> The value of the emotion it elicits is much lower than knowing the person who wrote it or in what historical or social background they did so.

Then the value of many ancient texts must be close to zero, because we often know nothing about the people who wrote them. In many cases even our guesses for where and when they were written differ by multiple centuries or thousands of kilometers.

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cautiouscat 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Then the value of many ancient texts must be close to zero, because we often know nothing about the people who wrote them.

This is where imagination fills the gap and makes it interesting to think about.

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qlte 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No that makes them more interesting for the same reasons OP gave. You try to build a mental model of this mystery person from a mysterious time, where ever little detail could be a clue about them, their society/culture, or just trivial.

With AI writing the answer is that everything is randomly averaged and thus trivial.

	▲	p-e-w 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You try to build a mental model of this mystery person from a mysterious time I’ve read many ancient texts with great delight, and not once have I tried to “build a mental model” of their authors. It’s a dimension of literary analysis that has never interested me, even for authors (such as Kafka) whose personal lives are generally considered inseparable from their works. The work stands on its own for me… or doesn’t, in which case learning about the circumstances of whoever wrote it won’t save it in my eyes.