> Reminds me of Plato's concern about reading and writing dulling your mind. (I think he had his sock puppet Socrates express the concern. But I could be wrong.)
Nope.
Read the dialogue (Phaedrus). It's about rhetoric and writing down political discourses. Writing had existed for millennia. And the bit about writing being detrimental is from a mythical Egyptian king talking to a god, just a throwaway story used in the dialogue to make a tiny point.
In fact the conclusion of that bit of the dialogue is that merely having access to text may give an illusion of understanding. Quite relevant and on point I'd say.
> In fact the conclusion of that bit of the dialogue is that merely having access to text may give an illusion of understanding. Quite relevant and on point I'd say.
Well, so that's exactly my point: Plato was an old man who yelled at clouds before it was cool.
Can you point at some references? Horse riding started around 3500 BC[0], while horse carriages started around 100BC [1], oxen/buffalo drawn devices around 3000 BC[1].
"However, the most unequivocal early archaeological evidence of equines put to working use was of horses being driven. Chariot burials about 2500 BC present the most direct hard evidence of horses used as working animals. In ancient times chariot warfare was followed by the use of war horses as light and heavy cavalry."
Long discussion in History Exchange about dating the cave paintings mentioned in the wikipedia article above:
The 3500 BCE date for horse ridding is speculative and poorly supported by evidence. I thought the language in the bit I pasted made that clear. "Horse being driven" means attached to chariots, not ridden.
Unless you want to date the industrial revolution to 30 BCE when Vitruvius described the aeolipile, we can talk about the evidence of these technologies impact in society. For chariots that would be 1700 BCE and horseback riding well into iron age ~1000 BCE.
I think you are reading "carriage" too specifically, when I suspect it's meant as a wider term for any horse-drawn wheeled vehicle.
Your [0] says "Chariot burials about 2500 BC present the most direct hard evidence of horses used as working animals. In ancient times chariot warfare was followed by the use of war horses as light and heavy cavalry.", just after "the most unequivocal early archaeological evidence of equines put to working use was of horses being driven."
That suggests the evidence is stronger for cart use before riding.
If you follow your [1] link to "bullock cart" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullock_cart you'll see: "The first indications of the use of a wagon (cart tracks, incisions, model wheels) are dated to around 4400 BC[citation needed]. The oldest wooden wheels usable for transport were found in southern Russia and dated to 3325 ± 125 BC.[1]"
That is older than 3000 BC.
I tried but failed to find something more definite. I did learn from "Wheeled Vehicles and Their Development in Ancient Egypt – Technical Innovations and Their (Non-) Acceptance in Pharaonic Times" (2021) that:
> The earliest depiction of a rider on horseback in Egypt belongs to the reign of Thutmose III.80 Therefore, in ancient Egypt the horse is attested for pulling chariots81 before it was used as a riding animal, which is only rarely shown throughout Pharaonic times.
I also found "The prehistoric origins of the domestic horse and horseback riding" (2023) referring to this as the "cart before the horse" vs. "horse before the cart" debate, with the position that there's "strong support for the “horse before the cart” view by finding diagnostic traits associated with habitual horseback riding in human skeletons that considerably pre-date the earliest wheeled vehicles pulled by horses." https://journals.openedition.org/bmsap/11881
On the other hand, "Tracing horseback riding and transport in the human skeleton" (2024) points out "the methodological hurdles and analytical risks of using this approach in the absence of valid comparative datasets", and also mentions how "the expansion of biomolecular tools over the past two decades has undercut many of the core assumptions of the kurgan hypothesis and has destabilized consensus belief in the Botai model." https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.ado9774
Quite a fascinating topic. It's no wonder that Wikipedia can't give a definite answer!
Your writing style is very much AI-like. I am not accusing you of using LLMs to write this comment, but I would like to point out that you may inadvertently be incorporating LLM-like writing.
One example is that before 2022, praising analogies was not a thing. Now every thread in HN is full of people praising each other's analogies - much like the sycophantic LLM.
I did not say it was unfit and I don't see how discussing writing styles and the influence of LLMs on it is off topic on a thread about the effects of LLMs on cognition.
I don't believe I was impolite or making a personal attack. I had a relevant point and I made it clearly and in a civil manner. I strongly disagree with your assessment.
OK, I may have been too quick to pattern-match on characterising someone's writing as being LLM-generated. Sorry for that. However we do want to be careful about criticising someone’s writing style; the guidelines ask us to avoid that.
Also, suspicions about the changing frequency of certain phrases in HN comments can easily be tested:
Really? You claim that praising an analogy would never happen in normal conversation before 2022? Seems fairly normal to potentially start with "that's a good way of putting it, but [...]" since forever...
Maybe, much like we invented gyms to exercise after civilization made most physical labor redundant (at least in developed countries), we will see a rise of 'creative writing gyms' of some sort in the future.
I like this outlook a lot. I suppose I've met a lot of people that do creative writing recreationally and also socially in clubs, writing not just poetry but also things like adventures for roleplaying games like D&D.
I wonder what the commercialized form of a "gym but for your brain" would look like and if it would take off and if it would be more structured than... uh... schools? Wait, wouldn't this just be like a college except the students are there because they want to be, and not for vocational reasons?
Same story for me. What has really helped is trying to make initiating useful and desirable tasks easier and seeking distractions harder. Bit by bit, cultivating that mindset changes things for the better over time.
The trap is usually "I've figured it out and this new system will solve my life" only to be burned out days or weeks later because this only addresses the symptoms and not that cause.
Cultivating a more friendly environment has been a great help for me. That and taking notes.
I rmemember what truly worked for me, as a chronic case, was a 1 day workweek. Granted I did work normal days, but I only mean things that cost motivation like side projects. On other days I even stopped myself when I started to kid myself about 'doing it'. It made me feel gross but that gross feeling helped when the scheduled day comes.
I stopped doing it for some reason. But I remember it worked. For what it is.
If the solution to all problems with attaching gpu farms to our workflows is to attach more gpu farms to our workflows, I can't see how this isn't just an elaborate scam.
So much of what people hyping AI write in this forums boils down to "this vendor will keep making this tool better forever and management will let me keep the productivity gains".
Experience shows otherwise. Urging me to embrace a new way of building software that is predicated on benevolent vendors and management seems hostile to me.
Nope.
Read the dialogue (Phaedrus). It's about rhetoric and writing down political discourses. Writing had existed for millennia. And the bit about writing being detrimental is from a mythical Egyptian king talking to a god, just a throwaway story used in the dialogue to make a tiny point.
In fact the conclusion of that bit of the dialogue is that merely having access to text may give an illusion of understanding. Quite relevant and on point I'd say.