alt Hacker NewsThe claim that books know things seems suspicious to me. I consider the act of knowing to be embodied, it is something a person has learned to do and has control over.
Is that how you approach PDF files? Do you feel it in your bones that these flows of bytes are knowing?
> The claim that books know things seems suspicious to me
I didn't say the book knows things, but everyone can agree that books has knowledge in them. Hence something possessing knowledge doesn't make it intelligent.
For example, when ancient libraries were burnt those civilizations lost a lot of knowledge. Those books possessed knowledge, it isn't a hard concept to understand. Those civilizations didn't lose intelligence, the smart humans were still there, they just lost knowledge.