On April 19, 2025, six of us conversed about Cheryl talking with her friend Rhonda, about her conversation with Plato while Cheryl was his media escort as described in Rebecca Goldstein’s dialogue in her Plato at the Googleplex. Cheryl tells Rhonda that she was annoyed with Marcus, one of Google’s software engineers, who joined Plato and Cheryl for lunch in a Googleplex’s cafeteria because he had read Plato’s Republic, and she had not. Testing Marcus’s knowledge about Plato, she asked him to summarize the book in five words. Holding up his fingers, Marcus said, “The. Perfect. State. Defines. Justice.” Plato adds to Marcus’s summary by saying the perfect state is ruled by those who know justice, and that the understanding of justice prevents a ruler from being corrupted by the perquisites of power. Unless the ruler becomes a philosopher, there can be no justice in the state.
Their discussion turned from the perfect state to perfect teeth when Cheryl suggested that Marcus could use the services of Dr. Kolodny, her children’s orthodontist, to straighten his teeth. Realizing she was being hurtful, she tried to change the subject, but Plato grabbed the topic of orthodontics, noting that “If you want to have your teeth straightened, you would go to someone who knows how to align your bite. Is there anyone who knows what actions are good or bad? For that matter, is there a difference between a life well-lived and one not well-lived?” The question triggers Cheryl’s tirade about the drop-dead gorgeous fashion models and beefy defensive ends she escorted on their book tours, asking who can judge whether their lives were lived well. Perhaps, Plato noted, that Cheryl should give the Google Talk on lives well-lived, a compliment that surprised Cheryl. Plato further observed that understanding emerges from conversation.
Their conversation swerved when Plato proposed making Cheryl his unremunerated attendant, a slave, causing Cheryl to remonstrate, “We don’t do slavery in the Bay Area! Even barbarians are people. Each person’s life is as important as anyone else's.” Again, Cheryl was taken aback when Plato said, “Brava!” Cheryl told Rhonda that Plato sparked a fire in the philosophical part of her mind. They were late and missed the tour of the Googleplex, but Marcus noted that the information is not in the building but in the cloud, piquing Plato’s curiosity. He held that mathematical reasoning goes into making the unknown knowable.
One of our group objected to making Euclidean Geometry the basis of knowledge since it is not true for all circumstances. After all, the inscription at the entrance of Plato’s Academy stated, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.” Another asked, “Can the Euclidean approach to proving a theorem be applied to other circumstances and used to answer other questions? How do we get to the truth without reason?”
Going back to Goldstein’s dialogue, Marcus gives Plato a Chromebook and shows him how to use Google. He types in Socrates, and within a tenth of a second, 4,700,000 results are listed on the screen. Marcus claimed Google is gathering knowledge, but Plato wryly noted, “It is gathering information. It is not clear whether it is gathering knowledge.” However, Marcus argues that a crowdsourcing algorithm that ranks the entries makes it knowledge. Another of our discussion group asked, “Is that what the Canadian Parliament does in Ottawa?” triggering a long diversion on another topic, with many of us apologizing for our government’s treatment of Canada to our Canadian guest. Finally, Plato asks, “Could we ask Google how we can live our lives?” No, said Marcus, but he is working on the Ethical Answers Search Engine, or EASE, to answer these questions.
At the end of our discussion, one of us asked, “Can Artificial Intelligence drive cars?” Since there are about 40,000 traffic fatalities each year in the United States, would it be acceptable if self-driving cars lowered the fatality rate to 4000 or even one? One participant asked Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), Gemini, how to prevent measles outbreaks, and it recommended vaccination and strongly advised against using vitamin A as a preventative. Did Gemini give better advice than the current Secretary of HHS? Are we ready to live our lives guided by AI or even to be ruled by reason?
We invite you to continue our conversation about Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, on May 4, 2025, from 2 PM to 4 PM using Google Meet, and share your insights on Plato and philosophy.
