Socrates: I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters.
Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved or disapproved.
"The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, "This invention, O king," said Theuth, "will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered." But Thamus replied, "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.
"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
How dare Amun-Ra come into my house and attack me like that! Sure, I'm using Wikipedia to debate stuff on the Internet, but my cell phone makes me a post human augmented, cybernetic being, not a half-educated layman with a fondness for sophistry. Right?
It depends on where you draw the boundary between "you" and "not-you". If that boundary extends only as far as your skin, then your cell phone makes you forgetful and dependent. If that boundary extends to tools that you use, books in front of you, texts that you can summon up at a moment, then your cell phone gives you a phenomenal recall for facts, though also an increased risk of mind control.
For me, I draw the boundary based on latency, unconscious guidance, and predictability. I can send a thought to move my hand, and it moves as I think of it. The hand is within the boundary of "me". Holding a pencil, I do not need to consciously consider how to form each curve of a letter. The pencil is within the boundary of "me". I can predict what emacs will do when given keystrokes, so emacs is within the boundary of "me".
On the other hand, there is a large delay between deciding to open a door and it responding to my pull, so it clearly is not "me". I need to consciously consider what search terms to query, and cannot do so at an unconscious level. Even when I repeat the exact same query as I did a year ago, I may not find the results I was searching for, and so there is no predictability. These lead me to feel that a search engine is not within the boundary of "me".
Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions?
Your door example raises further questions. When I pick up a remote control, the control moves just as easily as my hand. Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately?
> via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary.
It also means that it depends on the situation. If I'm reading a book, then the movement of my hands feels instant as I reach to turn the page. But back when I played the piano, at times my hands could feel like they are falling behind, not listening to what I'm telling them to do, responding too slowly for what is being demanded of them. Whether or not my hands feel like "me" depends on what I'm trying to have them do.
> Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately?
I've never really thought of it in terms of time, in part because it is only something to quantify in retrospect. A pencil in my hand feels like a part of me, that responds as I move it. If I press it against a piece of paper, I interpret the sensory input as "felt" from the tip of the pencil, even though I know that I have no nerve endings there. But a pencil on the table isn't part of me. Whether there's a smooth transition between the two as I pick it up and gain control over it, or whether it's something that just "clicks", I'm not sure.
It seems you suggest to base the boundary on how easy/trivial it is to make something go away from your posession, akin to "big man in a suit of armour — take that off, what are you?" line of reasoning. Well, the problem is that stripping tools from someone is not that much more difficult than stripping memory: some fair amount of violence would be necessary in both scenarios (blunt torso traumas vs. blunt head traumas).
Amun-Ra has missed one important part of writing. It is not just for remembering one's own thoughts but also for transmitting them over great distances of time and space.
If one is to read Wikipedia and repeat it verbatim without understanding then one is only a single component of a greater transportation medium. But if in contrast, if one was to internalise those words and draw lines of inference between ideas so elusively captured therein and a wider base of knowledge then maybe you are something more.
I remember when Amun-Ra personally attacked me the first time. What with the calendar and the clock, oye nothings ever enough for the schmuck. He'd have my legs for their ability to atrophy my arm strength if he'd have his way, making me look like a Glukkon
New information technology induces changes with how we interface with information, almost certainly a mixed bag of good and bad. Writing is directly associated with the decline of memory-based oral traditions. You can probably safely argue that writing brings many positives, but that does not preclude the existence of negatives.
This allegory is a trope at this point, but it is sort of true in some sense. People seem to internalize (yes, memorize) facts less and less nowadays because such facts can be queried immediately from the internet. While being able to look things up is great, without memorization synthesizing information is difficult because it's harder to draw connections between facts without having them in your head at the same time.
Not really. He mentioned instruction, but he fails to notice that reading and hearing can both happen, as they do happen without instruction.
And the crux of the matter is not the mode of information transmission, it's the veracity of the content. And if someone has the time, attention, effort to speak to you they usually want something.
How do you know your interests are aligned?
Reciting things from memory doesn't help much with applied epistemology (rationality).
I wasn't too clear apparently. More instructions needed :)
So, yes, he explicitly mentioned something, that's why I mentioned too.
What I think the problem is that he implies in that sentence that either reading is more instructionless than hearing/talking, or that somehow good instruction itself should just grow on trees, or that instruction is always good, or that ratio of instructioned knowledge vs "ignorance" matters.
What I try to point out is that what matters is applied knowledge, which is still very rare even today, yet the chance of picking up a book that helps with acquiring the skills to gather and apply knowledge has more chance than hearing it from someone.
