> ... in history, there is rarely a single “correct reading”, but rather many interpretations that at time reinforce and at times weaken each other. As I was r

> ... in history, there is rarely a single “correct reading”, but rather many interpretations that at time reinforce and at times weaken each other. As I was reading the GP's interpretation of these historical events, it occurred to me how difficult it really is to get at a reliable interpretation of something like this: I've already read a couple books on the subject—but I can see room the cracks so to speak, where the GP's view may be more accurate. That said, difficulty isn't the same as impossibility—and yes, it is technically impossible (or at least meaningless) for certain definitions of 'correct' interpretation, but if you're okay with correct up to "for all intents and purposes"—then it's a non-issue. For instance, in this case there is a pretty definite question we'd like answered: which innovation was the limiting factor on our original development of general purpose computation: increased memory capacity, or theoretical knowledge of general purpose computation—or was their role more alike than different? Depending on how things actually played out, there are definite things you can say about that. For instance, perhaps we need at least 500 bits of memory for general purpose computation—did we have access to that while no one had yet thought to build the general purpose computer because we were still waiting for Zuse, Turing/Church? If so, we answer one way; if not, we answer the other way. The only case where it gets endlessly complicated, perhaps giving apparent grounds for claiming impossibility of correct interpretation, actually fits neatly into the last option I mentioned in the original question statement: that there wasn't a significant difference in the two innovations' roles as limiting factors. It seems valuable to understand the difficult and limits of interpretation, but I think more harm is being done than good speaking so generally of "correct readings" being impossible. > Using the imperative “read”, “learn”, etc is also heavy handed and unnecessary. It’s the kind of language bad teachers - the teachers who have to use their authority rather than mentorship skills - tend to use (“Check out those books for more” flows much better, for instance). I really wish this was better known. It's a pretty consistent pattern and useful to be able to recognize. My read on it is that it's typically used as a defensive strategy—a way to prevent an interlocutor from questioning the speaker any further on the subject.