These things aren't contradictory. Ancient Greek students used wax tablets for taking notes, etc. What Socrates (and Plato and others) were upset about was the growing reliance on permanent writing to displace memorization. For example, giving a speech from notes rather than from memory; or in rhetoric citing to a work without being able to literally recite that part from memory. To the extent writing aided memorization and comprehension, they had no beef. The debate was about the nature of knowledge--whether knowledge could exist independent of an internalized form within the mind--i.e. memorization.
As always, in Plato there are more levels to this. Plato thinks that all true knowledge comes from memory, and that we gain knowledge by "remembering" things we first encountered before birth but have since forgotten. So it makes sense that he would see memory, rather than (even philosophical) writing, as the ultimate source of truth.
People always jump to simplistic conclusions and forget all the nuances involved.
As another example, The Art of Memorization was highly developed in Ancient India in order to preserve and transmit the vast corpus of "Hindu Literature" consisting of Vedas/Puranas/Kavyas/etc. It is quite fascinating to see how important Memorization has been to Human development and progress across centuries.
Modern Science has now shown us that Memorization has distinct positive effects on the Brain too.
Then he would have freaked out over smart phones. I've first hand seen what happens to e.g. sense of direction once use of the navigator-assist becomes habitual. Some auxiliary mental muscle atrophies in the brain.
Plato's Socratic dialogs are certainly not meant to be taken as a transcription of dialogs that actually happened. Socrates is used as a literary device. It's quite likely that earlier dialogs are more in line with Socrates' actual character but the later ones are what you might call fan fiction for sure.
For a completely different account of Socrates see Clouds by Aristophanes.
I find Socrates a very fascinating character and Plato's dialogs very entertaining to read. He is such an expert troll (no wonder they sentenced him to death).
I don't think there's a counterpoint at all - on the debate of handwritten notes vs typed notes the Socrates argument would definitely not be on the side of faster typed notes but rather on putting more effort into careful writing, it's just that he's saying that you should go way beyond taking mere handwritten notes and verbally repeat the same content until you can fully memorize it by heart.
The first article is saying that A < B and Socrates is saying that B < C - and both of them use similar argumentation (essentially, that taking shortcuts to do it faster is counterproductive to proper understanding), there's no contradiction and no counterpoint.
I've noticed the increase in these occurrences in HN where an article on an idea pops up and almost simultaneously another article on the opposite of the that idea appears.
It may seem coincidence but I came to understand that it's just the community digesting and reacting to the original idea very quickly
It's a bit of a karma hack. Posting rebuttals and references is a quick way to leverage the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. Speaking of which, I should probably something about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon soon.
Socrates seems here he is mostly expressing the frustration that he cannot entrain a book into his methods, and that their authors cannot keep pace with him in dialogue.
But that was never the point of writing. The point is to use some small fraction of sensory+cognitive function to give yourself access to a separable, durable, redundant, and location-independent form of information.
Not touched on here but in other recent books is the possible loss of sensory+cognitive function that comes with simply learning to read and write in the first place. It’s possible this is the origin of the myth of Odin sacrificing an eye to read the runes.
One place I’m sure I read it was in the first couple chapters of Joe Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World — hopefully he cites sources there. I can’t look up my notes just now but if I get a chance and find more I’ll post.
I like Thamus' argument against the intrinsic value of writing — shallow reminding, rather than remembering, comprises the vast majority of internet dialogue.
"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."
One point he’s making, that many people miss, is that there was a time when people learned to memorize large bodies of information for ready recall. Note the oral traditions of indigenous peoples, the exam system in historical east Asia, or even the way western schools used rote learning until recently.
Socrates is partially lamenting the expected loss of this super ability. And he was right: it is rare to memorize things reliably now since we have so much reference material
I think he underestimated how many ever-changing programming apis we would need to “learn” today — otherwise he might have more sympathy for the use of reference material
> Socrates is partially lamenting the expected loss of this super ability.
This 'super' ability, while impressive, offers far too little benefit for the effort necessary to achieve the memorization. A scholar who has a bunch of notes and books at his disposal will almost always outdo a scholar who has memorized 1% of the material contained in written form. That's why we don't memorize things and rely on externalized storage of knowledge. It is far more effective.
Humans aren't smart enough to parse complex things without a ton of memorization. You can look up knowledge, but you can't look up how to look up a specific set of knowledge. Expanding that core is still necessary no matter what age you live in and requires you to remember things.
So the scholar who focuses on looking things up might be more effective today, but he wont get any deep knowledge in any domain, while the scholar who focuses on putting things in his mind will probably be less effective today but get much deeper understanding of domains. For deeper domains like math or physics the only way to get anywhere is to embed a ton of knowledge in your brain, there is just no way to get anywhere with shallow look ups.
In addition, a scholar who has a bunch of notes and books at his disposal will actually end up remembering useful parts of it all too. However, the scholar will wasted significantly less time rediscovering what he vaguely remembers and bothering colleagues whether they do happen to remember.
The supreme irony, of course, being that Socrates never wrote anything down and we only know of him because his student Plato (and others) did write things down.
And Socrates’ views on writing weren’t unique to him; many of that era felt the same. Socrates was a man of his time in this respect.
> [writing] 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
This is another really important point. Socrates believed in the dialectic, where you are engaged with your teacher and can ask questions and test your assumptions and get feedback.
Just reading the material doesn’t afford that opportunity. You can’t ask a dead author of a book questions and get answers back.
