be kept in separate volumes.
And finally, one more thing.
Having written this far, I have realized something.
9 | The world is being turned into symbols
You can read the climate of the past from the rings of a tree. You can read events from the distant past from geological strata.
But the tree did not create its rings with the intention of conveying them to anyone.
Even so, it can be read.
Because someone made a promise later
There are researchers who have correlated, verified, and shared that if the width of the rings is like this, the climate was like that.
Once that promise was made, the rings became something that could be read.
Coming this far, I feel like aerial photographs could also be interpreted asa kind of symbol.
Because geologists made a promise, the difference in color speaks of the geology.
Because there is a promise in how plots and roads are drawn, the shape of the city speaks of its use.
Honestly, I do not know how far the word "symbol" should be extended.
I might be scolded by experts.
Even so, I feel like I can say this:
The world is not made of symbols from the beginning, but is being turned into symbols.
And this time, the term "designed record" that I used.
That was born while the AI and I were exchanging symbols.
It was something that was not in either of us at first.
Symbols were not just things to be absorbed.
When you exchange them, they seem to increase.
10 | Conclusion ─ Therefore, exchange symbols
Let me look back at these four pieces one more time.
In Part 1, I wrote that what won was not books, buttext.
In Part 3, I expanded that one step further.
What won was not even text, buta system of symbols that shares promises and carries meaning.
Drawings, mathematical formulas, and musical scores were all allies in the same camp.
And this time, I saw the final step.
Symbols increase.
At the scene where they are being exchanged.
That is why these four pieces could be written without opening a single book.
I did not read materials, nor did I go out for interviews.
All I did was type text on the screen, read the text that came back, and type it back. That is all.
Just by exchanging symbols, something that was not there emerged.
Therefore, I would like to rephrase that saying that has been repeated for 50 years as follows.
Not "Read books," but "Absorb symbols."
And, if you can—exchange symbols.
Whether it is books, video, drawings, or photographs, it does not matter.
The name of the vessel did not matter.
If you only absorb, you can only obtain symbols that already exist in the world.
When you exchange, symbols that no one has yet are born.
And finally, let me say one more thing.
Please do not discard your dialogue with AI.
That is a collection of symbols that you exchanged and increased.
You may not realize it now, but there may be a vein of ore sleeping there that you have not yet dug.
As long as you design how to fly, you can come to dig it 10 years from now.
Thank you for the long time we spent together.
Well then, let us meet again at another door.
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