In Plato's "Phaedrus" Socrates says the same thing about writing - it makes us stupid and forgetful. Plato would probably have seen Substack as a place full of opinions and no knowledge because of very little real dialogue and no true dialectic. Seneca himself thinks along the same lines throughout his writings - we should be brutally selective about what we fill our heads with. In his opinion, the *only* kind of knowledge that we can justify spending time and mental bandwidth on is knowledge about what is good and bad. Everything else are highly destructive distractions.
"To want to know more than enough is a kind of lack of control."
- Seneca, Letters 88.37
What can't be delegated to others is the task of becoming wise. Other kinds of literary activity allows for assistance, as Seneca says in the very letter you have been quoting.
Interestingly, I just this weekend picked up a little volume at my kids' school book fair entitled How to Memorize Scripture for Life: From One Verse to Entire Books, by Andrew Davis.
I'm a hardline opponent of AI and I don't use it at all and never will, and I've been working to retrain myself to either remember things or look them up manually in a book or by going to a specific website I've chosen myself rather than "googling it." I read Fahrenheit 451 decades ago, around age twelve or so, and the idea of people meeting in the woods to recite memorized passages or whole books really stuck with me all these years. Currently I'm reading A Canticle for Leibowitz and again finding myself considering those moved to become "memorizers and bookleggers." Speaking as a person of faith: seems that God is influencing me to develop these skills. Thanks for the articulation as to some of the reasons why.
I’ve observed similar cognitive offloading in my own life with online calendar and to-do list use. My memory for my schedule has certainly weakened, but I no longer miss things because I forget. It may be an example where the trade off favors the offloading. I’m unsure.
Embarrassingly, I have several chats with Claude all asking how long to bake a potato. I will put more effort into actually remembering moving forward. I will strive to onload and keep my memory sharp.
Deciding some things don't offer enough benefit to keep in-house and might be better offloaded to AIs makes perfect sense, especially because we've been doing a version of this for centuries.
The introduction of chainsaws and heavy machinery caused a loss of axe and saw skills among lumberjacks. There's a sad element to that, but I'm pretty sure that tradeoff was worth it. The real problem might be humans not understanding how to judge the strength of a tree's wood, to be unable to survey the terrain and understand the logistics of hauling thousands of pounds of lumber through treacherous mud paths.
I'm not sure exactly where that line is, and that's the thing — you need wisdom and expertise to judge where that line is. Once that's gone, we're in trouble. And there's no quicker way to erode that than to let an AI replace your facts and your critical thinking.
I recently took off the spell check, predictive text, and grammar checks from my cell phone. Memory slave is a term I will start using. I will make more errors but my words are now my own. Solid post.
And that's a brave move. I don't dare take off my spell check and grammar check, which should tell you I'm thoroughly helpless and enslaved in this area of my life. It doesn't sit well with me, but I'm uncertain if this is a battle I wish to fight at this moment.
I think the core misunderstanding on our part (and the parts of the Romans it seems) is what is valuable. Is simply knowing quotes or looking up an answer comparable to having the wisdom that underlies those quotes or those answers? I used to think so, but that was because I was too “busy” to really evaluate myself. When I stopped to look at what I was doing, I realized that the value was in the ideas, not the quotes or answers. Even in seemingly routine areas like how to cook, I realized that I had such a better experience when I realized that cooking pasta was not about time, but about how the water tastes, what the pasta looks like as it floats or sinks, when the gluten releases into the water. These were knowledge I couldn’t look up, but I had to learn by listening and watching.
That being said, I do think LLMs can be used to expand ourselves. I find myself asking a lot of question as I work through a particularly difficult book, or researching who else has thought about an idea I’m working through. The hard part is knowing enough to be suspicious of what the LLM is telling me.
I agree that memorizing and understanding are two different things.
It's retained facts vs practical wisdom. But without the former, it's hard to develop the later.
Most parents or grandparents would immediately agree with the received wisdom that their children become like their friends and so are very concerned if they're hanging around a bad crowd.
But adults are like this too — not only do we tend to become like those we spend time with, but we become like the ideas we immerse ourselves in continuously. So memory's role has the effect there too. We're bathing in what we remember. Even if we're not actively thinking it, it's there, imposing its opinions upon our nows, and that changes us.
I fall victim to this. Part of the problem, especially with names, is that there isn't a core group in my world. I have a Substack group (thankfully, half of you are all named Andrew), and then there's a LinkedIn group. Then the friend and family group (which really comes first but I don't want to edit this comment) and then there's a whole series of different work groups and then there's.... in some ways I think it's as much a function of a global network as it is a memory or memory slave function.
We've sort of normalized forgetting names, so the fallout isn't so bad. Though it's still a superpower to remember people's names and the details of their life they told you years ago. People just light up.
But I think it's not so much a specific forgetting, as it is forgetting — or never really remembering in the first place — that which is impactful in your life. Draw the line where you will. If that's not stored, you will be running at half capacity.
