Just because you memorized 10000 random articles on Wikipedia, doesn't mean you now have the wisdom to apply that in a particular circumstance.
Very much like early AI models.
It's common and easy to fall into considering the things you could look up as things you already know.
What's the difference, one might ask? What's the problem with offloading some of this knowledge and free up space in your head? Well the thing when you learn something is that it doesn't just permit access to the information, it also permits synthesis of new ideas. The sum of knowledge is greater than its parts.
A very concrete example: As someone who only speaks English one may look up the Latin terms 'manus' (hand) and 'facere' (to act/do/make); but unless you actually do, you'll probably not immediately grok the etymology of the English term 'manufacture'.
There are some computations (synthesis) that require so many (non-front loadable) memory accesses that it's impractical to do them from memory with significant delay (books), because the number_of_accesses * access_time dominates the project time.
Instead, you must have a working set of core information (or at least pointers to information) in low-latency memory (your brain).
Example: How much longer would it take me to do a multi-digit multiplication if I had to look up the process for multiplication in a book for every digit multiplication I did? And what if that multiplication were just one of many in the higher-level math problem I was trying to solve? (Then generalize to any problem that requires a core base of knowledge)
I'm genuinely curious, why do you think this is relevant? How would you differentiate "specific types of memory recall" scientifically?
That's not an accident. Wisdom emerges out of practice and the effortlessness that comes with it. The genius piano player isn't that good because of some pie in the sky wisdom about music, just like the AI they just played tons of scales and training pieces. Literally meaningless stuff. This rejection of rote memorization as some sort of lower skill, that students should be 'smart and lazy' is one of the stupidest modern tendencies.
It's much more likely that you can, that someone who would only look them up "on demand", however, as you at least are aware of the possibilities in those domains.
> He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines
In the Qur'an there is reference to something called Mantiq-at-Tayr and this is usually translated/understood as "Bird Logic". Because the reference is to 'Solomon' and his declaration to people that he and his father David were "taught Mantiq at'Tayr'" by God. And there is a work by a world class "psychonaut" named Attar of Neishapoor who wrote a book called by the same name and translated as "Conference of the Birds". (Note 'Bird' also means 'flier'. Mantiq can also meen logic.)
So I am certain this refers to esoteric speech and the "birds" in question that had conversations with Solomon were "fliers" (as in practicing psychonaut) and the matter is related to -Godel- and limitations of discerning 'truth' via text.
There is a 'communion in conversation' that is never achieved in text.
Tired Alfred North Whitehead quotes aside, he's basically the single most influential author in the western tradition, arguably even eclipsing the bible.
And even better, we would know it by heart.
Assuning we considered it important of course. But that would be another benefit: it would also filter unimportant works over time.
Of course not everybody would know it by heart. That's a third benefit: only people interested and caring enough would know Plato. Not dilletantes.
If we never had writing, would the Huns have carried forth Platonic wisdom? Would it really have survived thousands of years of cultural evolution and the decline of Greek civilization itself? Who even is the "we" who should consider it important?
> that would be another benefit: it would also filter unimportant works over time.
How would it even be possible to know what's been lost in the oral tradition without anyone writing things down? Only takes one autocrat to massacre followers of a specific tradition to effectively erase it. Things get filtered based on their ability to survive, which is partially a function of "importance", whatever that actually means at a given time.
> a third benefit: only people interested and caring enough would know Plato. Not dilletantes.
This just seems like unabashed elitism. A "benefit" of the oral tradition is that knowledge is reserved for the deserving? No thanks.
Is Twitter > books? Is HN > podcasts? Every medium has its tendencies... positive, negative and complicated. We don't actually choose between them. It's useful to keep an eye on losses, not just gains.
Oral traditions, for example, naturally evolve and diversify. A fairy tale can literally spread over the whole world, and develop thousands of versions. Each one adapted and localised. Written stories also spread, but remain identical... even more-so after printing.
This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding.
The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope.
See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times (admittedly, the Catholic Church was also much more a political-nation-religious entity then vs now)
Using thousands of monks to copy documents by hand instead of using printers was incredibly resource expensive, but affordable for the Medieval Church.
And I mean fully-loaded, so how much time needed to be spent {farming/military/political administration} to give a monk time to learn to read and write, and then allow them time to copy the book itself.
Price of 7 books = £5 = 100s -> 14s per book / Price of 1 Pig in London = 3s
14 / 5 => roughly 5 pigs per book
Note £1 = 20s
I was observing that the modern Catholic Church (post-printed word) has offified in exactly that way, with the printed word allow direct dissemination of the "agreed" canon (i.e. pope / hierarchy) to the entire church, thereby unifying them into a single practice.
