Socrates Was Against Teaching Writing

This debate occurs with every technology that augments human capability, with or without humans in the loop. On the one hand, nothing precluded you from pursuing the problem on your own.

In this respect, what’s notable is your saying after three days you abandoned this approach. One assumes it was because you sensed this problem had been previously worked out (knowledge and intuition) and this you were probably wasting valuable time better spent on other pursuits. Indeed, suspect you often use books, slide rules/calculators and computers, for example, to augments your problem solving.

That fits with real life in two ways: none of us are ever smart enough or have enough time to address all problems in all domains (e.g., reading a book a week for life only amounts to 3,000 books out of some 143 million unique titles in the world today). In a world where total knowledge is said to double every couple of years, yet everyone is already suffering from information overload and time starved, more augmentation is essential.

On the other hand, while we’re all cyborgs already, there are some types of augmentation more socially and politically viable than others. Eugenics, psychotropic drugs, nootropic/cognitive enhancing drugs are examples.

Musk’s idea, while intriguing, is fraught with such social and political consequences. Absent a long term analysis of its benign efficacy and protracted public discussion it’s simply an intriguing idea — somewhat like buying a ticket from him now to fly to Mars and spend your life there. Maybe best wait and see how that works out first.

Point is that augmenting our knowledge with technology is not the central issue. Rather, its developing both better thinking skills, especially critical thinking, and a more circumspect understanding of our rapidly changing world. Some technologies are just more useful than others.

Doc Huston