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Socrates on the forgetfulness that comes with writing
- abanayev 4y agoGood thing Plato was able to write this down.
- svnt 4y agoSocrates seems here he is mostly expressing the frustration that he cannot entrain a book into his methods, and that their authors cannot keep pace with him in dialogue. But that was never the point of writing. The point is to use some small fraction of sensory+cognitive function to give yourself access to a separable, durable, redundant, and location-independent form of information. Not touched on here but in other recent books is the possible loss of sensory+cognitive function that comes with simply learning to read and write in the first place. It’s possible this is the origin of the myth of Odin sacrificing an eye to read the runes.
- wwweston 4y ago> the possible loss of sensory+cognitive function that comes with simply learning to read and write in the first place. I don't doubt this is possible but I'd love a cite to find out what the case looks like.
- svnt 4y agoOne place I’m sure I read it was in the first couple chapters of Joe Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World — hopefully he cites sources there. I can’t look up my notes just now but if I get a chance and find more I’ll post.
- wwweston 4y agoOddly, was just browsing in a library today and that title was one that caught my attention. Will have to check it out!
- Archelaos 4y agoWhen interpreting this passages one must not forget that the whole dialog is itself presented in writing. One example of the famous Socratic irony (which is ironically Platonic irony).
- aap_ 4y agoThis is exactly what I thought, and this is of course fully intentional. You can really feel book-Socrates trying to break the 4th wall in that excerpt. Really amazing writing.
- xchip 4y agoThanks Plato for taking the minutes of Socrates meetings.
- Maursault 4y agoThat is some very nice sarcasm. Humor much appreciated. > Socrates did not write down any of his thoughts, however his dialogues were recorded by his student and protégé, the philosopher Plato (428 – 347 BCE). Plato did not "write down" Socrates' dialogues. Plato wrote the dialogues. Though we do have some authentic ideas from Socrates, such as, "I know that I know nothing," the idea that wisdom begins with ignorance, and most scholars still accept The Apology as at least quasi-historical. Socrates must have made a great impression on Plato, but when we read The Republic, we are not reading Socrates. It is the humble and brilliant Plato, alone.
- CyanBird 4y agoWhat a good day is to read Socrates Thanks for sharing
- robg 4y agoDon’t we read Plato’s writings of what Socrates said?
- jasonhansel 4y agoWe read Plato's writings of what a character named "Socrates" said; this character is based (to some extent) on the historical Socrates but is largely Plato's invention.
- User23 4y agoWe also have Xenophon and Aristophanes as sources about Socrates.
- s3000 4y agoSophist means teacher, wisdom [1],[2] kratos means power, or ruling [3] How big is the probability that somebody is named 'ruler of the wise' and then becomes arguably the most influential philosopher of all time? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristocracy_(class)#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristocracy_(class)#Etymology
- philipswood 4y agoPeople with suitable names often seem to be over-represented in a field. Cute, but no one is really sure why. So while his name seems a tad much, that in itself isn't enough to disprove he existed. (This is even more true in cultures where names usually mean something - think Hebrew biblical names)
- marginalia_nu 4y agoDo we know for a fact it was a given name and not a nickname? (also worth mentioning the Cratylus in this discussion; etymology was definitely something these people thought about)
- beefhead 4y agoI like Thamus' argument against the intrinsic value of writing — shallow reminding, rather than remembering, comprises the vast majority of internet dialogue. "You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so."
- nehal3m 4y agoHah, you can't make this stuff up. 6. Socrates on the Forgetfulness That Comes with Writing (newlearningonline.com) 33 points by indy 1 hour ago | hide | 5 comments 7. Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information (stackoverflow.blog) 329 points by TangerineDream 7 hours ago | hide | 189 comments
- Avshalom 4y agoOn a similar note: because Socrates never wrote anything down, it's entirely possible everything attributed to him was made up.
- virissimo 4y agoPossible, but improbable, since some attributions (approximately) agree across independent sources like Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, etc...
- Avshalom 4y agoFan fiction manages to agree about made up stuff across thousands of writers. Fictional canons in general easily produce (approximate) consistency across writers.
- hunterb123 4y agoIt isn't fan fiction, generally fans don't talk directly with the creators of their process, for years on end. Socrates pupils listened and discussed his ideas with him directly and very in-depth. Instead of him writing down statements to be misinterpreted, he instilled his philosophy into many people through direct conversation.
- Avshalom 4y agoI mean don't get me wrong I'm just having fun, I'm not some socrates-truther but "generally fans don't talk directly with the creators of their process, for years on end" have you met fans? Hell yesterday the entirety of Tumblr decided to invent a fake Scorsese film with memes and slash/fic and fanart and arguments about it's place in his canon. They probably produced more in a day than was written about Socrates in a century.
- EGreg 4y agoKids these days, with their writing and their abjads and alphabets… rotting their brains LOL. And they think I am corrupting the youth! I don’t think Socrates really existed btw. He was likely a rhetorical device of Plato and Aristophanes, similar to Sherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle. And both authors say the same of their main character: “He was the wisest, and the best, man I have ever known!”