Dialogue has several distinct advantages over reading when it comes to learning. I think we both agree that applied knowledge is best, but this can only be gained through application. Dialogue forces you synthesize ideas into new statements and respond to challenges to those statements which is intrinsically more applied than simply reading alone.
There's a good amount of research inicating that discussion and speaking lead to significantly more information retention than hearing or reading. The more individual the learning process is, the fewer opportunities there are for discussion. This is why I get into silly arguments on HN in the first place, gotta supplement that reading ;)
Reading makes knowledge acquisition easier, but it also decreases the fraction of knowledge that comes bundled with expert 1-on-1. This has both advantages and disadvantages.
> Dialogue forces you synthesize ideas into new statements and respond to challenges to those statements which is intrinsically more applied than simply reading alone.
Exactly!
Talking about a subject helps organize it.
> This is why I get into silly arguments on HN in the first place, gotta supplement that reading ;)
Ah, the good old Feynman criterion. You don't understand something until you can explain it to a 6th grader or a HNer ^^
> Reading makes knowledge acquisition easier, but it also decreases the fraction of knowledge that comes bundled with expert 1-on-1.
Experts are scarce, books are cheap.
Also if a bunch of people read a book, it has the same content for everybody. So if people recommend a book and you read it you can be fairly sure that you all read the same thing. But if a bunch of people talk to someone, and they say oh that someone is great, but then they don't like you, or they are in a bad mood, or ... or, you won't really know what's up. (Recently happened to me with a recommendation to a doctor. I'm still fed up with how useless it was to spend money on that doc and how high praise he got.)
I feel your doctor pain. I hope you find an answer. Actually, doctors may be one the more guilty professions when it comes to shallow knowledge without application. I like to see how many times I can ask a doctor 'why' or 'how' before they become frustrated with me for wasting their expensive time :P
> you can be fairly sure that you all read the same thing
I don't think this is a given. The bible has been around for a long time, but for whatever reason there have been disputes over what information exactly is encoded in it that have been going on for centuries. It's definitely a little more consistent the spoken word though!
Did you have a point with this? That couldn't be placed at the top?
I don't know how hating on writing is related to people being disoriented by pushbuttons, and maybe if you stated what you thought the parallel was, you could have saved everyone some time and effort in reading hard-to-parse prose.
> people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.”
Any reason you couldn't have made the point explicit the first time? Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50?
>Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50?
If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it -- but unfortunately that idea is so far away from reality that I'm afraid I don't understand at all.
At the risk of being an inaccurate arm-chair psychoanalyst I think that your anger and aggression towards it comes from a fear of missing out. Rather than skipping the things that are written in a style that you disagree with you read them anyway -- upset the entire time that the prose isn't written how you want it to be -- and then vent your frustrations by accusing the author or post writer of machinations that simply do not exist.
No one is worried about your reading skills. I initially had the urge to meet that sarcasm (is it sarcasm? hard to tell) with more of my own ("Oh yeah, you figured it out, that's exactly what the author meant to do") until I considered that perhaps you would misunderstand that as acceptance from peers.
My perspective in a few words : Some things don't compress. Long-form has a place in my life for that reason.
>If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it
Woosh? That was a tongue-in-cheek reference back to the original Socrates/Plato quote worrying about thinking skills atrophying due to writing.
For someone so married to the idea of being a deep thinker, who rigorously and patiently reads thick prose, you sure missed an obvious reference.
>At the risk of being an inaccurate arm-chair psychoanalyst I think that your anger and aggression
There's no need to psychoanalyze. Cercatrova took ~400 words, most of which were unnecessary, to bring up an idea, and not even make clear what part of the article it was related too. That's a really wasteful form of communication, and I pointed out why, then later on showed a better way to do it.
Most people would appreciate being told how they could communicate an idea better, and if there's someone here with a toxic personality, I would say it's the one who's trying to medicalize it and act like it's some kind of mental illness, rather than a request for common courtesy.
If you want to ascribe a personality trait to me, how about "distaste at people who waste others' time making their ideas obscure through poor communication", and I have to ask -- why don't you have that personality trait as well? Do you not like when others understand your ideas? Are you worried they'll better see the flaws?
Indeed, I did not understand the aggressiveness either, in both their comment before I quoted the article as a reason, and in their comment afterwards. I too wanted to match it with sarcasm, but I stopped myself for the same reason as you did.
I have to say, this post if anything is a meta argument that Plato was actually right. Behold the impatience and inattentiveness to read a short section that literally takes two minutes to parse. The internet has made people far to impatient.
