Tell me, Crito, is a man who never reads books but pretends skillfully that he does, wiser than the man who reads in truth?
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Tell me, Crito, is a man who never reads books but pretends skillfully that he does, wiser than the man who reads in truth?
yes, how else could tweetophon know so much
It is quite clear, Socrates, that he is in fact the wiser of the two, seeing as skillfully pretending to read must entail an acquisition of the basic contents of the books one pretends to have read. To put the question a different way, if the object of reading a book is to understand the author’s ideas, who is the wiser reader: one who spends hours or perhaps days poring over the book, trying (and maybe failing) to understand it, or one who reads a concise and accurate Wikipedia summary in a matter of minutes. Put this way, you must admit, Socrates, that the former reader is a fool indeed.
That is the expectation.
I see your reason, my friend, but does it not follow that the writers of those Wikipedia articles must have read the text in question?
This is so, Socrates, though I do not see how that is relevant to my point.
Let me put the matter in another point of view: is it better to be educated in matters of learning and philosophy by a fool, or by a wise man?
The answer to your question seems obvious, Socrates. Surely it is better to be educated by a wise man, as wisdom is the goal of learning.
But, Crito, by our earlier reasoning, someone who has read the book must be a fool. If the writers of the Wikipedia articles have read the book, by our own admission, they must be fools, and if it is foolish to be educated in matters of learning and philosophy by fools, then we must be fools to read the Wikipedia article rather than read the book. Clearly, reading the summary cannot be any substitute for the book, if we are to have any interest in philosophy.
I must admit, Socrates, that my judgment of readers as fools was flawed. However, I would still contend that although true readers of books are wise, those who profit from their wisdom rather than reading the books themselves are wiser still. If one is venturing into an unknown land and wants to acquaint himself with the are, he must make an exhaustive foray into the whole expanse, taking much care to accurately mark details of the landscape and their relation to one another. If one does this properly, which certainly would take much time and skill—indeed, much wisdom—one may produce an accurate map of the territory. However, if one wishes to be acquainted with an the same territory and had a ready-made map at his disposal, would this man not be a fool to go through the trouble of exploring and making his own man rather than simply using the map left by those wise explorers before him? In this way, he saves much time and effort but acquired the same knowledge. Those with an internet connection find themselves in much the same situation. Wise men have already done the reading and left behind summaries that offer the wisdom and knowledge of the books in a simplified format. As with the explorer, it would be wiser for a prospective reader to simply read the summaries written by those who have read the book.
that's great in theory, but in practice this knowledge (of the guy who just bought a map) is not remembered, and soon discarded. But the man who made the map remembers it forever. If you wish to keep your wisdom, you have to do some of that hard part yourself.
Do you not agree, Crito, that some mapmakers, however, sell false maps to confuse travelers?
Would it, then, be wise for a traveler to look purely to his map, and not acquaint himself to the terrain drawn?
You present a convincing argument, Crito, and your logic appears quite bulletproof. It is plainly evident that you understand what is wise and what is unwise, so you will undoubtedly be unsurprised to hear that I wish to ask you a few questions, for I'm afraid that I may have only a partial understanding of your meaning; It would be unwise of me to waste an opportunity to acquire even more knowledge than you've already shared, and to ask a few short questions so I can experience the joy of understanding wisdom in its entirety.
But it is first necessary to ensure that I do indeed understand the portion of your meaning that I think I do, so I will start by asking you this:
Is it not the case that wisdom is only desirable insofar as it can bring practical benefits to those who possess it? Otherwise, wisdom could not be desired so universally as it is, and it could not stand so far to the opposite of typical objects of desire, like sexual pleasure and drinking alcohol -- desires which are often indulged in excess, resulting in harm to their pursuers. Wisdom does not have any such analog; wisdom is always practically beneficial. Is that correct?
I suppose you are right, Socrates. Just as the map in my earlier analogy provides practical benefit, so too with wisdom.
Therefore, wisdom is to be used when it is useful and discarded when it has lost its usefulness. One may, of course, keep the map for future reference, just as one may refer back to a Wikipedia article or other such summary if and when one finds it beneficial to remember some idea or wisdom gained from a book summary.
It's weird that I have been following this thread and suspending my disbelief about Socrates talking about the internet. But the word "bulletproof" took me out of it.
Socrates, what does it mean for something to be bulletproof? What is a "bullet"?
Socrates, my friend, have you nothing to say? It would seem the truth of my rhetoric has left you speechless, no small feat for such a gadfly as yourself.
>would this man not be a fool to go through the trouble of exploring and making his own man rather than simply using the map left by those wise explorers before him?
Oh, Crito, I don't like to barge and interrupt two gentlemen at their discussion, but in this instance I simply must be rude and enter the conversation at hand. You argue well, like Socrates admitted, there's conviction in your logic, but you make the wrong assumption to equate reading literature with the craft of mapmaking and I disagree with this notion that you can simply take someone else's effort and take it as your own when reading is the matter. In literature, in art, there's hardly the one way for all undergoing such a task and one person's interpretation can never be someone else's, it is entirely his. No book is ever the same territory for an individual, it is entirely new ground he himself must traverse and, as you say, put himself through the trouble of exploring and making his own "map" rather than simply using that of another man. Art is a mirror, so it follows it shows only that which we, ourselves, see in it, it speaks to us, to our sentiments, morals, fears, hopes and dreams, and it would be a fatal mistake to think you can just undergo a shortcut to such things, even though you can fool the masses and make a convincing performance in regards to you actually having went through such an effort. But in the end, the worst thing about it as it seems to me, is that you would simply rob yourself of the experience, of that catharsis and illumination that comes from reading a striking work that impacts us, fundamentally changes our perception of ourselves, of our surroundings and of the world.
does wisdom not often sprout from the mouths of babes? surely it is not the speaker that matters, but the truth of what is spoken.
you mean like this:
?si=5HqOLE-q3D5mFPoE
Absolute chad behavior.
I will sit silently and listen intently to this exchange. Perhaps I will later recall the discussion to a friend, albeit with a degree of uncertainty regarding specific details.
No, simply for the reason that reading unlike justice, is a skill and not a virtue, whereby upon the latter you gain more from its appearances, but in the former the benefit lies in the art itself. A man who reads in truth learns more than a man who pretends, although admittedly the pretender often gets more social validation for this is his end, and not learning.
Ultimately I believe it depends which matters more for the person, wisdom or validation? but that's another discussion.
Can someone make a summary later so that I can pretend I read the whole thread?
>Is the man who bloviates deceptively wiser than one who is deceived by some literature and attempts to bloviate that deception as virtue
the bar is only as high as the wisdom of people who can be deceived
I don't get it, please explain
One of the best IQfy threads we've had in 2023, good job lads.
I have honestly sometimes learned themes, messages of books and even full philosophies by pretending to know about them until it just clicked one day while shitposting.
Shitposting is an art, an art of wisdom. The shitposter is wiser than both the man who does not read but reads Wikipedia articles and the man who reads both the book and the summary on Wikipedia.
The proof is trivial. Q.E.D.