Episode 51: Things I Want Decided

Inspired by Nader, Farritor and Schilliger's recent AI-assisted decryption of ancient texts, netting them the $1m Vesuvius Challenge Prize, I attempt to crack the code of a 1000 year old Japanese poem using Google's Gemini chatbot.

I pose to Gemini the four cryptic questions in the form of a poem about love's paradoxes by Izumi Shikibu, whose work was celebrated by Kenneth Rexroth with the following words: “Of all the poets of the classical period, she has, to my mind, the deepest and most poignant Buddhist sensibility.”

Can the latest Oogly Woogly Google tech finally solve riddles that have puzzled human readers and thinkers for centuries?

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Things I Want Decided

Which shouldn’t exist in this world, the one who forgets or the one who is forgotten? Which is better, to love one who has died or not to see each other when you are alive? Which is better, the distant lover you long for or the one you see daily without desire? Which is the least unreliable among fickle things— the swift rapids, a flowing river, or this human world?

-Izumi Shikibu (tr. Jane Hirshfield)