alt Hacker NewsAt the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
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(From Socrates’ dialog with Phaedrus)
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html#:~:text=there%2...
The irony of quoting this particular story without providing any of the necessary context for readers. Truly an aid to reminiscence and not memory.
> they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
This could be describing an internet argument where both parties google for expert articles that seem to support their point of view without really understanding anything about the subject.
It's just a story. Doesn't mean it's wise.
You're misinterpreting the quote. Socrates is saying that being able to find a written quotation will replace fully understanding a concept. It's the difference between being able to quote the pythagorean theorem and understanding it well enough to prove it. That's why Socrates says that those who rely on reading will be "hard to get along with" - they will be pedantic without being able to discuss concepts freely.
Likewise with AI the appearance of reasoning without the substance could lead to boring exchanges of plausible slop rather than meaningful discourse.
This is actually a great criticism. Post Enlightenment we’ve come to worship the written word as a source of truth. It’s not. Thoughts, wisdom, understanding, exist primarily (and by necessity primarily) as a continuous structure in our minds. By writing, we distill and collapse this rich continuous structure into a discrete 2D slice. It’s portable which has many benefits but we tend to forget that this written word we worship in academia is a low fidelity copy created out of necessity, not because it’s optimal. In fact, much is lost this way. The hazard is that we often end up testing for mastery of this low fidelity discretization rather than the knowledge structure it shadows.
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This is why I come to HN, knowledgeable people enrich the discussion so much with their unique points of view.
Also thanks to Mia (she/her), this was a very interesting read.
Impressive. Thanks for the share.
I was thinking about this recently: The difference between systemic (systematic) learning and opportunistic learning.
AI enables opportunistic learning, or Just-in-time (JIT) learning. It give the impression of infinite knowledge.
Most general concepts are well within the grasp of human understanding.
My curiosity RE the difference between systemic v opportunistic learning was the effect of longer-termed exposure/use to a tool that enables opportunistic learning.
Oh no, not that tired thing again. I suppose your point is: people once were critical of the technology of writing, so all criticism of the technology-at-hand is illegitimate. You don't actually make a point, so one has to assume.
Some points:
1. Technological inventions are not repetitions of the same phenomenon. Each invention is its own unique event, you cannot generalize the experience with previous inventions to understand the effects of the latest ones.
2. Socrates may have been in large degree right. Imagine that you and your society has been locked in the sewers, condemned to wade in shit for so long that you and your ancestors long ago forgot what fresh air feels like. What would you think about your life? Would you think "this is horrible" or "this is fine"? Or maybe "I enjoy smell of shit and we're so much better off because we don't have to worry about sunburn"?