No, Plato wasn't right that you should make people take 2 minutes to listen to your point when you could have made it in ten seconds.
And not that the personal attack was warranted, but: I'm happy to read dense material; I'd just like to know if it is worth my time first. By making me read all of the material first before I know what point it's building to, and not knowing the relevant to the article, you've made me take a lot of time just to learn that you were making a point I already agreed with.
I think the reference is cliché to the point that I usually hate to see it, but did understand the original post's intent in context (that is, the context provided by skimming the linked article to which the post is a reaction) without issue. It didn't even occur to me that it was anything other than plain.
For this reason I actually thought it was a good comment. I've seen the reference come up almost without fail in discussions like this, but I've never seen it so elaborated.
It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment, in its thick prose, and the article in order to understand, and even then you have to guess which point its referring, but could be wrong because cercatrova didn't actually own one.
Here is how I would have done the comment:
---
>people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.”
This reminds me of Socrates's story about how people in the ancient world worried about the atrophy from being able to use writing:
>>"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
A) Gets right to the point (so that if you already know the point, you can skip it.)
B) Saves everyone the time and effort of reading thick prose, most of which includes references to historical figures
C) Still quotes the relevant part.
D) Still contains a quick link to the rest of the context that cercatrova considered oh-so-important to add.
E) Contains a citation that can be googled in case the link goes dead.
F) Doesn't take a big wall of text.
But yes, it does have downsides: it G) takes actual communication effort, H) owns a specific point, and I) doesn't make cercatrova look cryptically wise. If those are your desiderata, then yeah, I agree he did it right, and everyone was right to vote it to the top of the discussion.
Can you elaborate on what you think we gain from making everyone read 6x as much with no indication of what the actual point is?
[1] I'm including people who weren't already aware of the quote, though you don't seem to think their vote matters here.
> It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment
Nah. It makes you think, I personally like to practice the art of thinking, of making connections between seemingly unconnected things, like Socrates and push buttons. Try to guess the point of a big comment by a first few sentences. And here I guessed right, that it would be about dangers of writing. But it was easy here, because letters are mentioned in a third sentence with emphasis: "and, most important of all, letters."
> its thick prose> Can you elaborate on what you think we gain from making everyone read 6x as much with no indication of what the actual point is?
I force myself to read thick prose sometimes, it is a way to practice attention and an ability to understand others. Maybe it was the reason why it was easy to me to guess the point of the comment?
But no one is forced to read it. For example, it seems to me you didn't read it through. I didn't read it. I read first few sentences, and skimmed to the end, to ensure that my guess is right.
> Advantages:
You are silently assume that a clarity and the ease of consumption is among of the top priorities. But it may not be so. Didn't you think that a comment about letters can be composed in a thick and hard to comprehend prose on a purpose to make some point about letters (that are supposed to be easy)? And about buttons too (that are supposed to be easy too)? I do not see what this point may be, but it could be because I'm too stupid to see it.
>It makes you think, I personally like to practice the art of thinking, of making connections between seemingly unconnected things, like Socrates and push buttons
So I guess I can add you to the list of people missing the irony.
There three "technologies" here: writing, push buttons, and clear writing.
In historical context -- because of cercatrova's oh-so clever, unclear comment -- we can laugh at how foolish it was to dismiss writing or push buttons as "causing atrophy".
Now, I'm advocating the third "technology", clear writing, and you're responding exactly like the very same ridiculed people: "Oh no, if people write clearly, then others won't get necessary practice in tolerating crappy prose! I'm a superior person who can parse crappy prose -- don't take that advantage from me!"
> force myself to read thick prose sometimes, it is a way to practice attention and an ability to understand others. Maybe it was the reason why it was easy to me to guess the point of the comment?
So, what, you're saying you're more deserving of knowing the point of the comment than others? That it's good that they didn't get it?
>You are silently assume that a clarity and the ease of consumption is among of the top priorities. But it may not be so. Didn't you think that a comment about letters can be composed in a thick and hard to comprehend prose on a purpose to make some point about letters (that are supposed to be easy)? And about buttons too (that are supposed to be easy too)? I do not see what this point may be, but it could be because I'm too stupid to see it.
Or because the point could have been made explicit, but wasn't. In any case, with this comment, you've indicated you've drunk the koolaid. You're actually defending people making themselves harder to understand than necessary, rather than maturely accepting feedback on how to make your point clearer.
> Now, I'm advocating the third "technology", clear writing,
And you are doing it in a response to the obscure prose of Socrates. It shows one more time that Socrats' obscure prose make people think. Cleverer people than me and you read Socrates in a search of novel ideas. And you succeeded.
