If Plato were to come back today I think he
would have a lot to say about so many things
but crowdsourcing would be of great interest
to him.
I take Plato to the Googleplex and he's very,
very interested in our technology.
And that would appeal to him very much.
But he gets into a conversation at the Googleplex
with a software engineer on crowdsourcing
and could crowdsourcing answer the kind of
ethical questions that he first raised.
And he is, he's quite interested in this idea
but he's very down on it.
He's very much against it because, you know,
he doesn't -- he didn't have much faith in
the ethical opinions of the masses.
He thought that ethics was a kind of knowledge
that is extremely hard to attain.
He's right.
I mean that's one of the reasons we've left
him so far behind.
Slowly, slowly we make progress -- ethical
progress.
But he thought, you know, it was a kind of
knowledge and it takes a trained mind and,
you know, it's harder than mathematics.
Mathematics is a preparation for this kind
of knowledge that you need that kind of dispassion
and distance from your own life to be able
to access ethical knowledge.
So he would not have been very interested
in crowdsourcing and what is the opinion of
the masses of people.
And he also would say, I think, well then
how do we ever make any ethical progress.
How do we ever learn anything new to challenge
our intuitions if, in fact, it's just being
crowdsourced.
I do have Plato getting quite addicted to
the Internet and looking up things on the
Internet and Wikipedia constantly.
I mean that was partly -- I needed a quick
way to bring him up to speed and he is -- so
he carries -- while he's at the Googleplex
he gets a Chromebook, they give him a Chromebook
and he carries it with him everywhere.
I mean he's constantly consulting it.
But again he is -- he believed in the expert.
He believed, you know, in expertise.
He -- Aristotle, his student, was actually
says some things that are much more continent
or favorable toward crowdsourcing.
You know, he says that if you go to a meal
if it's just cooked by one person you may
not like it but if it's a feast with many
people bringing their dishes you'll find something
to like Aristotle says.
And he really has an idea there of crowdsourcing.
Let's try to get as many points of view as
possible.
Plato is very dubious of this.
He believes that it's extremely difficult
to know anything.
It takes a tremendous amount of training -- years
and years of training.
He has the rulers of his state studying advanced
mathematics for ten years before they can
even think about political philosophy.
That's how hard he thinks these things are.
