Why I am a Platonist and you should be too

Plato thought that there were things that we could learn about the world.  He thought that if we had enough time and patience and the right collaborators, everything would eventually become clear.  His faith was less ontological and more social than the caricature that we call "Platonism" today.  He used myths and metaphors as a backdrop to the main event of his philosophy, which is dialectic, an essentially social activity.   His faith was simply that there were things to know and that we could learn together by talking to each other.

The static, absolutist mindset traditionally associated with Platonism doesn't follow from this faith.  Kant's argument that what we can learn is conditioned by us as much as it is about the world that we inhabit is completely consistent with Plato's faith.  What we need is dialectic, not mysticism.  We need analysis and self-criticism, not a fixed view of the world.

What worries me now is that while those on the Norvig side of the Norvig-Chomsky debate call their opponents, "Platonists" it is in fact they who lead us down the static, mindless path.  Frederick Jelinek's famous quote "every time I fire a linguist my models get better" lifts today to "every time I fire a theorist my models get better" across all kinds of domains.  Do we even need scientists any more?  

Plato - and I - would say we absolutely do.  But the reason isn't that we can make better predictions, discover patterns and relationships that we didn't know about before or even generate new theories or prove new mathematical theorems faster than AI can.  The reason is that our collaboratively developed shared understanding of the world, woven into the conceptual narrative that we call "science" is essential to who we are as a species.  The dialectical process that builds fragile consensus, sustains it for a while, then drives paradigm shift is not primarily an engineering optimization. It is a human social activity.   AI can absolutely obliterate humans when you cook it down to loss functions.  But that is completely missing the point of science.  Our innate desire is to understand.  Ability to predict and control is a side effect, not the primary goal of science.

The recent stalling of progress in AI has some people saying that what we need are "world models."  While this supports my argument and on the surface looks like "Platonism" in the caricature sense, I think we have to blow up the whole idea of static "models."  Again, science, art, and culture are all dynamic social activities.  Do we want these activities to be driven by algorithms with whatever-first-worked loss functions leading the way, or do we want things to be driven by human interactions?  Plato would see the former as like letting the Sophists lead culture and philosophy.  The problem, as Plato so clearly put it, is that when you let the sycophant-engines run unbridled, those pulling back toward real engagement end up "judged like a doctor brought before a jury of children with a cook as prosecutor" (Gorgias 492e).

The easy response to my challenge above is that we should just look at AI as another great "conversant" or "partner."  We can have it both ways - rapidly accelerated "progress" while somehow keeping the humans in charge.   At some level, I agree with that.  But a lot of discipline is going to be required.  Most importantly, we need to stay engaged and focused on significant culturally generative activities.  That means sustaining the drive to understand and to build shared understanding collaboratively.  That is what Plato tells us to do.

OK, as the old Greek was fond of ending things, let us be going.