3 ms·

> But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have

> But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, 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. In fact, it will 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. 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. --Socrates on writing

diggan 2y ago
That's a interesting and very fitting quote. Basically saying that since we can now write down information, people will get lazier about remembering things. Basically the exact same claim as the submission article.
- MomsAVoxell 2y ago
  I think there is some validity to the nature of generational knowledge loss through differing information systems. At one end of the scale, you’ve got 80,000 year old stories, still being told - at the other end of the scale, you’ve got App Of The Day™ style social media, and kids who can’t write an email, use a dictionary, or read a book. This is no hyperbole - humans have to constantly fight the degeneracy of our knowledge systems, which is to say that knowledge has to be generated and communicated - it can’t just “exist” and be useful, it has to be applied to be useful. Technology of knowledge which doesn’t get applied, does not persist, or if it does (COBOL), what once was common becomes arcane. So, if there is hope, it lays with the proles: the way every-day people use ML, is probably the key to all of this. It’s one thing to know how to prompt an LLM to give you a buildable source tree; its another thing entirely to use it somehow to figure out what to make out of the leftover ingredients in the fridge. Those recipes and indeed the applications of the ingredients, are based on human input and mores. So the question for me, still really unanswered, is: How long will it take until those fridge-ingredient recipes become bland, tasteless and grey? I think this belies the imperative that AL and ML must never become so pervasive that we don’t, also, write things down for ourselves. Oh, and read a lot, of course. It seems, we need to stop throwing books away. Oh, and encourage kids to cook, and create their own recipes... hopefully they’ll have time and resources for that kind of lifestyle…
barrenko 2y ago
Socrates is just the next monkey in line. As human monkeys, we have already traded (short-term) memory for abstract thinking and who knows what else. I guess that is the curse of evolution/specialization.
- MomsAVoxell 2y ago
  No doubt, this curse (which is also missing generalization, i.e. evolution/generalization/specialization) is all for the sake of self-awareness, or at least, awareness, of some particular thing. As long as humans remain aware that they are engaging with an AI/ML, we might still have a chance. Computers definitely need to be identifiable as such.

diggan 2y ago

That's a interesting and very fitting quote. Basically saying that since we can now write down information, people will get lazier about remembering things. Basically the exact same claim as the submission article.

MomsAVoxell 2y ago
I think there is some validity to the nature of generational knowledge loss through differing information systems. At one end of the scale, you’ve got 80,000 year old stories, still being told - at the other end of the scale, you’ve got App Of The Day™ style social media, and kids who can’t write an email, use a dictionary, or read a book. This is no hyperbole - humans have to constantly fight the degeneracy of our knowledge systems, which is to say that knowledge has to be generated and communicated - it can’t just “exist” and be useful, it has to be applied to be useful. Technology of knowledge which doesn’t get applied, does not persist, or if it does (COBOL), what once was common becomes arcane. So, if there is hope, it lays with the proles: the way every-day people use ML, is probably the key to all of this. It’s one thing to know how to prompt an LLM to give you a buildable source tree; its another thing entirely to use it somehow to figure out what to make out of the leftover ingredients in the fridge. Those recipes and indeed the applications of the ingredients, are based on human input and mores. So the question for me, still really unanswered, is: How long will it take until those fridge-ingredient recipes become bland, tasteless and grey? I think this belies the imperative that AL and ML must never become so pervasive that we don’t, also, write things down for ourselves. Oh, and read a lot, of course. It seems, we need to stop throwing books away. Oh, and encourage kids to cook, and create their own recipes... hopefully they’ll have time and resources for that kind of lifestyle…

barrenko 2y ago

Socrates is just the next monkey in line. As human monkeys, we have already traded (short-term) memory for abstract thinking and who knows what else. I guess that is the curse of evolution/specialization.

MomsAVoxell 2y ago
No doubt, this curse (which is also missing generalization, i.e. evolution/generalization/specialization) is all for the sake of self-awareness, or at least, awareness, of some particular thing. As long as humans remain aware that they are engaging with an AI/ML, we might still have a chance. Computers definitely need to be identifiable as such.