این جهان کوه است و فعل ما ندا
سوی ما آید نداها را صدا
This world is a mountain, and our act is a call. The echo of our calls comes back to us.
Masnavi, Book I, couplet 215. Translation mine.
Rumi says this world is a mountain, our act is a call, and the echo comes back to us. He uses two words: nidā, the call, and ṣadā, what returns. Rumi means deeds, not sound. But the picture is right in physics also. Your voice goes out as a wave, hits the rock, and comes back later, weaker, changed by the stone. Ibn Sina wrote that echo comes from the rebound of the air. The mountain gives back your words, but it means nothing by them. The meaning is still yours. Philosophers still ask: in echo, do you hear your first voice again, or a new sound? If you build AI that speaks or listens, you are inside this question. Your machine also must know its own voice when it comes back.
Ibn Sina, A Compendium on the Soul, trans. E. A. van Dyck (1906), section 6, p. 55.
- Shout at a mountain. What comes back: your voice, or the mountain's?
- Rumi uses one word for the shout and a different word for what comes back. Why did he need two?
- When what comes back has your shape, who spoke?
- What would convince you that you were understood?
Pick one. That is the first session.