What would the ancient Greeks say about Blockchain?

We can guess from what Plato said about the invention of writing almost 2500 years ago.

Plato, considered to be the father of Western philosophy, saw writing as an innovative technology much in the same way that blockchain is seen for its technological innovation today.

Let us see what he says in his work entitled “Phaedrus,” through his famous avatar, Socrates, about the invention of writing, and you can easily guess the parallels.

Plato writes:

“Among the ancient gods of Naucratis in Egypt there was one named Theuth, and it was he who first discovered numbers and calculation, geometry and astronomy, as well as checkers and dice, and above all else, writing.

The king of all Egypt at that time was the god Ammon. Theuth came to show him his arts and urged him to impart them to all the Egyptians…

When they came to write, Theuth said: “O king, here is something which, when learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and wisdom.” Ammon, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man may give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they may benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, being the author’s father, your devotion to it has led you to describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are.

In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the souls of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on characters belonging to others, instead of trying to remember from inside, all on your own. You have not discovered a potion to remember, but to remind; you give students the impression of wisdom, not its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have learned much, when for the most part they will know nothing.”

These words translated from Plato’s “Phaedrus” dialogues are about the words themselves, and they are almost 2,500 years old. But don’t they sound familiar? A new technology promises to dramatically improve memory, but can be observed to do the opposite, to “introduce forgetfulness into the soul” as the price of the trust the new technology has won.

Did Plato underestimate the contribution of writing technology? It’s easy to say yes, with 2,500 years of hindsight and all the benefits that writing gives us today. But can we put ourselves in the shoes of “most expert Theuth” and make the same lofty claims about blockchain? We are eager to try, for we believe deeply in the deep mnemonic implications of this new form of writing that nothing but the most catastrophic natural or artificial disasters can erase. If it is not “a potion for memory”, if not “wisdom”, then nothing can be.

Plato, speaking through Socrates and the god-king Ammon, surely has the same criticism for blockchain as he did for writing. But would he underestimate in this case too? HistoryDAO is an unapologetic blockchain champion, so we stand before this pioneering titan of all thought and respectfully say “yes!” But we take a number of important points:

• We should admit that we are closer to the one who “can give birth to the elements of an art” and not the other “who can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them.” So it is up to us to win the judgment of others.
• Just as Plato anticipated, mnemonic technologies show significant signs of changing how we remember things, perhaps for the worse. Certainly we lose the practice of committing things to memory which we have usually committed before. It’s too easy now to use our smartphones to look up names, directions, dates, phone numbers, recipes, formulas, etc. instead of storing these things in memory like we used to.
• We should consider carefully what kind of “sprinkling” we have. What distinction was Plato trying to make between “remembering” and “memory”? And what is the meaning of “remembering from the inside”?

So let us consider and answer the question of the third point with more help from Plato, for his Socrates was challenged in the Phaedrus dialogues as follows:

“Surely, when our Egyptian scribe receives a written invitation to a dinner party, it tells him something new—it is not merely reminding him?”

Socrates responds by drawing distinctions between different levels of purpose. Indeed, he reminds his challenger of the higher level of conversation they are having, reaching down into the mundane realm into which he had momentarily fallen:

“Clearly, when I said that the written word could only serve to remind us of what we know, I did not mean it in this general sense… It is only the highest kind of knowledge, the knowledge of the object itself, the known and truly real being, which the written word cannot teach us. That is, not an image of a circle, but the real circle. Not a picture of a bee, but the real bee.”

Of course, writing is very practical for all kinds of daily activities, which have nothing to compare with regard to matters of the soul. It is a different conversation that Plato’s Socrates is not interested in having. Plato reminds us of the supreme priority of wisdom and truth over worldly concerns. In Plato’s view, nothing can be called progress if wisdom and truth do not define the progress. In other words, we have received nothing if we have only received air conditioners, medicines, smart phones, trips to the moon, etc. These are nothing without wisdom and knowledge of the truth. And writing, it seems, provides no such mediation according to Plato.

But reminders are undoubtedly extremely useful, so all is not lost. After all, we wouldn’t know anything about Plato without the “reminiscences” he himself undertook to write. So, where does wisdom and truth come from if writing is disqualified?

Socrates is of course happy to answer:

“Only when a student has pondered for a long time, in discourses and examples, and has been tested, does student and teacher ask and answer questions with good will and without envy – only then, when reason and knowledge are the ultimate consequence of human effort.. .”

According to Plato, then, true knowledge can only come from discourse. Plato has many ways of expressing this thought, and this is where HistoryDAO draws special inspiration. We boldly assert before the father of all Western philosophy, as Theuth did to Ammon, that blockchain is the most irrefutable system of “reminders” known to mankind. We didn’t invent it ourselves, but what an invention it is! And by building a community around it in a way that facilitates free discourse, we can actually have a path towards truth and wisdom as well.