Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we're jumping
into something pretty fundamental writing, but
through a historical lens. That's right. We're
looking at Plato's take on it, believe it or
not. Yeah, you shared this piece from hackscience
.education, which references James Like's book,
The Information. It really digs into Plato's,
well, Concerns. Concerns is a good word for it.
So our mission today is to unpack those arguments,
play those arguments against writing and sort
of explore why they might still echo today, especially
with all the new tech hitting us. Exactly. It
provides this really valuable historical perspective
on debates we think are brand new. but they're
really not. Okay, let's get straight into it
then. Gleit quotes Plato saying writing offers
an elixir not of memory but of reminding and
the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom. What's
really behind that? It almost sounds like he
thought writing was a bad thing, making people
less smart. Well, yeah, in a way. You have to
remember, Plato lived in a primarily oral culture.
For him, memory wasn't just recall, it was active
mental engagement. Dialogue, debate, turning
ideas over in your own mind. Okay. So true wisdom,
for Plato, was this deep internalized understanding.
Writing, he worried, was like an external crutch.
You wouldn't need to know something deeply if
you could just look it up. Ah, so it gives the
appearance of knowing, but you haven't done the
internal work. Precisely. It's not just about
forgetting facts. Yeah. He felt the process of
active remembering, that mental wrestling, built
a richer, more connected understanding, reading
passively, maybe not so much in his view. Wow.
That's quite the critique of something we see
as totally essential now. It really is. But then
the article brings in Thomas Hobbes centuries
later with a completely different view, like
the polar opposite. Right. Hobbes looked at societies
without widespread writing. And he said they
lacked a, quote, planting of knowledge by itself
apart from weeds in common plants of error and
conjecture. Talk about a flip. For Hobbes, writing
wasn't a crutch. It was the foundation. It was
how you organized knowledge, preserved it accurately,
shared it systematically. It cleaned up the weeds
of oral tradition, you know? So between Plato
and Hobbes, writing obviously became much more
widespread, integrated. Massively so. The whole
landscape of information and education changed.
That context is key to understanding why their
views are so starkly different. And Plato's worry
wasn't just about memory, was it? The piece says
he saw writing as a degradation of human skills
more broadly. Exactly. It was about the perceived
impact on cognitive abilities overall. He valued
that mental effort, the internal processing,
the back and forth of spoken dialogue. Writing
seemed more passive, potentially hindering, maybe...
critical thought, and deep engagement. It's fascinating.
But the blog post puts it bluntly, in this, Plato
lost. Yeah, that's a key point they make. It
suggests that fighting against these new information
technologies, even with deep philosophical reasons,
doesn't often work out in the long run. History
does seem to bear that out. Concerns about new
tech are often valid, absolutely, but adoption
tends to happen anyway. Plato's resistance, while
understandable for his time and context, didn't
stop writing from becoming dominant. You see
this shift, then, from Plato's world, mostly
oral, to Hobbes' where literacy was more the
norm. Maybe Plato's loss was inevitable. Perhaps.
It certainly shows how our view of knowledge
and wisdom evolves with our technologies. Which,
naturally, brings us right up to today. The article
makes a direct link, suggesting people pushing
back hard against today's emerging tech might
face a similar outcome to Play -Doh. It's a powerful
parallel, isn't it? Makes you think about current
debates, you know, AI in classrooms, or how much
we rely on search engines versus actually learning
things. Absolutely. That core tension, Play -Doh
identify the external tool offering the appearance
of wisdom without the deep internal work you
hear echoes of that constantly. Calculators and
math class, smartphones, search engines, it's
the same fundamental question. Right. So wrapping
up this deep dive, Plato's big worry was that
writing, this new tech of his time, would weaken
our memory and give us a kind of shallow understanding.
A superficial grasp instead of true wisdom. It
highlights this recurring anxiety we seem to
have whenever new ways of handling information
come along. So the thought to leave folks with.
Yeah, maybe think about this. How do Plato's
arguments about the appearance of wisdom play
out in your life with all the digital information
around us? Are we truly internalizing knowledge?
Or are we maybe becoming a bit too reliant on
those external reminders, those digital nudges?
Something to ponder.