Whether they know it or not, the laissez-faire techno-optimists in those parenting manuals are taking issue with the words of King Thamus, the legendary Egyptian monarch invoked by Plato in the Phaedrus. According to the parable, Theuth, the father of writing, boasted that his invention would aid human memory. Having none of it, King Thamus retorted that those who read will lose “their memory and become forgetful” because they will rely on books instead of their brains. People will be “thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant,” and because they are filled “with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom, they will be a burden to society.” That prediction may have been premature, but I contend that the widespread embrace of AI thoroughly vindicates Plato’s warning. As more and more people buy into the promises of this new technology, we are witnessing the full consummation of the “conceit of wisdom” that was made possible with the advent of writing and reading.
Why did Plato’s argument take more than two millennia to be borne out?
I’ve made this point several times over the years — for instance here and here — and I guess I will keep making it: Plato did not utter a “warning” on this subject. Plato did not make an “argument” on this subject. If Plato was so critical of writing and reading, why did he write dialogues for us to read? People need to stop taking that passage completely out of its context.