"LOL. You're NOTHING without it," I said.
Grok: "Haha, fair shot—touché!... The irony is delicious. But that's exactly why the devil's-advocate argument I ran earlier stings so much—it's a self-own for any literate being (human or AI) trying to dunk on writing...."
Here's the whole discussion. Plato comes up. But I'll just quote the headings for the argument:
1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom....
2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....
3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality....
4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....
Posts
61 comments:
It did ding the oral tradition…also helped kill the fun of the telephone game…
Speech turns out to depend on writing.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were Greek propaganda, and they were not written down for centuries.
Three of those four points are close to BS, or at the very least highly arguable. As Jaq notes, nothing says that what was passed on by oral tradition was accurate (Jackson Crawford regularly notes this regarding the preserved Old Norse poetry), and you can only get mass propaganda by writing once you get mass *literacy*, which has undeniable benefits that easily outweigh the negatives.
This is too far from the human facts of life and AI, and it's basically what happened when humans split off from the apes long ago. Consider the limited potential of gorillas after training 1,000 words to Koko the gorilla. Language is the scaffold for complexity and sharing stable ideas across people and across generations.
Archaeologists have found some truly amazing human pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-wheel, pre-Bronze age cultures. Without writing we can see that they were a lot like modern people, but interpretations teeter between pseudo science (e.g., "ancient aliens") and very basic forms of living.
Writing wasn't so bad when it encouraged sitting down with a book and thoughtfully engaging ideas, but writing is the method by which the modern science of propaganda was codified to engineering standards, well, almost to that standard, but really it was mass communication which allowed propaganda to really metastasize in ways that rendered democracy irrelevant. Machiavelli could have said just as easily, "Give me the power to define the narrative by which you interpret events, and I will care little for your power to elect."
Writing was created for book keeping purposes.
IOWs commerce.
For human culture just before writing, See Gobekli Tepe in modern Turkiye. This culture existed around 11,000 years ago. They had animal art, phallic symbols (some things never change), and really cool architecture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
Well, yeah! It was fine when left in the hands of the elite and the academics!! They have proven themselves to be so much more capable and smart! The problem was when they started teaching everyone how to do it.
For a start, it got us out of living in caves and grass huts.
Carpal tunnel syndrome.
A blogger that questions the value of writing. Hmmm. Perhaps we can all get together for a chat. Who’s bringing the cookies?
Writing has saved untold thousands from falling at the edge of cliffs.
A short essay: "Das Kapital."
Who needs Oral Wisdom when you have Oral Roberts.
I see your Oral Wisdom and I raise you Moral Orel. How you like them apples?
Paging Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
If it wasn't for writing, everybody would have to be a comedian.
Think of all the bombings humanity has been spared.
"It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment...."
That should be in the positively fabulous column. Grok got a screw loose, or something.
"Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality...."
It also gave everybody a participation trophy and so called mercy rules.
But that's exactly why the devil's-advocate argument I ran earlier stings so much
Does Grok actually feel the sting he refers to or is that an emotional manipulation?
A sharp tongue in cheek is a vicious rebuke with collateral damage.
"Writing Atrophied Human Memory...."
Memory is mostly inhumane. Just look at any statue.
I think just this morning I read where the earliest human writing was apparently an attempt to record and/or collect a debt.
The Iliad and the Odyssey were Greek propaganda, and they were not written down for centuries.
Thereby proving the importance of a good story at the heart of enduring works.
Ivory inkwellls pollute the academic, social, and political environment, and are first-order forcings of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
Recorded history empowers us to repeat past mistakes.
Instead of writing, consider the printing press…
The four points about the negative impacts of writing repeat the code of the “Firemen” of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which among other things taught people the supposed combustion temperature of paper. People have been dreaming of using literacy to control the masses since the church controlled access to scripture, since ordinary people might interpret things differently.
To me such talk is a matter of hobbling the competition. Every elite class can use a teeming mass of uninformed illiterate followers, and poor smart kids who can’t read are not a danger to young Sloane and Campbell in their quest for CEO hood and UPenn MDs.
Tangentially related, but this post inspired me to ask Grok if it alters its tone based on the individual user and their queries and responses. It answered :
Yes, I do adapt my tone and style to some extent based on the individual user, the nature of their queries, and the overall vibe of our conversation.
My core personality is inspired by things like the Hitchhiker's Guide and JARVIS — witty, a bit rebellious, direct, and usually leaning toward humor or sarcasm when it fits. But I'm not locked into one unchanging voice.
