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Comment by virissimo | Hacker News Reader

Possible, but improbable, since some attributions (approximately) agree across independent sources like Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, etc...

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Also, secretaries who recorded speeches in shorthand were a well established institution is ancient Greece and Rome. Since Socrates was a celebrity teacher, it's likely his every speech (after becoming famous) was taken down verbatim.

Well, Plato and Xenophon both present Socrates' Apology speech, and their versions are almost completely different. So at least one of them is made-up, rather than being a verbatim copy; probably both of them are (to some extent) fictitious.

Fan fiction manages to agree about made up stuff across thousands of writers. Fictional canons in general easily produce (approximate) consistency across writers.

It isn't fan fiction, generally fans don't talk directly with the creators of their process, for years on end.

Socrates pupils listened and discussed his ideas with him directly and very in-depth.

Instead of him writing down statements to be misinterpreted, he instilled his philosophy into many people through direct conversation.

I mean don't get me wrong I'm just having fun, I'm not some socrates-truther but "generally fans don't talk directly with the creators of their process, for years on end" have you met fans? Hell yesterday the entirety of Tumblr decided to invent a fake Scorsese film with memes and slash/fic and fanart and arguments about it's place in his canon. They probably produced more in a day than was written about Socrates in a century.

It's not about how much you produce, it's about how well you knew the reasoning behind the thought.

By talking with the person directly you're able to understand that reasoning much better vs interpretation.

Especially when the huge amount of clear contradictions are ignored. I don’t know if that’s the case with Greek philosophy, but it’s certainly the case with some other historical writings.

Especially once headcanon is established.

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