alt Hacker NewsIt’s a pretty interesting point.
If a large fraction of the population can’t even hold five complex ideas in their head simultaneously, without confusing them after a few seconds, are they literate in the sense of e.g. reading Plato?
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fn-mote • 01/22/2025
> can’t even hold five complex ideas in their head
As an aside, my observation of beginning programmers is that even two (independent) things happening at the same time is a serious cognitive load.
Amusingly enough, I remember having the same trouble on the data structures final in college, so “people in glass houses”.
wolfram74 • 01/21/2025
What makes an "idea" atomic/discrete/cardinal? What makes an idea "complex" vs simple or merely true? Over what finite duration of time does it count as "simultaneously" being held?
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I hope they're literate to understand we're only reading about that alleged exchange because Plato wrote it down.
Median literacy in the US is famously somewhere around the 6th grade level, so it's unlikely most of the population is much troubled by the thoughts of Plato.