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We trained GPT3 with the complete works of Plato. The following text selections are either OG Plato or GPT3 Plato. Care to guess the origin of each selection an

We trained GPT3 with the complete works of Plato. The following text selections are either OG Plato or GPT3 Plato. Care to guess the origin of each selection and attempt the Platonic Turing test? (No cheating) 1. Of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being itself with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. 2. Is not beauty wise? Imagine not to yourself a beauty which is devoid of wisdom but have the wisdom to conceive beauty in her full perfection. For wisdom and beauty are the same, as I dare say that you yourself well know. A beautiful body is called wise because of the soul which it encloses, and of which it is the attendant or vessel. There is an inferior sort of wisdom which means caution, and is only a craft, and is concerned with the body; but the higher wisdom is the co-knowing of the soul, or is philosophy, and of this the intelligent is a part. And this part in another form is that which is rightly called wisdom, and is the pilot of the soul, guiding her in her journey to the land of the good and the beautiful. That which has no wisdom is a soul which inherits the name only; this is but a part of wisdom, and is entitled only to this much, that no soul in which there is not this superior part ought to be called wise. That which is called wisdom without this adjunct ought to be deemed only half wise, and this, when joined with that, is complete.

FabHK 4y ago
Could you do Foucault or Derrida? (see: https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/ )
- dimatura 4y ago
  I assumed from the title this would be Lacan or such. I think GPT-3 would be incredibly successful at emulating postmodernist logorrhea.
  - anothernewdude 4y ago
    That's because they use language "ironically" to convince people to be nihilists.
teraflop 4y ago
I have only the most superficial familiarity with Plato, but here's my guess: #1 is Plato. It expresses a clear theme that happens to match my vague understanding of what "Platonism" is, and the writing is efficient and effective. The metaphor of knowledge as "food" seems particularly unlikely to be something that GPT-3 would express in such a concise way. The only thing that really gives me pause is the part at the end about "the revolution of the worlds"; I'm not sure what exactly that's referring to. #2 is GPT-3. The topic meanders a lot, and there are a lot of individual chunks of prose that sound weird to me, or at least artless. (What value is "as I dare say you yourself know" adding, for instance?) It seems to be throwing around words like "beauty", "mind", "soul" and "wisdom" in ways that obscure their meanings, rather than elucidating them. For example, "wisdom [...] is the pilot of the soul" makes much less sense than "mind, the pilot of the soul".
tremon 4y ago
Plato wrote in English? Neither text is OG Plato, both are interpretations of his work.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Tricky. Is it supposed to be Socrates speaking, or someone he interrogates? Plato's dialogues are full of speeches from people expounding theses that are themselves contradictory (and directly contradict Plato). There is for example a platonic dialogue that is chock full of convincing nonsense arguments, almost like a satire. Both of them are nailing the ye olde Benjamin Jowett English. The first one does seem possibly a bit at odds with some of his cosmology. The second one seems superficially closer to some of his conclusions about the form of the good, but it also seems really internally inconsistent. Some strange things: First he asks: > Is not beauty wise? Then he bluntly asserts: > For wisdom and beauty are the same, as I dare say that you yourself well know. Plato usually isn't the one to just assert things like this. If this text is Plato's, it's definitely not one of Socrates' speeches. > There is an inferior sort of wisdom which means caution, and is only a craft, and is concerned with the body; but the higher wisdom is the co-knowing of the soul, or is philosophy, and of this the intelligent is a part. This also feels like it contains parts from a discussion about epistemology which is out of place when the topic is the forms, he typically contrasts crafts (techne) with knowledge (episteme). Here he just dismisses something as a craft completely out of the blue.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Excellent analysis! Thank you.
lioeters 4y ago
> There abides the very being itself with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible essence.. Beautiful, this part reminds me of Buddhist literature, which I've found often rhymes/resonates with Greek philosophy.

FabHK 4y ago

Could you do Foucault or Derrida? (see: https://xkcd.com/451/ https://xkcd.com/451/ )

dimatura 4y ago
I assumed from the title this would be Lacan or such. I think GPT-3 would be incredibly successful at emulating postmodernist logorrhea.
- anothernewdude 4y ago
  That's because they use language "ironically" to convince people to be nihilists.

teraflop 4y ago

I have only the most superficial familiarity with Plato, but here's my guess: #1 is Plato. It expresses a clear theme that happens to match my vague understanding of what "Platonism" is, and the writing is efficient and effective. The metaphor of knowledge as "food" seems particularly unlikely to be something that GPT-3 would express in such a concise way. The only thing that really gives me pause is the part at the end about "the revolution of the worlds"; I'm not sure what exactly that's referring to. #2 is GPT-3. The topic meanders a lot, and there are a lot of individual chunks of prose that sound weird to me, or at least artless. (What value is "as I dare say you yourself know" adding, for instance?) It seems to be throwing around words like "beauty", "mind", "soul" and "wisdom" in ways that obscure their meanings, rather than elucidating them. For example, "wisdom [...] is the pilot of the soul" makes much less sense than "mind, the pilot of the soul".

tremon 4y ago

Plato wrote in English? Neither text is OG Plato, both are interpretations of his work.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Tricky. Is it supposed to be Socrates speaking, or someone he interrogates? Plato's dialogues are full of speeches from people expounding theses that are themselves contradictory (and directly contradict Plato). There is for example a platonic dialogue that is chock full of convincing nonsense arguments, almost like a satire. Both of them are nailing the ye olde Benjamin Jowett English. The first one does seem possibly a bit at odds with some of his cosmology. The second one seems superficially closer to some of his conclusions about the form of the good, but it also seems really internally inconsistent. Some strange things: First he asks: > Is not beauty wise? Then he bluntly asserts: > For wisdom and beauty are the same, as I dare say that you yourself well know. Plato usually isn't the one to just assert things like this. If this text is Plato's, it's definitely not one of Socrates' speeches. > There is an inferior sort of wisdom which means caution, and is only a craft, and is concerned with the body; but the higher wisdom is the co-knowing of the soul, or is philosophy, and of this the intelligent is a part. This also feels like it contains parts from a discussion about epistemology which is out of place when the topic is the forms, he typically contrasts crafts (techne) with knowledge (episteme). Here he just dismisses something as a craft completely out of the blue.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Excellent analysis! Thank you.

lioeters 4y ago

> There abides the very being itself with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible essence.. Beautiful, this part reminds me of Buddhist literature, which I've found often rhymes/resonates with Greek philosophy.