WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.580 Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're jumping 00:00:02.580 --> 00:00:05.780 into something pretty fundamental writing, but 00:00:05.780 --> 00:00:08.000 through a historical lens. That's right. We're 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.000 looking at Plato's take on it, believe it or 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.320 not. Yeah, you shared this piece from hackscience 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:15.160 .education, which references James Like's book, 00:00:15.259 --> 00:00:18.000 The Information. It really digs into Plato's, 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:20.289 well, Concerns. Concerns is a good word for it. 00:00:20.489 --> 00:00:24.289 So our mission today is to unpack those arguments, 00:00:24.510 --> 00:00:26.109 play those arguments against writing and sort 00:00:26.109 --> 00:00:29.149 of explore why they might still echo today, especially 00:00:29.149 --> 00:00:31.850 with all the new tech hitting us. Exactly. It 00:00:31.850 --> 00:00:35.630 provides this really valuable historical perspective 00:00:35.630 --> 00:00:38.520 on debates we think are brand new. but they're 00:00:38.520 --> 00:00:40.240 really not. Okay, let's get straight into it 00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:42.579 then. Gleit quotes Plato saying writing offers 00:00:42.579 --> 00:00:45.939 an elixir not of memory but of reminding and 00:00:45.939 --> 00:00:50.159 the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. What's 00:00:50.159 --> 00:00:51.479 really behind that? It almost sounds like he 00:00:51.479 --> 00:00:53.240 thought writing was a bad thing, making people 00:00:53.240 --> 00:00:56.000 less smart. Well, yeah, in a way. You have to 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:58.579 remember, Plato lived in a primarily oral culture. 00:00:59.240 --> 00:01:01.880 For him, memory wasn't just recall, it was active 00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:06.069 mental engagement. Dialogue, debate, turning 00:01:06.069 --> 00:01:09.810 ideas over in your own mind. Okay. So true wisdom, 00:01:10.329 --> 00:01:13.469 for Plato, was this deep internalized understanding. 00:01:14.230 --> 00:01:16.569 Writing, he worried, was like an external crutch. 00:01:17.150 --> 00:01:18.709 You wouldn't need to know something deeply if 00:01:18.709 --> 00:01:20.969 you could just look it up. Ah, so it gives the 00:01:20.969 --> 00:01:23.030 appearance of knowing, but you haven't done the 00:01:23.030 --> 00:01:25.349 internal work. Precisely. It's not just about 00:01:25.349 --> 00:01:27.959 forgetting facts. Yeah. He felt the process of 00:01:27.959 --> 00:01:30.900 active remembering, that mental wrestling, built 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:33.299 a richer, more connected understanding, reading 00:01:33.299 --> 00:01:36.459 passively, maybe not so much in his view. Wow. 00:01:36.780 --> 00:01:38.719 That's quite the critique of something we see 00:01:38.719 --> 00:01:41.299 as totally essential now. It really is. But then 00:01:41.299 --> 00:01:43.200 the article brings in Thomas Hobbes centuries 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:44.939 later with a completely different view, like 00:01:44.939 --> 00:01:47.560 the polar opposite. Right. Hobbes looked at societies 00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:49.480 without widespread writing. And he said they 00:01:49.480 --> 00:01:52.459 lacked a, quote, planting of knowledge by itself 00:01:52.459 --> 00:01:55.120 apart from weeds in common plants of error and 00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:58.739 conjecture. Talk about a flip. For Hobbes, writing 00:01:58.739 --> 00:02:01.780 wasn't a crutch. It was the foundation. It was 00:02:01.780 --> 00:02:04.760 how you organized knowledge, preserved it accurately, 00:02:05.079 --> 00:02:07.859 shared it systematically. It cleaned up the weeds 00:02:07.859 --> 00:02:10.520 of oral tradition, you know? So between Plato 00:02:10.520 --> 00:02:13.180 and Hobbes, writing obviously became much more 00:02:13.180 --> 00:02:16.729 widespread, integrated. Massively so. The whole 00:02:16.729 --> 00:02:19.490 landscape of information and education changed. 