Plato’s Hippias Minor: Truth, Lies, and Feedback Loops

What is the truth? In our previous discussion, we heard the conclusion of Socrates that measurement is the greatest skill that we can exercise. The title character of Plato’s Lesser Hippias, or Hippias Minor, is unable to separate cause and effect in the motions of time, and the dialogue challenges not only Hippias but the reader to measure the difference that separates truth and lie – not just in objective physical outcomes but also in subjective value judgments. It’s a matter of special importance now, 2,400 years later, as technology is used to generate and broadcast value judgments globally, often anonymously and of questionable intent. As one participant pointed out, truth and lie can both be present at the same time and, as the observer, it’s the soul’s job to measure its own relative perspective in distinguishing the difference. Recalling the division of the line of knowledge that Socrates describes in The Republic, gauging differences in perspective may be our guide to the path of truth that connects our hypotheses to the first principles of things – especially with predictive technologies like ChatGPT that we discussed in the conclusion.