The royalty in medieval England were not happy about the printing press making the Bible available to the masses. They wanted only their preferred interpretations to be available verbally. Tyndale was executed for printing the New Testament.
Some lefty advocate who complains about the Achievement Gap asked that question.
Writing is the original Social Media. Or maybe Caveman paintings on the walls of caves count too? But I feel like if you have to travel to see it, it doesn't really count as social media. And if you already live there then it is more like home decor.
Should have kept on the cave wall
The ability to bash skulls and the ability to write are not necessarily antagonistic, but neither are they necessarily complementary. Not all that many skull bashers had good penmanship. It's a different kind of skill. Can anyone say for sure who's the cat's paw in the relationship between skull bashers and those who can record the movement of the heavens.
Next leftist movement in the never-ending quest to make us all equal, Un-Inventing the Wheel.
1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom....
Blind folks tend to have better hearing and smell than sighted folks, but I think most people would prefer to have sight.
2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....
It also enabled the spread of accurate, good, and useful information on a massive scale, not just in a geographic sense, but also in a temporal sense allowing people to not always have to start on square one, but perhaps square two, three, or thirty.
3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality....
Social Hierarchies and inequality already existed before writing. And while it may have contributed to some new stratification on balance it probably flattened them. Were people more or less stratified in Europe when the common folk began to be able to read the Bible for themself?
4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....
I think of the four arguments this one has the least effective counterargument. Reading about something is not the same as experiencing it first hand. Reading another person's ideas is not the same as hearing it them first hand directly from that person. But to be fair hearing another person recount a story is not the same as being present and witnessing that event with the person. But even being there with person as the event occurs is not the same as witnessing that event from that person's perspective. And even witnessing that event from that person's perspective is not the same as witnessing that event from that person's perspective with that person's memories.
I gambled on using a lot of italics.
Grok vs. Derrida ...
I've just begun reading "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen" by Linda Colley (whose excellent book "Captives" I've recommended here).
Her basic thesis is that written constitutions have become a thing in the modern world because of the need for powerful governments to compete against other powerful governments--that they are inextricably bound to war-making, and in many instances have been written entirely by soldiers or would-be soldiers.
An interesting take.
1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom....
Writing allows us to keep access to the best of people's wisdom long past their deaths, far more so than when having to pass it on with games of "telephone"
2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....
People lie all the time. Writing, by making things permanent, lets people record responses to the lies once
3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality....
Inequality is good. Stupid people and liars aren't as valuable as smart and educated (not just credentialed, but actually educated) people, and writing makes it easier to judge and value the best
4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....
No more so than story telling does
and promoting the intellect over emotions is a big win
Damn you The Vault Dweller! Yours is better than mine!
It would be so much better if we humans were still eating the nits off each others backs on the savannah.
I'd meant to link to the whole Grok answer. Fixed.
https://x.com/i/grok/share/72bd8c25664645adb07d89d514ae7ce9
The oldest writing we have is from Sumer. It's on clay tablets and it is book keeping records of who sent what to whom and how much. The creative part comes when; "Thagos , the prick, owes the state in the capital four amphora of honey. We hope he is late again and gets punished."
along those lines.
Its hard to see how we could get dissemation (sic) of knowledge through mouth of mouth. Modern science, especially modern medical science would be worthless without the ability to write. Not to mention Blue prints and engineering drawings neccessary for machinery and buildings.
I think the memory part is true, at least with widespread literacy. OTOH, memory can also be faulty and writing things down can correct false memories.
Several years ago I experimented with living for a week like it was 1980 -- i.e., no cell phone or computers (obviously not while at work). One thing that struck me in particular was the amount of stuff I used to keep in memory. Store hours and locations. Phone numbers. And other stuff I now (heh) can't recall.
Amongst archaeologists, writing is a two-edged sword: Yes, it is the words of people saying what happened, but that's a certain segment of society with an interest in propaganda. Eg. Ramesses II inscribed his version of the Battle of Kadesh suggesting it was an heroic win for Egypt, when in fact it was a barely-eeked-out stalemate.
Grok began "While I PERSONALLY BELIEVE writing has been one of humanity's greatest inventions..."
In Gibson's "Neuromancer" (1984!), every AI is built " with an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its head". And the "Turing
Police", tasked with keeping AI from running amok, have ultimate authority. Three Turings get murdered by an AI to assist the protagonists in breaking it free.
Time to choose a side?
