Plato got virtually everything wrong (2018)
Aristotle, Plato, and early science
- Several comments attack Aristotle’s wrong mechanics (heavier objects fall faster; motion requires continuous force), but others argue:
- These are intuitive in everyday regimes with drag; “heavier falls faster” is a decent approximation in air.
- The real problem was later dogmatism: people treating Aristotle as infallible instead of testing.
- Criticizing him for not using calculus is anachronistic; math was extremely primitive and even basic results like Pythagoras’ theorem were new.
- Others note that Aristotle also formalized logic and raised foundational “why do things move?” questions, which was a huge advance.
Critiques of the article
- Many see the article as shallow “clickbait” or a “midwit” take:
- It cherry-picks Plato’s worst ideas, over-focuses on the Republic, and ignores aporetic dialogues and Plato’s own self-critique in Parmenides.
- It judges him by modern scientific correctness instead of by the questions he opened.
- Some argue stronger critiques come from Nietzsche, Popper, and Russell, who see Plato as debasing reality in favor of abstractions or as an enemy of open society.
What philosophy (and Plato) are for
- Multiple commenters stress philosophy is about asking and refining questions (justice, love, being), not supplying final answers or empirical laws.
- Plato/Socrates are praised for method (definition-refinement, dialogue) and for inaugurating systematic inquiry; later traditions (analytic, existentialist) are framed as sustained, often anti-Platonic, responses rather than wholesale replacements.
Platonism, logic, and dualism
- One long thread blames Plato’s elevation of logic/math and mind–body dualism for:
- Modern “rationalist” movements, magical thinking (“thoughts determine reality”), AI “foom” scenarios, and authoritarian “philosopher-king” politics.
- Replies push back:
- This is framed as standard idealism vs materialism and universals vs nominalism; many modern “rationalists” are actually nominalists.
- Others defend Platonic-style primacy of logic/math (possibly timeless, independent of physical instantiation).
- Some suggest math/logic are constraints of human cognition, not of the universe itself.
Politics, religion, and worldviews
- Several note Plato’s role in shaping hierarchical, anti-democratic thinking (Republic as proto-fascist; influence on Christian theology).
- There’s a side-debate about whether “nihilistic secular materialism” is really a dominant worldview:
- Some see it as pervasive among elites and policy-makers; others insist most people, including the “managerial class,” still hold strongly idealistic or spiritual assumptions.
- One comment links Plato’s dualism to future tech: substrate-independent “minds” (e.g., AI states surviving hardware replacement) could make a kind of mind–body dualism practically real.