[Brendinooo]

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.

[IAmBroom]

I can name exactly one living human being who has memorized Beowulf. 1200 years ago that number was undoubtedly greater.

Not as relevant today, you say? OK, name someone who has memorized a work of similar length.

So, I agree with you. That kind of "long-read" memorization is no longer appreciated and cultivated, and I have no doubt it impacts our brains differently than watching a YT video.

[nh23423fefe]

There are a bunch of people who memorize digits of pi now. These kinds of memorization feats are just status seeking showoffs. Why should imagine the brains of people a 1000 years ago were somehow different because they could memorize something I have no interest in?

[Brendinooo]

> These kinds of memorization feats are just status seeking showoffs

If it feels this way it's only because 1) it's an optional skill in our society as it's currently constructed and 2) for pi specifically, once you get past 15 significant figures you're kinda wasting your effort anyways[0].

I mean, sure. Anyone can flaunt their excesses. But if the functioning of society depended on people memorizing pi, more people would do it and would be less likely to do it in a showoffy way.

> Why should imagine the brains of people a 1000 years ago were somehow different

Because, in the lifetimes of a bunch of people who hang around here, we've experienced in real time how reliance on search engines can alter our memory processes. It's not a reach at all to extrapolate that to the question of memorization vs. relying on books.

[0]: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do...