Hm, I think Plato is largely true; not in the sense that writing is a harmful crutch, but in the sense that simply being able to read something is not a substitute for knowing it. I think we can see that at play here on HN and on the larger internet all the time: people who read a paper or article, and then attempt to discuss it, without realizing that their understanding of the material is entirely incorrect. These are "men filled not with wisdom but the conceit of wisdom," and they lack the awareness to understand that they don't understand.

In other words it is not the writing that is harmful, but the lack of teaching.

I understand where Socrates/Plato is coming from, but this doesn't match my experience. I had no "lack of teaching", having sat through about 18 years of it in total, but I definitely have a better average recollection of things that I read of my own interest than things I was "taught". Maybe things would have been different if I had a world class philosopher as a personal tutor, but alas that was not to be.

If were to rephrase it, I would put the distinction not between teaching and reading, but between passive consumption and active learning.

EDIT: Thinking more about having a world class philosopher as a personal tutor, I suddenly remembered a quote from Russell that took me a while to track down, but here it is:

> In 343 B.C. he [Aristotle] became tutor to Alexander, then thirteen years old, and continued in that position until, at the age of sixteen ... Everything one would wish to know of the relations of Aristotle and Alexander is unascertainable, the more so as legends were soon invented on the subject. There are letters between them which are generally regarded as forgeries. People who admire both men suppose that the tutor influenced the pupil. Hegel thinks that Alexander's career shows the practical usefulness of philosophy. As to this, A. W. Benn says: "It would be unfortunate if philosophy had no better testimonial to show for herself than the character of Alexander. . . . Arrogant, drunken, cruel, vindictive, and grossly superstitious, he united the vices of a Highland chieftain to the frenzy of an Oriental despot."

> ... As to Aristotle's influence on him, we are left free to conjecture whatever seems to us most plausible. For my part, I should suppose it nil.

- "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, Chapter XIX p. 160

But did you memorize that quote, or was it sufficient to know its gist so you could google it?

At least with writing it's fairly easy to implement on your own with little more than what most people would have available in a rudimentary survival situation. It'll be a tough day when someone goes to sign into their GoogleLife (tm) and find out that they can't get AI access because "precluding conditions agreed to upon signing"

As I see it, the solution to this is to invest in open source. As for a "survival situation", a solar-powered laptop with a locally running LLM would definitely be the first item on my list.

It shouldn't be, because LLM:s can't be trusted in the way literature can. People around you are also going to question why you insist on such a power hungry setup.

I’m not suggesting LLMs are infallible, but boy you’re overselling the accuracy of literature

Why do you think that?

Oh definitely the latter. My memory is too far gone from a lifetime of reading. May the next generation avoid my dire fate.

I mean, that's all any of us needs. It's an honorable quote.

I know you're not trying to draw any parallels between Plato's admonition on written thoughts supplanting true knowledge and the justifiable concerns about automated writing tools supplanting the ability of writers to think. To a modern literate, Plato's concern is legible but so patently ridiculous that one could only deploy it as a parody and mockery of the people who might take it as a serious proof that philosophers were wrong about modern tools before. I was obviously just kiddin about whether you googled it. Unfortunately, now a whole new generation is about to use it to justify how LLMs are just being maligned the way written language once was.

Socrates was wrong on this. But Plato was kind of an asshole for writing it down. The proof of both is that we can now google the quote, which is objectively funny. The trouble with LLMs, I guess, is that they would just attribute the quote to your uncle Bob, who also said that cats are a good source of fiber, and thus the whole project started when the words were put in parchment ends with a blizzard of illegible scribbles. If writing was bad for true understanding, not-writing is where humanity just shits its pants.

But are you filled with wisdom, or with the conceit of wisdom?

Niether. I'm just filled with half baked knowledge that I have to check a lot on wikipedia.