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Social "science" hogwash. If the past had predictive ability, historians would be billionaires. When you can demonstrate repeatability in the predictive nature

Social "science" hogwash. If the past had predictive ability, historians would be billionaires. When you can demonstrate repeatability in the predictive nature of your models, then you will be in a place to call others a "fool". Until then, realize you're standing on a house of cards.

salawat 6y ago
Alright. So run something by me. If, as you say "history is always written by the victors"; wherefore do you get legitimacy to your claim this makes history a waste of time? It appears to me, in fact, you're drawing conclusions based on historical occurence to lend predictive credibility to your assertion that history is always written by the victor, and therefore, worthy of dismissing. If I accept your assertiom, your claim is baseless and bereft of any rhetorical power whatsoever. That's before we even touch on the factual errors. Some of the best and most valuable history is not that written by the victor, but that recorded by the eventual loser. Historians hunt for, and preserve these false starts, and spend lifetimes teasing out the circumstances around them. You want examples of predictive power? Power vacuums: why sometimes you don't kill the dictator you can get along with Involuntary relications: They never end well; ever. Regicide: Fun for the whole family Genocide: Fun for the entire ethnic group War: As the atrocity of the means of conducting war increases, the stomach for employing it consistently decreases sharply. Bugs and common defect classes: ever tracked a development teams bad habits? Great practice. Helps immensely in making you look like a psychic because you just learn where and how everything is going to break. Numerical interpolation/integration: History has non-human aspects as well. To ignore the impact or utility of history is to entirely dismiss the field and methods of simulation and engineering. Those mathematical constructs are underpinned by relationships that are predictive by their nature. I mean, I can go on. Look, I was like you once. I gave the history majors I knew endless amounts of guff. Then I actually read some, and wondered why I was seeing so many old issues rearing their ugly heads. History is critically important to ynderstanding and contextualizing the human experience. There are thoughts every human in their lifetime will think. Watch someone elses children and pick them out. Go ahead. We record history so that those that come after us can see how we reasoned, and how it turned out. That way. You don't end up repeating the mistakes of your forebearers. Which can only come to pass if you read the bloody thing and absorb it. Techne itself is a form of historical record; a network of interrelated knowledge, contexts, and applications thereof that are composable to bring about an end. Our history, the history of humanity, is a network of the excesses, vices, illusions of grandeur, tales of victory and crushing defeats laid bare before us. It is the path of cobbles that brought us to where we are. You know what? Go watch Connections if you haven't. If you had, you should have managed to absorb why understanding the past informs better decisions moving forward by priming your pattern recognition faculties and breaking you of that most horrible habit of "This time it'll be different."
imtringued 6y ago
>If the past had predictive ability, historians would be billionaires. It only takes one person to become a billionaire. The historians that could become billionaires surely did and thus exhausted the potential for other historians to become billionaires. So this argument is pretty weak. I haven't even considered the fact that in practice there is no way for an individual historian to make billions without also being good at business and being good at business is not a unique quality of historians. There is also the problem that nobody claimed to predict the future in an economically viable fashion. Did historians ever claim to predict the future (human nature is not the same as the future) at all? What you have built is a straw man. There are so many holes in this argument, can't you think of anything better?
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  We’re literally discussing a blog post where the author makes extensive and detailed predictions about the future. It has exactly as much legitimacy as astrology. It’s anti-intellectual.

salawat 6y ago

Alright. So run something by me. If, as you say "history is always written by the victors"; wherefore do you get legitimacy to your claim this makes history a waste of time? It appears to me, in fact, you're drawing conclusions based on historical occurence to lend predictive credibility to your assertion that history is always written by the victor, and therefore, worthy of dismissing. If I accept your assertiom, your claim is baseless and bereft of any rhetorical power whatsoever. That's before we even touch on the factual errors. Some of the best and most valuable history is not that written by the victor, but that recorded by the eventual loser. Historians hunt for, and preserve these false starts, and spend lifetimes teasing out the circumstances around them. You want examples of predictive power? Power vacuums: why sometimes you don't kill the dictator you can get along with Involuntary relications: They never end well; ever. Regicide: Fun for the whole family Genocide: Fun for the entire ethnic group War: As the atrocity of the means of conducting war increases, the stomach for employing it consistently decreases sharply. Bugs and common defect classes: ever tracked a development teams bad habits? Great practice. Helps immensely in making you look like a psychic because you just learn where and how everything is going to break. Numerical interpolation/integration: History has non-human aspects as well. To ignore the impact or utility of history is to entirely dismiss the field and methods of simulation and engineering. Those mathematical constructs are underpinned by relationships that are predictive by their nature. I mean, I can go on. Look, I was like you once. I gave the history majors I knew endless amounts of guff. Then I actually read some, and wondered why I was seeing so many old issues rearing their ugly heads. History is critically important to ynderstanding and contextualizing the human experience. There are thoughts every human in their lifetime will think. Watch someone elses children and pick them out. Go ahead. We record history so that those that come after us can see how we reasoned, and how it turned out. That way. You don't end up repeating the mistakes of your forebearers. Which can only come to pass if you read the bloody thing and absorb it. Techne itself is a form of historical record; a network of interrelated knowledge, contexts, and applications thereof that are composable to bring about an end. Our history, the history of humanity, is a network of the excesses, vices, illusions of grandeur, tales of victory and crushing defeats laid bare before us. It is the path of cobbles that brought us to where we are. You know what? Go watch Connections if you haven't. If you had, you should have managed to absorb why understanding the past informs better decisions moving forward by priming your pattern recognition faculties and breaking you of that most horrible habit of "This time it'll be different."

imtringued 6y ago

>If the past had predictive ability, historians would be billionaires. It only takes one person to become a billionaire. The historians that could become billionaires surely did and thus exhausted the potential for other historians to become billionaires. So this argument is pretty weak. I haven't even considered the fact that in practice there is no way for an individual historian to make billions without also being good at business and being good at business is not a unique quality of historians. There is also the problem that nobody claimed to predict the future in an economically viable fashion. Did historians ever claim to predict the future (human nature is not the same as the future) at all? What you have built is a straw man. There are so many holes in this argument, can't you think of anything better?

solosoyokaze 6y ago
We’re literally discussing a blog post where the author makes extensive and detailed predictions about the future. It has exactly as much legitimacy as astrology. It’s anti-intellectual.