- handedness 4y agoNo, Socrates very likely existed. He was mentioned not just by Plato and Aristophanes, but also a number of other contemporaries: Ion of Chios, Eupolis, Ameipsias, and Xenophon. We also have references to contemporary accounts by Antisthenes, Aischines of Sphettos, and Aristippos of Kyrene. His trial was also mentioned by Aischines. It's a popular theory on the web but it is a difficult one to justify when we have so much evidence to the contrary, and I'm aware of no serious historian who supports that view.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoWow, Ameipsias sent me down a rabbit hole. Apparently wrote a comedy about Socrates and his tutor, a music theorist. Now for Eupolis…
- dr_dshiv 4y agoWrote a play about this fascinating boozed-out religion and its baptisms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotys
- rcarr 4y agoI think Conan Doyle came to dislike Sherlock in the end if I remember right. In fact it might even be a trend for detective writers to dislike their detectives as I seem to recall Agatha Christie disliked Poirot as well.
- galaxyLogic 4y agoI think there is "Forgetfulness that comes with Programming". When you program you are constantly doing problem-solving. Having to tackle new problems every day pushes the memory of the solutions you came up in previous days out of your brain. There is just not enough room in the brain. But writing down the code helps to rediscover your earlier discoveries if you take time to document your code. Still it may be difficult to figure out where such old code and documentation is stored.
- visarga 4y ago> writing down the code helps to rediscover your earlier discoveries Using Copilot you can "remember" other people's discoveries too.
- keyle 4y agoCompletely agree with this, I'm very efficient at clearing the board in my short term memory and give 110% of what I have to the problem at hand. It makes anything I done previously almost as good as if someone else did it and I need to rediscover it. Which is a good thing, because boy that guy couldn't code himself out of a well.
- anadem 4y agoAh, yes, that explains to me how it is that when I'm stuck in some bit of code and go look on StackOverflow or wherever, I find an answer I'd posted long before.
- galaxyLogic 4y agoFunny that happened to me as well I was reading somebody's answer on SO and it took me some time to realize I had written it myself.
- sixstringtheory 4y agoThis is like a more wholesome version of using git-blame to see what idiot wrote that crappy bit of code and seeing your own name on it.
- stephc_int13 4y agoSocrates was obviously wrong but not entirely. I think that we tend to underestimate how much of generational knowledge is lost. Writing can help, but not much. Most of what we know is uncommunicable with words, especially at the expert level.
- vbezhenar 4y agoEverything is communicable with words.
- anadem 4y agoThat's not my experience; it sounds like a glib rejoinder.
- spindle 4y agoAgreed, especially since it's a well known topic in the philosophy literature and one generally agreed to be contentious. See Frank Ramsey's famous rejoinder to Wittgenstein, "What you can't say you can't say, and you can't whistle it either." FWIW, I think Ramsey was wrong (for once), but my point is that it's clearly a very difficult topic.
- aussiesnack 4y agoIt's so manifestly false, the only charitable assumption is that they're making an offbeat point. Perhaps it could be defended by simply defining 'everything' as 'all propositional knowledge'. Or maybe you could say true 'communication' is only possible between people who already share the concepts they're communicating, in which case words are only a Kripke-esque pointers, excluding the obvious cases of purported difficulties communicating with words. A bit of a stretch perhaps. At a minimum, it's a tad gnomic without some expansion.
- philipswood 4y agoIt would seem that way, but some human skills are widely regarded as "unexplainable". One example would be chicken sexing - determining the gender of a young chick. Check: https://commoncog.com/chicken-sexing-and-perceptual-learning-as-a-path-to-expertise/ https://commoncog.com/chicken-sexing-and-perceptual-learning... for a nice view on it. Another rich field of examples come from sport training. There even if you can explain a skill, the explanation is often not much use in learning it effectively.
- achrono 4y agoWhat puzzles me is Socrates refers to listening to an oak (tree) or even a stone, but dismisses the possibility of the same from a painting. What does he even mean by listening to an oak? To my 21st c. ears, it is much more sensible to talk of listening to a text as if the author were really here, howsoever remote the text or the author be, than listening to a stone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- psychphysic 4y agoI have to write reports for work. And once that report is written I struggle to remember anything about the case. Put that report in front of me and seemingly without reading it I can recall it in detail that amazes me. I do think there is a psychological archiving effect from writing. And that in the right circumstances it can help remember as well as declutter your mind. Mind you I have no evidence for any of this other than personal experience.
- themitigating 4y agoDo you mean visulizing the set of papers or filename?
- psychphysic 4y agoNo unfortunately I have to open the report. It's fairly useless phenomenon but I imagine there is some words that prompt me subconsciously? The reports are 5 pages long and titled date and subject. The first page is just details of where when what who. I don't even consciously read it having it there somehow helps me remember.
- jamesgill 4y agoThe supreme irony, of course, being that Socrates never wrote anything down and we only know of him because his student Plato (and others) did write things down. And Socrates’ views on writing weren’t unique to him; many of that era felt the same. Socrates was a man of his time in this respect.
