Saturday, March 25, 2023

Socrates vs ChatGPT

 I suggest one read Gorgias, Plato's work about Socrates and the Sophists. For example in the introduction of Gorgias:

SOCRATES: He hardly seems to me to be answering the question. 

GORGIAS: Why don’t you question him then, if you like? 

SOCRATES: No, I won’t, not as long as you yourself may want to answer. I’d much rather ask you. It’s clear to me, especially from what he has said, that Polus has devoted himself more to what is called oratory than to discussing. 

POLUS: Why do you say that, Socrates? 

SOCRATES: Because, Polus, when Chaerephon asks you what craft Gorgias is knowledgeable in, you sing its praises as though someone were discrediting it. But you haven’t answered what it is. 

POLUS: Didn’t I answer that it was the most admirable one? 

SOCRATES: Very much so. No one, however, asked you what Gorgias’s craft is like, but what craft it is, and what one ought to call Gorgias. So, just as when Chaerephon put his [449] earlier questions to you and you answered him in such an admirably brief way, tell us now in that way, too, what his craft is, and what we’re supposed to call Gorgias. Or rather, Gorgias, why don’t you tell us yourself what the craft you’re an expert in is, and hence what we’re supposed to call you? GORGIAS: It’s oratory, Socrates.6 SOCRATES: So we’re supposed to call you an orator? 

GORGIAS: Yes, and a good one, Socrates, if you really want to call me “what I boast myself to be,” as Homer puts it.

SOCRATES: Of course I do. 

GORGIAS: Call me that then. 

SOCRATES: Aren’t we to say that you’re capable of making others orators too? GORGIAS: That’s exactly the claim I make. Not only here, but elsewhere, too. 

SOCRATES: Well now, Gorgias, would you be willing to complete the discussion in the way we’re having it right now, that of alternately asking questions and answering them, and to put aside for another time this long style of speechmaking like the one Polus began with? Please don’t go back on your promise, but be willing to give a brief answer to what you’re asked. 

GORGIAS: There are some answers, Socrates, that must be given by way of long speeches. Even so, I’ll try to be as brief as possible. This, too, in fact, is one of my claims. There’s no one who can say the same things more briefly than I. 

SOCRATES: That’s what we need, Gorgias! Do give me a presentation of this very thing, the short style of speech, and leave the long style for some other time.

GORGIAS: Very well, I’ll do that. You’ll say you’ve never heard anyone make shorter speeches.

What do we see. Socrates asking questions of Gorgias. Not asking Gorgias to explain something external to himself alone but to expostulate on some existential issue.

Read Plato and his Socratic tales, that capability is absent in ChatGPT. All ChatGPT can do it regurgitate and sort what it has been fed. It cannot answer a Socratic dialog.