This! It’s both-and. Literacy has been undeniably good, but we rarely consider the consequences of widespread literacy.
There’s a way of knowing something that can be recalled orally from memory that is different and valuable. But we even measure it using a yardstick for written knowledge (accuracy, breadth, etc).
I believe this overemphasis on written knowledge (really, it’s implicitly a denial that any other type exists) is part of what drives the hysteria about LLMs ending the world. LLM doomerism has to believe that written knowledge is at least the most important if not the only necessary form of knowledge.
The oral tradition is not lost, it just evolved to suit the times; urban legends and creepy pasta just have a lot more relevance. Literacy created the written tradition, moved writing past being just a medium for storage and transmission and moved the word beyond the limitations of speech. What really killed the oral tradition (in the sense TFA means) is technology, the ability to reproduce without error and the idea of "correctness," the old myths ceased to evolve so new ones took their place.
It's interesting how people will think that the Klamath preserved an oral story from 7700 years ago, yet in the historiography of Europe, a 50-100 year gap from the events to the recording of them in text is viewed with deep suspicion. For example, viewing the accounts of the Trojan war as being even remotely accurate beyond "there was a war in the bronze age," is seen as pretty fringe.
having spent significant time with people who hold spoken knowledge, I can promise you that there are still many things that can only be passed this way, and an ancient comment, passed verbaly to me, is directly relevant, as it concerns the adoption of writing by an affiliated tribal group, and how this was proof that "their minds are weak"
This is such bullshit. Consider the Serbian mythical figure Dukljan. Do you really think this output of several centuries of Chinese Whispers game is a good way to preserve knowledge about the Roman emperor Diocletian?
I had similar thoughts while thinking about the right to own copies of music or films.
That is - increasing ease of recording and transmission of cultural artifacts has homogenised that output, and reduced the urge and ability of individuals to preserve and pass on that output.
I don't know. Having all scientific knowledge written down and being indexed for research seams to scale better. Also I am not sure what point the article is trying to make. It seams a bit vague.
I feel with the sentiment for the "loss of skill" due to convenience tech.
But hey, these days many people have the choice (meaning the time and money), to keep some of the skills alive. The internet gives you the possibility to find any person teaching the skill set you seek. For more common stuff even Youtube is a trove often for free.
It is ironic that the essay comes from UPenn in Philadelphia.
Many of you may find it shocking or unbelievable, but literacy is slipping in many parts of the US (like Philadelphia). The number of functionally illiterate people is increasing, schools are failing to educate students for a constellation of reasons.
The reality is that we instead suffer from a "tyranny" of illiteracy. I think those folks in their ivory towers, like upenn, should help to address that before starting the pearl-clutching about what has been lost because of widespread literacy.
> are capable of transmitting just as much useful information as the technologies of reading and writing.
No. A mythology of a demon spiting fire and rocks doesn't help you understand geology, tectonic plaques and volcanoes. We know that an eruption happened 7700 years ago without the need for this "oral traditions" bullshit.
Religious superstitions aren't "as much useful information" as science. That's why they are left behind. Religion is useless because is just a mask for ignorance.
Question: What do we call knowledge transfer which came before even oral tradition? I'm talking about things like "hold your axe this way", watching and learning stuff. These traditions are even more easily lost than oral tradition, I'd suppose.
In this thread: many people missing the points being made in the article.
>The ‘tyranny of literacy’ makes us sceptical of knowledge being retained in oral societies for such a long time
This is actually not what I thought this would be about from the headline: I thought someone would pull the Plato quote from Phaedrus about how literacy was inferior because it forced us to engage with views from dead men who were not able to answer for what they wrote.
It's just making the point that if you have a society that's entirely dependent on memory, it's going to have a better memory. This seems logical; their example about remembering phone numbers is simple and relatable.
And Plato made this point as well: "They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."
I'd imagine there's a fair amount of motivated reasoning behind rejecting this point.
The Jivaro of Peru ruse up against their Spanish oppressors. Apparently the Spanish governor of the region was very hungry for gold. He got a bit pushy torturing and killing to get compliance. The tribes banded together, took his fort, melted the gold he had demanded and poured it down his throat.
The written record was preserved some couple hundred years later (I seem to recall a priest was present for the confrontation took notes and drew pictures). The oral history in the tribe had lost it.
Cool story, lost because that tribe has a tradition of blood feuds which causes oral traditions to be interrupted.
My point is that oral tradition requires an unbroken chain and events often conspire to break generational tradition.
The written word is a hedge against the loss of oral history. There’s nothing to say we couldn’t have both.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 31.0 ms ] threadThere’s a way of knowing something that can be recalled orally from memory that is different and valuable. But we even measure it using a yardstick for written knowledge (accuracy, breadth, etc).
I believe this overemphasis on written knowledge (really, it’s implicitly a denial that any other type exists) is part of what drives the hysteria about LLMs ending the world. LLM doomerism has to believe that written knowledge is at least the most important if not the only necessary form of knowledge.
Superstitions should never be considered "knowledge", the same way that stupidity is not intelligence and noise is not information.
That is - increasing ease of recording and transmission of cultural artifacts has homogenised that output, and reduced the urge and ability of individuals to preserve and pass on that output.
I feel with the sentiment for the "loss of skill" due to convenience tech.
But hey, these days many people have the choice (meaning the time and money), to keep some of the skills alive. The internet gives you the possibility to find any person teaching the skill set you seek. For more common stuff even Youtube is a trove often for free.
Many of you may find it shocking or unbelievable, but literacy is slipping in many parts of the US (like Philadelphia). The number of functionally illiterate people is increasing, schools are failing to educate students for a constellation of reasons.
The reality is that we instead suffer from a "tyranny" of illiteracy. I think those folks in their ivory towers, like upenn, should help to address that before starting the pearl-clutching about what has been lost because of widespread literacy.
I mean some people think that a 65,000 years old story is true [0] so surely a 2000 years old one is more valid
0, https://www.abc.net.au/news/deeptime/tell-me-a-story/
No. A mythology of a demon spiting fire and rocks doesn't help you understand geology, tectonic plaques and volcanoes. We know that an eruption happened 7700 years ago without the need for this "oral traditions" bullshit.
Religious superstitions aren't "as much useful information" as science. That's why they are left behind. Religion is useless because is just a mask for ignorance.
>The ‘tyranny of literacy’ makes us sceptical of knowledge being retained in oral societies for such a long time
This is actually not what I thought this would be about from the headline: I thought someone would pull the Plato quote from Phaedrus about how literacy was inferior because it forced us to engage with views from dead men who were not able to answer for what they wrote.
It's just making the point that if you have a society that's entirely dependent on memory, it's going to have a better memory. This seems logical; their example about remembering phone numbers is simple and relatable.
And Plato made this point as well: "They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks."
I'd imagine there's a fair amount of motivated reasoning behind rejecting this point.
My point is that oral tradition requires an unbroken chain and events often conspire to break generational tradition.
The written word is a hedge against the loss of oral history. There’s nothing to say we couldn’t have both.