Learn or Process?
Zachary Gartenberg’s lecture last night drew from sources like Plato’s Meno, where Socrates asks whether virtue can be taught or whether learning is a recollection of knowledge already within. Gartenberg contrasted this with AI, which learns through external feedback loops. Among the examples discussed was the story of Oedipus, who uncovers the truth of his origins not as abstract information, but as a devastating recognition that he has unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. The example illustrates how human learning can redefine identity. Yet many forms of learning are mundane, procedural, and far from transformative. Is human learning’s distinctiveness being a little overstated?
