Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by speak_plainly | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

speak_plainly

This is a midwit-level take on Plato.

Arguments:

Plato is responsible for a dualistic model of mind and matter that hampers our thinking today.

Plato had an unrealistic ideal of what knowledge is.

Plato had weird methodological assumptions.

There are real criticisms you could make about Plato and his work, but this misses the mark by miles.

View on HN

After reading it, the feeling I had: I was hungry for lunch but all that was on hand was 3½ oreo cookies and half a small bottle of soda that's losing its fizz.

I suspect someone prompted an LLM: write an article that makes an unconventional argument about a philosopher.

Unconventional would be Bataille.

In 2018? That's pretty impressive.

We need to coin a phrase for this constant accusal of "being written by LLM". LLM-ophobia?

Llamanoia

In 2018? Interesting argument.

Hardly unconventional, a significant amount of the past 150 years of continental philosophy has involved critiques of Plato along the same lines as expressed here.

My understanding is that Plato's major contribution to philosophy was his method of analysis, and not his specific ideas. Is that on the right track?

Not really. Both his ideas and his method (dialogues) have been very influential.

These days, you could probably say that his ideas are more influential than his method: not many academic philosophers write in dialogue form, but his ideas are still referenced constantly.

Thank you. I guess by 'method of analysis', I meant the way he refined definitions in an attempt to make them logically consistent, not his use of dialogue necessarily. I'm just a layman, but it seemed to me like that was what distinguished him from his contemporaries.

I think you might be thinking of Socrates, who is indeed mostly known for his Socratic method. But it’s a bit complicated, as we mostly know of Socrates from Plato’s writings, in which he is usually the main character. Socrates didn’t write anything down himself.

In any case, both Socrates and Plato have been immensely influential on Western thought, probably more than anyone else.

Thanks again. I do know all of this, and I've read quite a few of his works. I was hoping someone who has formally studied philosophy or the history of philosophy could give an in-depth take.

Sure, I mean you’re kind of right there with the comment about Socrates being known for his method as compared to his contemporaries. But the key is that his method is seen as such a radical departure that he is typically considered the “first” philosopher, with other Greek thinkers before him lumped into the category of pre-Socratics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Socratic_philosophy

This is a narrative though, and of course the actual history of philosophy is more complicated. But at least in academic philosophy, the order of teaching and categorization usually goes pre-Socratics, then Socrates and Plato, then Aristotle.

> This is a midwit-level take on Plato.

Is this intended as a pejorative? Why not just say "dimwitted"? It would communicate your semantics much clearer.

Hopefully you wrote this ironically otherwise... QED?

I'm legitimately confused what was confusing about my comment. Are we supposed to presume that the author thinks themselves better or not?

Typically when someone encounters a word they're unfamiliar with they'll do at least a cursory search of it[0] to see if it's a real word, the context, etc., rather than assuming the author made it up or intended to use some other word. Dimwit and midwit mean two different things.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=midwit

> Dimwit and midwit mean two different things.

> Midwit is an internet slang term, often used pejoratively, to describe a person with average or slightly above-average intelligence who believes they are exceptionally intelligent or insightful.

Does this not describe most of the people on this forum? Why would you invite such comparisons if you aren't confident you're better or "more correct" in some way? It seems they intended to use "dimwit", as that would result in comment making more sense overall by drawing a clear contrast with the speaker.

One commonly observed midwit behaviour is to make arguments based on the dictionary definition of a word, having failed to understand that there is a complex set of cultural and social connotations implied by its use. In the case of the midwit, the implication is that intelligent people understand, stupid people understand, but the half-smart get completely the wrong end of the stick.

Yea another dumbass behavior is using words nobody can understand because they sound trendy. This doesn't make plato magically interesting unless you're living 2500 years ago. At least I can understand plato because he, and especially his successor, made comparisons quite explicit. He would not have used "guy like you or me" as an implied insult....

It seems a reasonable response for someone who is reading the term for the first time ever. I also didnt knew the word despite having seen the iq graph meme.

"Midwit" must be new to you, but in fact it has a particular meaning and sense in internet parlance. A midwit is a person who believes themselves to have transcended the dimwitted, when in actuality the dimwit is in better agreement with a genius/the very-well-informed.

Here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit

Reply on news.ycombinator.com