site banner
parrhesia  1yr ago (parrhesia.substack.com)   3280 thread views

History Classes Are Mostly Useless

parrhesia.substack.com

SS: Americans are rather ignorant about history. Moral reasoning by historical analogy is bad. Historical examples can be misleading for making predictions. These facts suggest that the utility of history courses is overestimated. In fact, they are mostly useless.

-4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think there are some places where it does seem to be structural and some places where you have a Great Man.

The fall of the Soviet Union seems mostly structural to me - long-running economic stagnation while the West got richer created widespread discontent, which eventually led to a situation where nobody could bail out the boat because everyone was bailing out of the boat. It could have ended differently, in the sense that there could have been WWIII instead, but I don't think any particular person destroyed the Soviet Union and I'm not sure any particular person could have saved it where Gorbachev failed (though perhaps someone else replacing Brezhnev might have had a chance).

The US's incredible military capability in WWII, basically carrying the Pacific War by itself, doesn't map onto anyone's then-recent decisions AFAIK; it really does just seem to be "the country was big and rich, and quantity has a quality all its own".

Bill Gates also doesn't seem like a Great Man to me. The time of consumer computers had come; remove him from the picture and somebody else founds a massive software company worth gigabucks a little bit later. The same applies to a lot of corporate tycoons, though Elon Musk has some claim to GMhood given that most of the things he's done are things widely thought infeasible.

I agree that GMT has a lot of applicability, and that the claims that nobody ever matters are wishful thinking born out of SJ doctrine, but trends do also matter.

I think with Gates, you could argue that, while nobody wouldn't exploit the second boom of home computing, the actual software landscape might look a lot different without MS's tactics with DOS and Windows. Still, it is somewhat structural, so this counterfactual world might still end up at something like what we have now.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats