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Plato's criticism is very true on an individual basis. What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to
by marginalia_nu 4y ago
Plato's criticism is very true on an individual basis. What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to exchange ideas over physical and temporal distances.
It turns out that was a greater benefit that to some extent makes up for losing the exceptionally well trained memory of scholars from a verbal tradition. Not that that last part isn't a loss though, and his warning against false wisdom is more relevant than ever today when it feels like half the people you talk to online are just googling up wikipedia articles to base their world view upon on the fly.
--edit-- sometimes me not grammar good
- largepeepee 4y agoIt's also useful to point out that historical verbal tradition trained a very specific type of memory recall but that doesn't automatically make anyone wise. Just because you memorized 10000 random articles on Wikipedia, doesn't mean you now have the wisdom to apply that in a particular circumstance. Very much like early AI models.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoI think the contrast should be between studying and internalizing a subject versus having the ability to look up a subject. That seems the most true to Plato's intention. It's common and easy to fall into considering the things you could look up as things you already know. What's the difference, one might ask? What's the problem with offloading some of this knowledge and free up space in your head? Well the thing when you learn something is that it doesn't just permit access to the information, it also permits synthesis of new ideas. The sum of knowledge is greater than its parts. A very concrete example: As someone who only speaks English one may look up the Latin terms 'manus' (hand) and 'facere' (to act/do/make); but unless you actually do, you'll probably not immediately grok the etymology of the English term 'manufacture'.
- _glass 4y agoExactly. My compsci prof was forcing us to learn so much by heart, but then it's internalized and you start to think in those terms. Right now I am writing my PhD thesis in management and in the beginning I didn't have all of those papers really in my head. But now slowly that knowledge accumulates and I can think through things I couldn't think before. But on the other hand, I now think, how could I not understand that, it's trivial. And to add, it is the same for literature and poems. If you know a poem by heart, it's not just fancy to recite it, but that you start to really incorporate part of that language.
- ethbr0 4y agoI think of it in terms of computer memory levels. There are some computations (synthesis) that require so many (non-front loadable) memory accesses that it's impractical to do them from memory with significant delay (books), because the number_of_accesses * access_time dominates the project time. Instead, you must have a working set of core information (or at least pointers to information) in low-latency memory (your brain). Example: How much longer would it take me to do a multi-digit multiplication if I had to look up the process for multiplication in a book for every digit multiplication I did? And what if that multiplication were just one of many in the higher-level math problem I was trying to solve? (Then generalize to any problem that requires a core base of knowledge)
- kristianbrigman 4y agoIt is very similar to caching performance impacts. And like you say, sometimes performance is just faster, and sometimes it actually enables functionality…
- dumpsterdiver 4y ago> also useful to point out that historical verbal tradition trained a very specific type of memory recall I'm genuinely curious, why do you think this is relevant? How would you differentiate "specific types of memory recall" scientifically?
- stevenhuang 4y agoCued recall in the form of verbal tradition is often criticised to be subject to inaccuracies as, for one example, stories accrue embellishments over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_(memory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_(memory)
- ethbr0 4y agoIn Appalachia that's just called storytelling. :)
- Barrin92 4y agoStrong memory is almost always an indicator of exceptional skill. Whether it's chess players, musicians, writers or poets, mathematicians or also programmers, people who excel generally have astonishing ability to recall. That's not an accident. Wisdom emerges out of practice and the effortlessness that comes with it. The genius piano player isn't that good because of some pie in the sky wisdom about music, just like the AI they just played tons of scales and training pieces. Literally meaningless stuff. This rejection of rote memorization as some sort of lower skill, that students should be 'smart and lazy' is one of the stupidest modern tendencies.
- coldtea 4y ago>Just because you memorized 10000 random articles on Wikipedia, doesn't mean you now have the wisdom to apply that in a particular circumstance. It's much more likely that you can, that someone who would only look them up "on demand", however, as you at least are aware of the possibilities in those domains.