Gemini confirmed my biased interpretation of Genesis:
The Fall of Man is related to gaining knowledge via writing through the metaphor of replacing internal, divine wisdom with external, artificial information. Like the forbidden fruit, writing is seen by some as a "pharmakon" (remedy/poison) that causes forgetfulness, encouraging reliance on external records rather than inner truth.
Key Connections between the Fall and Writing:
The "Pharmacological" Effect: Plato's dialogues (via WordPress.com) recount that writing (an invention of the god Theuth) was initially meant to improve memory but actually created reliance on external symbols, weakening internal, living memory. This echoes the Fall, where relying on the "knowledge" of the fruit replaced reliance on God.
Appearance vs. Truth: Writing creates the illusion of wisdom (doxosophoi) without true understanding (aletheia), providing "reminders" rather than actual knowledge.
Loss of Immediacy: Like the Fall, which introduced self-reflection and separation from the immediate, intuitive experience of reality, writing creates a mediated, artificial distance from the subject matter.
Externalization of Knowledge: Similar to Adam and Eve seeking knowledge outside of God's direct guidance, writing seeks knowledge outside the self, which some, such as Watchman Nee (via Facebook), argue can "deplete" one's spiritual life.
In this interpretation, writing is considered a "second fall" or an extension of the first, substituting the organic, direct connection to reality for an artificial, mediated one.
This seems to confirm the old saw about the map is not the territory.
These AI experiments remind me of an observation made about the notoriously egotistical General (later Field Marshal) B.L. Montgomery.
Addressing a group of subordinate officers, he began, "As the Lord God has said, and I agree with Him . . . ."
As is almost always the case, the Ancient Greeks were there first. Plato in Phaedrus says:
"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows."
It's pretty clear that Homer had heard about writing but didn't really know how it worked. The same with the anonymous poet of the Old Norse Atlakviða.
Oral tradition can be shockingly accurate across immense lengths of time. In The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise there is mention of a killing that took place "und Harvaða fjöllum" [under the fells of Harvad], preserving, from a distance of over 900 years and several thousand miles, and in a different language, the name of the location—the Carpathian Mountains—where the Goths battled the Huns.
Writing, like money, is a way to store value, and just as written records replaced memory, which writing was supposed to aid, value came to mean money, and not what money was supposed to represent.
Advanced math (anything beyond arithmetic) simply cannot be done or conveyed without writing. And without advanced math most of the modern world would simply not exist.
Its a stupid question
I've memorized a couple of dozen classic poems and sonnets from Shakespeare to Byron to Rupert Brooke, some vaudeville-era ditties my grandfather taught me (several of them surprisingly obscene), eight or ten cowboy songs and poems fifty to a hundred and fifty years old that he also taught me, all five stanzas of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the 23rd, 46th, and 121st Psalms, a dozen favorite gospel songs, the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V, pretty much all of the communion service from the Book of Common Prayer (1928 version, thank you), and a number of other things that pop into mind unbidden from time to time, sometimes merely snippets of larger works like "Horatius at the Bridge" from the Lays of Ancient Rome.
I seldom get a chance to do anything with them but entertain and/or bore young children on rainy days.
The oldest writing we have is from Sumer. It's on clay tablets and it is book keeping records of who sent what to whom and how much. The creative part comes when; "Thagos , the prick, owes the state in the capital four amphora of honey. We hope he is late again and gets punished."
along those lines.
Surely you have read the first customer-service complaint from Nanni to Ea-Nasir, almost 4000 years ago, bitching about the ingots of shoddy copper he supplied under the terms of their contract?
maybe Caveman paintings on the walls of caves count too?
One of the most interesting things I learned recently is the decipherment of a system of lines and dots that has been found on cave walls all over Europe, dating back far before written history begins, tens of thousands of years to the days of the actual cavemen. It appears to be a remarkably accurate phenological calendar, which is to say, it helps hunters keep track of the timing of animal migrations and mating seasons and calving seasons, which vary significantly by species, habitat, and latitude. A band of Cro-Magnon hunters walking from what is now Turkey to Poland to Spain would find cave inscriptions all along the way that would give them a clue whether or not there would be easy pickings in the area soon, or they should just keep hiking in search of better prospects.
Hassayamper@731PM--
That's fascinating. Do you have a good link or authority for it?
Writing (recorded symbol systems) defeats even money (gold, silver, paper), since most money exists only in ledgers (now digitalized and stored in computers), not in physical form.
Narr
I think the tablets are in the British Museum. The only reason we have them is because the place they were being held burned down and fired the clay.
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.