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> Of course you can read non-existent messages, for example when an AI hallucinates one This message clearly exists. It's could be not factually correct, but a

• layer8 2y ago
  No, it’s a citation of a message that does not exist. I wasn’t talking about a message sent by an AI, I was talking about an AI reproducing the alledged content of a purported message. If you open a text file in an editor, and then delete the file on disk, then the file does not exist anymore, but you can still read its contents in your editor. Same if you open a web page in your browser, and the page is then deleted server-side. You can still read the loaded copy of the web page in your browser, although the web page doesn’t exist anymore. The “message” in TFA’s notification is exactly like that.
  • galaxyLogic 2y ago
    It depends on how we define what we mean by the word "message". In the common sense interpretation "file" is not a "message". Nor is the display on which you are reading the message. Nor is a clay-tablet on which ancient Sumerians wrote messages. "Message" is information sent by someone to someone else. A message could be saved in a file but then the file is just the "medium" for transferring the message to its future readers. So I would think that "This message does not exist" is something like writing "This is not a pipe" on a painting of a pipe. I never understood what Marshall McLuhan meant with "Medium is the message". Medium is what makes it possible to transmit messages. Can anybody help me out, what did McLuhan mean?