- fedeb95 4y agoIronically, Plato wrote them down.
- sixstringtheory 4y ago> [writing] will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing This is another really important point. Socrates believed in the dialectic, where you are engaged with your teacher and can ask questions and test your assumptions and get feedback. Just reading the material doesn’t afford that opportunity. You can’t ask a dead author of a book questions and get answers back. That’s why it’s nice to be provided solutions to solve problems in STEM texts. Interactive technology like with modern MOOCs help provide more sophisticated feedback. But still nothing comes close to having access to an actual professor like during office hours.
- aap_ 4y ago> Pp. 551-552 in Compete Works, edited by J. M. Cooper Sigh. This is not how you cite Plato. Stephanus pagination exists for a reason.
- barbariangrunge 4y agoOne point he’s making, that many people miss, is that there was a time when people learned to memorize large bodies of information for ready recall. Note the oral traditions of indigenous peoples, the exam system in historical east Asia, or even the way western schools used rote learning until recently. Socrates is partially lamenting the expected loss of this super ability. And he was right: it is rare to memorize things reliably now since we have so much reference material I think he underestimated how many ever-changing programming apis we would need to “learn” today — otherwise he might have more sympathy for the use of reference material
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago> Socrates is partially lamenting the expected loss of this super ability. This 'super' ability, while impressive, offers far too little benefit for the effort necessary to achieve the memorization. A scholar who has a bunch of notes and books at his disposal will almost always outdo a scholar who has memorized 1% of the material contained in written form. That's why we don't memorize things and rely on externalized storage of knowledge. It is far more effective.
- watwut 4y agoIn addition, a scholar who has a bunch of notes and books at his disposal will actually end up remembering useful parts of it all too. However, the scholar will wasted significantly less time rediscovering what he vaguely remembers and bothering colleagues whether they do happen to remember.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoYes, because memorization will happen naturally, of the things most important for such scientist. But if such scientist would exert himself to remember everything verbatim, he'd end up remembering only a tiny bit of information and will likely end up accomplishing nothing else.
- Jensson 4y agoHumans aren't smart enough to parse complex things without a ton of memorization. You can look up knowledge, but you can't look up how to look up a specific set of knowledge. Expanding that core is still necessary no matter what age you live in and requires you to remember things. So the scholar who focuses on looking things up might be more effective today, but he wont get any deep knowledge in any domain, while the scholar who focuses on putting things in his mind will probably be less effective today but get much deeper understanding of domains. For deeper domains like math or physics the only way to get anywhere is to embed a ton of knowledge in your brain, there is just no way to get anywhere with shallow look ups.
- mozball 4y agoThe article and comments focus on writing and forgetfulness. But IMO Socrates also makes a second deeper point - about writing (and reading) and the illusion of knowledge. > SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. An eloquent writer or speaker may give the reader or listener the mistaken impression about the depth of his knowledge or of the validity of his assertions. But we can't know for sure unless those ideas are challenged in debate or in experimentation. Similarly, someone who reads a book or two on C++ may come away with the mistaken impression that they know everything necessary to program well in it. Likewise, a person who reads Newton's works may think he has the requisite knowledge to be a scientist like Newton. Or that by reading all the great works on philosophy one can become a philosopher on par with the great philosophers. Such thinking ignores all the hours and years of dedication and experience needed to attain true knowledge and understanding of a subject. Its starts out with reflecting on the problem of interest and coming up with solutions and then applying those solutions. When those ideas are inevitably challenged by ignored or unforeseen sub-problems - One must focus on and address each of those sub-problems. And so on and so forth in a feedback loop of continuous reflection , application and refinement. Lot of that context is lost when transferring the final end report into writing (or any other medium). As philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked, "the map is not the territory" and "the word is not the thing". When reading Socrates criticism of writing, what's scary is not about how laughably wrong he was in hindsight. But that (as history has proven) even though the advantages of writing far outweigh the disadvantages, it still doesn't invalidate his original criticism which still stands today.
- beeforpork 4y agoZettelkasten is the opposite and usually considered genius. :-)
- PedroBatista 4y agoI'm no cultured man, but I write not to remember but to forget.
- sowhybother 4y ago'But hey, that we forget is such useful.' > um "To be honest, i for my part for shure didn't know what the heck i had forgotten at all" 'For sure, that's the good thing..." (-;
- rramadass 4y agoNice passage, relevant excerpts (with my comments :-); >one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. Definition of "Peer Review". >introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own Writing is an aide to Understanding which you still have to work at and internalize. >You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; Exactly right. >you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. This is so true in the Modern World where there is lots of information being created and consumed but few people understand what they have Read and/or Written. >And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.” Is he describing HN ? >When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. The bane of the Internet !
- mib32 4y agoThis is why now instead of taking notes, I only take voice notes. Each time I need to think about something, to clarify in my mind, I launch Voice Memos on my iOS device and record my thoughts. It immensely helped me to structure my mind and be more clear about my ideas. I highly recommend that to anyone.