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.
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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.