In counterpoint I offered the number of papal crises and schisms that abounded during the medieval and pre-medieval period (i.e. before printed material became cheap and available).
Ergo, the use of the printed word allowed the Catholic Church to unify and standardize in a way it had not before -- GP's point.
It's indicative that the majority of monotheistic religious splits within Catholicism happened before the printing press, when intervening human parties could reinterprete the canon as it flowed through them.
For political-national-religious entity, the Catholic Church / Holy Roman Empire partnership allowed the Church to become a nation in all but land, by the power its blessing conveyed upon a chosen leader.
Would it? The Bible, which is much larger, was practical to standardize and disseminate without the printed word, and its not like there was a proximate relationship between the availability of printing (presumably with movable type, in the 15th century) and the codification of canon law in the 20th. The idea that this was waiting on printing is…hard to defend.
> See: how many schisms and papal crises there were in medieval times
The really durable schisms after the 11th Century emerged after or just before (and became crystallized because of) printing, though.
IIRC this was their main contention against the Protestant reformation. They believed that just pointing at scripture without some practice of custom and tradition to ensure you're properly interpreting it in a sensible way would lead people to folly and extremism/fundamentalism.
Granted it's sort of a pick your poison deal. You either get the fundamentalism of hardline scripturalists or you get the corruption that comes with a hierarchical institution that requires people to offloading some of their critical thinking. Or you can blend them together and get the worst of both worlds by creating something that looks like the more noxious elements of the American Evangelical movement.
I don't think it is fair to say the latter leads to "corruption" or "offloading some of their critical thinking". This phobia is largely a feature of radical individualism and the lack of humility that the notion of radical self-sufficiency (intellectual or otherwise) entails. The paradox of individualism is that it actually weakens the ability to be an individual. Human beings are social animals whose lives are relatively short and therefore whose experiences are limited. And because individualism atomizes the individual, the effect is that this social animal becomes subject to greater levels of fear and stress about his isolation, and when isolated from the social and from tradition, he becomes easy prey for weird ideologies.
In this specific case, scriptural canon was compiled by the Catholic Church. You obviously cannot appeal to the canon to codify the canon, so some extra-biblical body of knowledge and understanding must exist that would allow such a canonical body of scripture to be identified. This body of knowledge and understanding is called Tradition, and it is guarded, refined, and transmitted by an unbroken chain of authority found in the apostolic succession. (Tradition is the basis for the transmission and development of all knowledge in human history; there is likewise a scientific tradition without which there could be no science.) The notion that an individual could do better alone without relying or drawing on tradition is belied by the presence of over 40,000 Protestant sects in the US alone, each claiming to be able to interpret scripture. And how do they interpret scripture? However they want! In most cases, it means interpreting it according to whatever happens to be fashionable at the time. So much for "critical thinking". This is very visible in the mainline Protestant churches that, not so incidentally, are shrinking very rapidly. Where this Protestant mindset has leeched into Catholic circles, it has produced the same deadly effect.
This is largely the story of religions, especially old pagan religions. Myths and folklore came about. The moment when religions went scriptural, the message became firm and technical. And gave rise to law as a study.
The romans were already pretty good at law.
Non scriptural religions had evolving myths and folklore like Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Those religions did not contribute to law like the prior comment mentions.
India developed complicated law system before Judaism. Seems like it's part of human societies that grow in complexity, not something special to Judaism.
Protestantism definitely had a big impact on the development of western empirism and probably modern law. In general our current Western individualistic skeptic mindset is the heritage of the reformation.
Roman law development is thought to be put together by judaic influence. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1452148
Indian development is beyond my understanding.
Protestantism led to direct literacy and scholarship in Bible studies. Again, this is influenced by religion. The adoption of literacy is what led to Northern Europe's success.
Well you're lucky if they do; often they just make stuff up on the fly depending on what they saw on some dubious media or social network.
What's the difference between having read something last year and believing it, vs having heard someone tell you something last year and believing it? Would people stop in a conversation and go try to find the source of their information if they had to track down a specific person?
> What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to exchange ideas over physical and temporal distances.
Why would his words be less potent when applied to billions of people, as opposed to only a few? Are those billions not just as susceptible to fallacy as the elite few?
> Trust thyself
The whole point of his writing all it down, the very literal foundations of ~2500 years of philosophy and the bedrock of Western (and others) civilization, was so that he could have an effect on social issues over time. That was the whole point! He is super clear about this in his writings and throughout his life and travels.
It turns out that was a greater benefit that to some extent makes up for losing the exceptionally well trained memory of scholars from a verbal tradition. Not that that last part isn't a loss though, and his warning against false wisdom is more relevant than ever today when it feels like half the people you talk to online are just googling up wikipedia articles to base their world view upon on the fly.
--edit-- sometimes me not grammar good