That’s why it’s nice to be provided solutions to solve problems in STEM texts. Interactive technology like with modern MOOCs help provide more sophisticated feedback. But still nothing comes close to having access to an actual professor like during office hours.
I think there is "Forgetfulness that comes with Programming".
When you program you are constantly doing problem-solving. Having to tackle new problems every day pushes the memory of the solutions you came up in previous days out of your brain. There is just not enough room in the brain.
But writing down the code helps to rediscover your earlier discoveries if you take time to document your code. Still it may be difficult to figure out where such old code and documentation is stored.
Completely agree with this, I'm very efficient at clearing the board in my short term memory and give 110% of what I have to the problem at hand.
It makes anything I done previously almost as good as if someone else did it and I need to rediscover it. Which is a good thing, because boy that guy couldn't code himself out of a well.
Ah, yes, that explains to me how it is that when I'm stuck in some bit of code and go look on StackOverflow or wherever, I find an answer I'd posted long before.
Nice passage, relevant excerpts (with my comments :-);
>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.
Definition of "Peer Review".
>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
Writing is an aide to Understanding which you still have to work at and internalize.
>You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding;
Exactly right.
>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.
This is so true in the Modern World where there is lots of information being created and consumed but few people understand what they have Read and/or Written.
>And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
Is he describing HN ?
>When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not.
Readit News
6. Socrates on the Forgetfulness That Comes with Writing (newlearningonline.com) 33 points by indy 1 hour ago | hide | 5 comments
7. Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information (stackoverflow.blog) 329 points by TangerineDream 7 hours ago | hide | 189 comments
People always jump to simplistic conclusions and forget all the nuances involved.
As another example, The Art of Memorization was highly developed in Ancient India in order to preserve and transmit the vast corpus of "Hindu Literature" consisting of Vedas/Puranas/Kavyas/etc. It is quite fascinating to see how important Memorization has been to Human development and progress across centuries.
Modern Science has now shown us that Memorization has distinct positive effects on the Brain too.
1) Extensive long-term verbal memory training is associated with brain plasticity : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8102627/
2) A Neuroscientist Explores the "Sanskrit Effect" : https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a-neurosci...
3) Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers : https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.070039597
4) Cache Cab: Taxi Drivers' Brains Grow to Navigate London's Streets : https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memor...
Then he would have freaked out over smart phones. I've first hand seen what happens to e.g. sense of direction once use of the navigator-assist becomes habitual. Some auxiliary mental muscle atrophies in the brain.
Deleted Comment
I find Socrates a very fascinating character and Plato's dialogs very entertaining to read. He is such an expert troll (no wonder they sentenced him to death).
The first article is saying that A < B and Socrates is saying that B < C - and both of them use similar argumentation (essentially, that taking shortcuts to do it faster is counterproductive to proper understanding), there's no contradiction and no counterpoint.
It may seem coincidence but I came to understand that it's just the community digesting and reacting to the original idea very quickly
Deleted Comment
But that was never the point of writing. The point is to use some small fraction of sensory+cognitive function to give yourself access to a separable, durable, redundant, and location-independent form of information.
Not touched on here but in other recent books is the possible loss of sensory+cognitive function that comes with simply learning to read and write in the first place. It’s possible this is the origin of the myth of Odin sacrificing an eye to read the runes.
I don't doubt this is possible but I'd love a cite to find out what the case looks like.
"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 is partially lamenting the expected loss of this super ability. And he was right: it is rare to memorize things reliably now since we have so much reference material
I think he underestimated how many ever-changing programming apis we would need to “learn” today — otherwise he might have more sympathy for the use of reference material
This 'super' ability, while impressive, offers far too little benefit for the effort necessary to achieve the memorization. A scholar who has a bunch of notes and books at his disposal will almost always outdo a scholar who has memorized 1% of the material contained in written form. That's why we don't memorize things and rely on externalized storage of knowledge. It is far more effective.
So the scholar who focuses on looking things up might be more effective today, but he wont get any deep knowledge in any domain, while the scholar who focuses on putting things in his mind will probably be less effective today but get much deeper understanding of domains. For deeper domains like math or physics the only way to get anywhere is to embed a ton of knowledge in your brain, there is just no way to get anywhere with shallow look ups.
And Socrates’ views on writing weren’t unique to him; many of that era felt the same. Socrates was a man of his time in this respect.
This is another really important point. Socrates believed in the dialectic, where you are engaged with your teacher and can ask questions and test your assumptions and get feedback.
Just reading the material doesn’t afford that opportunity. You can’t ask a dead author of a book questions and get answers back.
That’s why it’s nice to be provided solutions to solve problems in STEM texts. Interactive technology like with modern MOOCs help provide more sophisticated feedback. But still nothing comes close to having access to an actual professor like during office hours.
When you program you are constantly doing problem-solving. Having to tackle new problems every day pushes the memory of the solutions you came up in previous days out of your brain. There is just not enough room in the brain.
But writing down the code helps to rediscover your earlier discoveries if you take time to document your code. Still it may be difficult to figure out where such old code and documentation is stored.
It makes anything I done previously almost as good as if someone else did it and I need to rediscover it. Which is a good thing, because boy that guy couldn't code himself out of a well.
Using Copilot you can "remember" other people's discoveries too.
>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.
Definition of "Peer Review".
>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
Writing is an aide to Understanding which you still have to work at and internalize.
>You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding;
Exactly right.
>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.
This is so true in the Modern World where there is lots of information being created and consumed but few people understand what they have Read and/or Written.
>And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
Is he describing HN ?
>When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not.
The bane of the Internet !