In Plato's "Phaedrus" Socrates says the same thing about writing - it makes us stupid and forgetful. Plato would probably have seen Substack as a place full of opinions and no knowledge because of very little real dialogue and no true dialectic. Seneca himself thinks along the same lines throughout his writings - we should be brutally selective about what we fill our heads with. In his opinion, the *only* kind of knowledge that we can justify spending time and mental bandwidth on is knowledge about what is good and bad. Everything else are highly destructive distractions.
"To want to know more than enough is a kind of lack of control."
- Seneca, Letters 88.37
What can't be delegated to others is the task of becoming wise. Other kinds of literary activity allows for assistance, as Seneca says in the very letter you have been quoting.
Interestingly, I just this weekend picked up a little volume at my kids' school book fair entitled How to Memorize Scripture for Life: From One Verse to Entire Books, by Andrew Davis.
I'm a hardline opponent of AI and I don't use it at all and never will, and I've been working to retrain myself to either remember things or look them up manually in a book or by going to a specific website I've chosen myself rather than "googling it." I read Fahrenheit 451 decades ago, around age twelve or so, and the idea of people meeting in the woods to recite memorized passages or whole books really stuck with me all these years. Currently I'm reading A Canticle for Leibowitz and again finding myself considering those moved to become "memorizers and bookleggers." Speaking as a person of faith: seems that God is influencing me to develop these skills. Thanks for the articulation as to some of the reasons why.
Pretty chilling outlook, but a powerful call to action! Thanks Andrew!
A great concept for an article — and very well executed.
Thanks!
I’ve observed similar cognitive offloading in my own life with online calendar and to-do list use. My memory for my schedule has certainly weakened, but I no longer miss things because I forget. It may be an example where the trade off favors the offloading. I’m unsure.
Embarrassingly, I have several chats with Claude all asking how long to bake a potato. I will put more effort into actually remembering moving forward. I will strive to onload and keep my memory sharp.
Deciding some things don't offer enough benefit to keep in-house and might be better offloaded to AIs makes perfect sense, especially because we've been doing a version of this for centuries.
The introduction of chainsaws and heavy machinery caused a loss of axe and saw skills among lumberjacks. There's a sad element to that, but I'm pretty sure that tradeoff was worth it. The real problem might be humans not understanding how to judge the strength of a tree's wood, to be unable to survey the terrain and understand the logistics of hauling thousands of pounds of lumber through treacherous mud paths.
I'm not sure exactly where that line is, and that's the thing — you need wisdom and expertise to judge where that line is. Once that's gone, we're in trouble. And there's no quicker way to erode that than to let an AI replace your facts and your critical thinking.
Thanks, and Good luck with hour quest
I recently took off the spell check, predictive text, and grammar checks from my cell phone. Memory slave is a term I will start using. I will make more errors but my words are now my own. Solid post.
Thanks!
And that's a brave move. I don't dare take off my spell check and grammar check, which should tell you I'm thoroughly helpless and enslaved in this area of my life. It doesn't sit well with me, but I'm uncertain if this is a battle I wish to fight at this moment.
I think the core misunderstanding on our part (and the parts of the Romans it seems) is what is valuable. Is simply knowing quotes or looking up an answer comparable to having the wisdom that underlies those quotes or those answers? I used to think so, but that was because I was too “busy” to really evaluate myself. When I stopped to look at what I was doing, I realized that the value was in the ideas, not the quotes or answers. Even in seemingly routine areas like how to cook, I realized that I had such a better experience when I realized that cooking pasta was not about time, but about how the water tastes, what the pasta looks like as it floats or sinks, when the gluten releases into the water. These were knowledge I couldn’t look up, but I had to learn by listening and watching.
That being said, I do think LLMs can be used to expand ourselves. I find myself asking a lot of question as I work through a particularly difficult book, or researching who else has thought about an idea I’m working through. The hard part is knowing enough to be suspicious of what the LLM is telling me.
I agree that memorizing and understanding are two different things.
It's retained facts vs practical wisdom. But without the former, it's hard to develop the later.
Most parents or grandparents would immediately agree with the received wisdom that their children become like their friends and so are very concerned if they're hanging around a bad crowd.
But adults are like this too — not only do we tend to become like those we spend time with, but we become like the ideas we immerse ourselves in continuously. So memory's role has the effect there too. We're bathing in what we remember. Even if we're not actively thinking it, it's there, imposing its opinions upon our nows, and that changes us.
I fall victim to this. Part of the problem, especially with names, is that there isn't a core group in my world. I have a Substack group (thankfully, half of you are all named Andrew), and then there's a LinkedIn group. Then the friend and family group (which really comes first but I don't want to edit this comment) and then there's a whole series of different work groups and then there's.... in some ways I think it's as much a function of a global network as it is a memory or memory slave function.
We've sort of normalized forgetting names, so the fallout isn't so bad. Though it's still a superpower to remember people's names and the details of their life they told you years ago. People just light up.
But I think it's not so much a specific forgetting, as it is forgetting — or never really remembering in the first place — that which is impactful in your life. Draw the line where you will. If that's not stored, you will be running at half capacity.
Thanks for this truly scary post !!!👍👍👍
What could the naked ape be called when it has most of its memories outsourced ??? ...
THE wet-dream of the transhumanists !!!