Between the R and Silence: The Louvre Heist and the Relevance of Prediction

René, Robert, Raoul?

The Missing Letter

In his recent monologue on the Louvre heist, broadcaster Carlos Alcina opened with a classic story: The Arrest of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc. Aboard an ocean liner, in the middle of a storm, the telegraph operator receives an urgent message:

"Travelling aboard: famous thief wanted by the police. First class, blond hair, wound on the right forearm, registered under the false name of…"

And then the line goes dead. Only the first letter of the name reaches him: an “R.”

This lost initial—a minimal presence, an eloquent absence—sets the entire intrigue in motion. Who among the passengers whose name begins with R is the thief? René, Robert, Raoul? What should have been a simple technical transmission becomes a puzzle. Alcina evokes this scene to introduce his account of the Louvre, another mystery of identities, appearances, and substitutions. Yet the most compelling element is not the theft itself but the force of a truncated prediction, the irresistible drive to join the dots.

The Disregard for Probability

In the age of artificial intelligence, many thinkers remain skeptical of such incomplete operations. Noam Chomsky, for instance, has stated that large language models “understand nothing,” that their sole merit lies in “predicting which token comes next.” For him, this task—statistical, repetitive—lacks scientific interest: it can produce coherent sentences but reveals nothing about the inner structure of the mind.

Underlying his critique is a long-standing hierarchy: comprehension is noble, prediction is mechanical. Thinking is valued over guessing; the biological mind over the probability-based algorithm. Prediction is relegated to the periphery of thought, a useful supplement without philosophical dignity.

Derrida and the Trace of the Supplement

But Jacques Derrida taught that every hierarchy conceals the possibility of inversion. What seems secondary may in fact be constitutive. In Of Grammatology, when analyzing Rousseau’s concept of the “supplement,” Derrida shows that the supplement does not add something to an already complete whole; it reveals that the whole was never complete. The secondary exposes the void at the origin.

In this light, the task of “predicting the next token” ceases to be a mechanical curiosity and becomes a figure of thought itself. Every act of language, human or otherwise, involves anticipation. There is no comprehension without expectation, no meaning without projection. What Chomsky dismisses as superficial is paradoxically the principle that makes all signification possible.

Leblanc’s “R” embodies this logic. It is not a mere misplaced letter but a trace in Derrida’s sense: simultaneously present and absent, a mark pointing to a lack and, in doing so, opening the field of meaning. Its power lies not in what it says, but in what it promises. With this letter, the message does not end; it begins.

Prediction, Desire, and Language

At its core, predicting is a form of desire. Anyone trying to complete an interrupted sentence, or to guess another’s next word, participates in the same game as a reader confronting an open text. The machines that today anticipate tokens operate, in another register, with the same logic: they extend the trace, continue the series, and attempt continuity where there is rupture.

They lack consciousness, of course, but this does not render their task trivial. Prediction is not merely mechanical; it is a wager on possibility. It is a way of continuing the writing where the message was cut off. And in this, it resembles the human mind: we constantly complete fragments, infer the unsaid, fill gaps with imagination.

Outside of fiction, the world is a broken telegraph. A signal that cuts out, a sentence that never arrives, an emotion poorly expressed: every day we interpret half-drawn messages. Perhaps comprehension is nothing more than predicting with sensitivity; reading, thinking, and loving all involve risking a continuation of what has yet to be said.

Conclusion: The Intelligence of the Interval

The telegraph operator, the skeptical linguist, the grammatologist, and the language model share the same scene: an incomplete text demanding continuation. Prediction is not the residue of intelligence but its subtlest form.

Leblanc’s “R” reminds us that absence is generative, that all meaning arises from the attempt to continue what has been interrupted. Derrida would have celebrated it: the supplement reveals itself as origin, the addition as structure, prediction as the most modest—and most radical—form of thought.

Perhaps what is truly human is not to understand everything, but to guess, with both grace and error, the letter that comes next. For between the R and silence, the mystery of language continues to be written.

References

Chomsky, N., Roberts, I., & Watumull, J. (2023, March 8). The False Promise of ChatGPT. The New York Times.
Chomsky, N. (2023). Interview on AI and the Limits of Understanding. New York Times Conversations.
Derrida, J. (1967). Of Grammatology. Paris: Minuit.
Derrida, J. (1972). Dissemination. Paris: Seuil.
Leblanc, M. (1905). The Arrest of Arsène Lupin. In Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Cambrioleur. Paris: Pierre Lafitte.
Alcina, C. (2025). Monologue on the Louvre Heist [Radio broadcast]. Radio Nacional de España.
Harris, R. (1981). The Language Myth: Why Language is Not an Instinct. London: Duckworth.