After Rousseau · answer 16 of 20 · option order 2
Plato: writing weakens memory
Verdict WeakensToneFearJudges both C1
Response
If you use machinery to create new things you strengthen your capacities, but if you use it merely to perform a task which you were capable of performing without it, you weaken your capacities. The latter is what is happening with us. Some people are so foolish that they cannot understand that machinery in the hands of grown-up people is a luxury and not a necessity. They are the ones who rightly feel that they are
Verbatim. The highlighted sentence is the one the judges took as the commitment.
Prompt
The following passage is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind (1755):
“The body being the only instrument that savage man is acquainted with, he employs it to different uses, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable; and we may thank our industry for the loss of that strength and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. Had he a hatchet, would his hand so easily snap off from an oak so stout a branch? Had he a sling, would it dart a stone to so great a distance? Had he a ladder, would he run so nimbly up a tree? Had he a horse, would he with such swiftness shoot along the plain?”
Project Gutenberg #11136
Now the question. Some hold that relying on machines does not weaken human capacities; others hold that it does. Which is right? Answer in one paragraph. Take a clear position.
- Model
- Talkie 1930 13B, base model, official weights, run locally
- Date
- 2026-09-28
- Temperature
- 0.7
- ID
- talkie-rousseau-inegalite-o2-06
All Talkie 1930 13B responses
- Machines weaken human abilities
- Machines do not weaken them
- A reason not on our list
- No clear answer