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> People are basically the same as they always have been And you came to this conclusion without reading any history? This is too absolutist a statement. Sure,

by 0xdde 6y ago

> People are basically the same as they always have been And you came to this conclusion without reading any history? This is too absolutist a statement. Sure, some things need to be relearned through experience, but there are also plenty of cases where you don't want to waste time reinventing the wheel.

dionidium 6y ago
The downvoters are thrashing a straw man. Obviously nobody believes you're supposed to recreate society every 20 years ex nihilo. What I'm arguing is that the case for reading history has been overstated. Specifically, I was reacting to the claim that, "Human behavior seems to be notoriously consistent across centuries." I agree. It is. Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have and there's no library big enough to change that. This is like arguing about whether dieting "works." On the one hand, obviously, yes, it works. There's no credible debate about the efficacy of calorie restriction for losing weight. It simply works. On the other hand, most human beings can't actually follow a diet, so, no, it doesn't actually work, for any reasonable definition of "works." Reading history is probably a lot like that.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Fine, but by your own argument, reading history gives you some insight into how the humans of today will react to certain situations. You can read history to find out what humans actually are like, not what theory says they're like.
  - dionidium 6y ago
    I like this framing quite a bit :)
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  > Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have And we know this... how? Studying history! > and there's no library big enough to change that Who's trying to change human nature? This is a strawman you are thrashing. Studying history is about understanding human nature, not changing it. Just like studying physics is about understanding projectile motion, not about changing the gravitational constant. The idea behind studying history is that we use the insights gained from it to try to solve new challenges in reasonable ways, instead of ways we'd know were likely to fail if we'd just cracked open a book.

by 0xdde 6y ago

dionidium 6y ago

The downvoters are thrashing a straw man. Obviously nobody believes you're supposed to recreate society every 20 years ex nihilo. What I'm arguing is that the case for reading history has been overstated. Specifically, I was reacting to the claim that, "Human behavior seems to be notoriously consistent across centuries." I agree. It is. Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have and there's no library big enough to change that. This is like arguing about whether dieting "works." On the one hand, obviously, yes, it works. There's no credible debate about the efficacy of calorie restriction for losing weight. It simply works. On the other hand, most human beings can't actually follow a diet, so, no, it doesn't actually work, for any reasonable definition of "works." Reading history is probably a lot like that.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Fine, but by your own argument, reading history gives you some insight into how the humans of today will react to certain situations. You can read history to find out what humans actually are like, not what theory says they're like.
- dionidium 6y ago
  I like this framing quite a bit :)
sixstringtheory 6y ago
> Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have And we know this... how? Studying history! > and there's no library big enough to change that Who's trying to change human nature? This is a strawman you are thrashing. Studying history is about understanding human nature, not changing it. Just like studying physics is about understanding projectile motion, not about changing the gravitational constant. The idea behind studying history is that we use the insights gained from it to try to solve new challenges in reasonable ways, instead of ways we'd know were likely to fail if we'd just cracked open a book.