Plato
Reasoning our way out of the cave
Intro
Plato was one of the earliest ancient Greek philosophers and is undoubtedly one of the most influential thinkers in the canon of Western philosophy. His teacher was none other than Socrates, another legendary figure in this tradition. However, unlike Socrates, who never wrote anything down, Plato wrote dozens of texts, including the Republic, The Symposium, and The Apology.
Plato was a utopian thinker; he spent a lot of his time wondering and writing about how society could be reformed. At the same time, he tended to be more than a tad cynical about the ability of the masses to govern themselves, as in a democracy (which Athens was at the time). Plato also differed from current scientific thought in his embrace of rationalism over empiricism, believing that reason is the only way to apprehend the truths of the universe.
Still, Plato’s goal was, in essence, to help people see through their own biases and flawed assumptions—things that are just as pervasive today as they were in Ancient Greece. Although he lived more than two thousand years ago, his work reflects an understanding of many cognitive biases and heuristics that have been coined by modern-day behavioral scientists.1
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
– Plato, Republic2
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