- kruczek 4y agoThis is actually what Plato also mentions, a few paragraphs later: > He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174%3Atext%3DPhaedrus%3Asection%3D275c https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
- mike_hock 4y agoIronically, we'd never know what he said had it not been written down.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoYeah, and then some. Tired Alfred North Whitehead quotes aside, he's basically the single most influential author in the western tradition, arguably even eclipsing the bible.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y agoPlato gives multiple hints across his works about the esoteric, unwritten teachings [1]. We can only speculate about the content; for me, they were surely tied with the Eleusinian Mysteries [2]: early, myths-driven psychonautics based on ergot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- asimpletune 4y agoI also think he had a bunch written teachings that were intended only for his students. Obviously they’re lost to time.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y agoWith some luck and intelligence maybe we will discover more about the past in the future [1]. [1] https://scrollprize.org https://scrollprize.org
- asimpletune 4y agoYeah, I've been excited about this because we're only about a month away until the ink detection deadline.
- dalbasal 4y agoI think it's better to think of these as different, rather than superior... especially given our times' proliferation of mediums with differing cognitive implications. Is Twitter > books? Is HN > podcasts? Every medium has its tendencies... positive, negative and complicated. We don't actually choose between them. It's useful to keep an eye on losses, not just gains. Oral traditions, for example, naturally evolve and diversify. A fairy tale can literally spread over the whole world, and develop thousands of versions. Each one adapted and localised. Written stories also spread, but remain identical... even more-so after printing. This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding.
- spacebanana7 4y ago> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding. The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope.
- ethbr0 4y agoBut the body of canon law would have been impractical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word. See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times (admittedly, the Catholic Church was also much more a political-nation-religious entity then vs now)
- spacebanana7 4y agoI largely agree about the administrative difficulty although I‘d emphasise the written word over the printed word in this context. Using thousands of monks to copy documents by hand instead of using printers was incredibly resource expensive, but affordable for the Medieval Church.
- bestouff 4y ago> people you talk to online are just googling up wikipedia articles to base their world view upon on the fly. Well you're lucky if they do; often they just make stuff up on the fly depending on what they saw on some dubious media or social network.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoWell that's the human brain for you. It's very good at extrapolating new information from things it's seen and heard that may not be true, without actually telling you that it's basically making shit up as it goes. It's yet another reason why education matters.
- brookst 4y agoI can’t tell if that’s a tongue in cheek criticism of the panic over AI hallucination. Bravo either way.
- digging 4y agoWould this be different in a world without writing? We generally synthesize incoming information into a knowledge base and a set of beliefs - I'm not convinced we're less susceptible to that when all knowledge is oral. What's the difference between having read something last year and believing it, vs having heard someone tell you something last year and believing it? Would people stop in a conversation and go try to find the source of their information if they had to track down a specific person?
- dumpsterdiver 4y ago> You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; > What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to exchange ideas over physical and temporal distances. Why would his words be less potent when applied to billions of people, as opposed to only a few? Are those billions not just as susceptible to fallacy as the elite few?
- mannykannot 4y agoSocrates (for it is he who was opposed to writing) did not appreciate how the act of writing exercises our abilities of both memory and reasoning, at least as much as speaking and certainly more than listening. Someone who has written extensively on a topic is almost certainly well-versed in it, and more so than when they began (even crackpots are generally masters of their own flawed theories.)
- efficax 4y agoplato is specifically thinking of the social impact but he's also not actually arguing against writing. after all, he's making his argument in writing. he's trying to push the reader to look into their souls for the truths that he thinks are already there. "remembrance" here is specific, so is "memory". It doesn't mean, to remember facts and things that happened, but to reach back into ones mind beyond sensation and to "remember" the eternal forms.
- adregan 4y agoThanks for this context. In this light, I am reminded of Emerson’s “Self Reliance.” > Trust thyself
- Balgair 4y agoI'm sorry, Plato wasn't thinking about the effects of the written word on social issues over time and space?! The whole point of his writing all it down, the very literal foundations of ~2500 years of philosophy and the bedrock of Western (and others) civilization, was so that he could have an effect on social issues over time. That was the whole point! He is super clear about this in his writings and throughout his life and travels.