00:02:19.789 --> 00:02:22.050 That context is key to understanding why their 00:02:22.050 --> 00:02:24.270 views are so starkly different. And Plato's worry 00:02:24.270 --> 00:02:27.030 wasn't just about memory, was it? The piece says 00:02:27.030 --> 00:02:30.270 he saw writing as a degradation of human skills 00:02:30.270 --> 00:02:33.030 more broadly. Exactly. It was about the perceived 00:02:33.030 --> 00:02:35.830 impact on cognitive abilities overall. He valued 00:02:35.830 --> 00:02:37.830 that mental effort, the internal processing, 00:02:38.050 --> 00:02:40.569 the back and forth of spoken dialogue. Writing 00:02:40.569 --> 00:02:43.889 seemed more passive, potentially hindering, maybe... 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:46.259 critical thought, and deep engagement. It's fascinating. 00:02:46.479 --> 00:02:49.280 But the blog post puts it bluntly, in this, Plato 00:02:49.280 --> 00:02:51.460 lost. Yeah, that's a key point they make. It 00:02:51.460 --> 00:02:53.900 suggests that fighting against these new information 00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:56.819 technologies, even with deep philosophical reasons, 00:02:57.139 --> 00:02:59.159 doesn't often work out in the long run. History 00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:01.900 does seem to bear that out. Concerns about new 00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:04.939 tech are often valid, absolutely, but adoption 00:03:04.939 --> 00:03:08.360 tends to happen anyway. Plato's resistance, while 00:03:08.360 --> 00:03:10.819 understandable for his time and context, didn't 00:03:10.819 --> 00:03:13.340 stop writing from becoming dominant. You see 00:03:13.340 --> 00:03:15.919 this shift, then, from Plato's world, mostly 00:03:15.919 --> 00:03:19.259 oral, to Hobbes' where literacy was more the 00:03:19.259 --> 00:03:23.419 norm. Maybe Plato's loss was inevitable. Perhaps. 00:03:23.900 --> 00:03:25.960 It certainly shows how our view of knowledge 00:03:25.960 --> 00:03:28.699 and wisdom evolves with our technologies. Which, 00:03:28.819 --> 00:03:31.729 naturally, brings us right up to today. The article 00:03:31.729 --> 00:03:33.849 makes a direct link, suggesting people pushing 00:03:33.849 --> 00:03:36.229 back hard against today's emerging tech might 00:03:36.229 --> 00:03:39.090 face a similar outcome to Play -Doh. It's a powerful 00:03:39.090 --> 00:03:41.129 parallel, isn't it? Makes you think about current 00:03:41.129 --> 00:03:43.810 debates, you know, AI in classrooms, or how much 00:03:43.810 --> 00:03:46.189 we rely on search engines versus actually learning 00:03:46.189 --> 00:03:48.949 things. Absolutely. That core tension, Play -Doh 00:03:48.949 --> 00:03:51.129 identify the external tool offering the appearance 00:03:51.129 --> 00:03:53.310 of wisdom without the deep internal work you 00:03:53.310 --> 00:03:56.110 hear echoes of that constantly. Calculators and 00:03:56.110 --> 00:03:58.150 math class, smartphones, search engines, it's 00:03:58.150 --> 00:04:00.810 the same fundamental question. Right. So wrapping 00:04:00.810 --> 00:04:03.729 up this deep dive, Plato's big worry was that 00:04:03.729 --> 00:04:06.710 writing, this new tech of his time, would weaken 00:04:06.710 --> 00:04:09.409 our memory and give us a kind of shallow understanding. 00:04:09.849 --> 00:04:12.870 A superficial grasp instead of true wisdom. It 00:04:12.870 --> 00:04:14.969 highlights this recurring anxiety we seem to 00:04:14.969 --> 00:04:17.449 have whenever new ways of handling information 00:04:17.449 --> 00:04:20.110 come along. So the thought to leave folks with. 00:04:20.329 --> 00:04:22.990 Yeah, maybe think about this. How do Plato's 00:04:22.990 --> 00:04:25.050 arguments about the appearance of wisdom play 00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:27.129 out in your life with all the digital information 00:04:27.129 --> 00:04:29.879 around us? Are we truly internalizing knowledge? 00:04:30.519 --> 00:04:33.180 Or are we maybe becoming a bit too reliant on 00:04:33.180 --> 00:04:35.800 those external reminders, those digital nudges? 00:04:35.959 --> 00:04:36.600 Something to ponder.