> and you're responding exactly like the very same ridiculed people: "Oh no, if people write clearly, then others won't get necessary practice in tolerating crappy prose! I'm a superior person who can parse crappy prose -- don't take that advantage from me!"
Yes. Do you think it makes me a bad person? I believe not: I did my best to explain you benefits of my skills and how to acquire them. I'm not so egoistic, I'm ready to share my wisdom with a random person without charging them money.
> Or because the point could have been made explicit, but wasn't.
Had you experience of deciphering such an obscure point? Did you feel the fun it gives? I cannot agree that everyone on every occasion must seek the maximum clarity, it would take away the fun.
> In any case, with this comment, you've indicated you've drunk the koolaid.
Wow. You've almost won. But no. I checked wikipedia and urbandictionary, and I know what you mean by "you've drunk the koolaid". Urbandictionary explains: "Kool-Aid" is what one drinks metaphorically, in the context of a political campaign, when faced with an eminent loss. The term was popularly referenced in the 1993 film, "The War Room" by George Stephonopolous when he states, "I'm afraid we're all going to have to drink Kool-Aid."
My skills of understanding are stronger than your skills of making yourself obscure by using references to a folklore. Though it was a nice attempt to win argument by using a form as a point. I like it, really. Much better than obscure Socrates' prose arguing that letters are easy. I can say even I'm a little frustrated to decipher it, because it would be a really good point, you deserved to win just for being able to use it.
> You're actually defending people making themselves harder to understand than necessary, rather than maturely accepting feedback on how to make your point clearer.
Why do you think they need your feedback? With all we know about them they can be better than you and me combined at making their point clear, but decided on this specific occasion to speak riddles.
You're really on this aren't you? Seems like everyone else here except you understood the point I was trying to make by referencing Socrates' story. No one else but you in this thread had I problem with how I did it. Perhaps if everyone else around you gets it but you, it might be time to ask yourself why.
I guess you feel that you're speaking for some imagined group who demands digestible, workmanlike prose at all times. I guess I'll speak up for the others?
Frankly, fully rewriting someone's comment and including a 9-item list of what you think are advantages comes across as more than a little intense.
Like "life isn't fair" and "most vendors have an abusive EULA", if you ever find yourself saying that to defend your side ... you're probably on the wrong side.
Clear communication is good. You should welcome suggestions for how to communicate better. "Try it sometime", as it were.
Y’know…it was clear that the original commenter was telling a story. If you didn’t want to read it, you could’ve stopped. Nobody was making you. :) There are plenty of other comments, and I found this one fascinating; myself.
Maybe it’s just that some of us still have patience - and don’t need things condensed into sound bites or summations for our convenience.
Let’s just cut ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ down to 40 minutes, because - why couldn’t Kubrick just compress all that slow motion classical music stuff down to the actual point of the movie?
‘Humanity makes first contact. They send out a spaceship to the source. The AI on the ship becomes sentient and murderous. One man escapes, and arrives at the source. He exits his 3 dimensional existence and enters a psychedelic-esque state whereupon he transcends humanity as we know it.’
Okay, now nobody needs to see ‘2001’ again - ever!
Symphonies - what the fuck?
Why couldn’t Mozart have just written a 3 1/2 minute long pop song instead of wasting all of our time?
What an asshole! Yet we celebrate this music as some of the greatest of all time? Shame on us.
Shakespeare? Ugh. They fall in love. Their love isn’t approved. They kill themselves. Get to the point!
You’re totally right. There’s absolutely no reason for us to do anything but compress all information into Tweet-level hyperchunks. :)
What is that responding to? I wasn't opposed to reading or referencing the full text. My criticism was that it should have led with the core point, so people know what point you're making before they dive into the long exposition of it.
What you're advocating here is basically saying that people should never read the description of a movie, or know anything about it, before starting on it, because that's mainly what my edit change. Do you really believe that?
Furthermore, HN isn't a movie. If you're going to take two and half hours to make a point, just don't bother with posting.
I spotted this gem of a comment while scrolling and had to scroll back up to be sure I hadn't misread it. It's both hilarious and pertinent! Well said, "Big Toe."
Here's an easy rule of thumb for when someone posts a passage from Socrates - they're probably saying that Socrates already made this point a couple millennia ago.
Socrates: I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters.
Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed praise or blame, according as he approved or disapproved.
"The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, "This invention, O king," said Theuth, "will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered." But Thamus replied, "Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess.
"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."