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>I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.” Being German I would like to think that w
by Barrin92 5y ago
>I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.”
Being German I would like to think that while there's always opportunity to be more introspective about your history over the last few generations we've done an okay job of correcting some historical mistakes, and that's a pretty decently sized group.
>If you want to change the world to a better place, the best way to do it is a for-profit
I can only assume that if we'd turned the country into an LLC we'd be even more on the cutting edge of error correcting today. I feel like this post is what happens if you burn every history book and instead shove a diet of a16z podcasts and silicon valley serial entrepreneur biographies through GPT-3
- vt85 5y ago[dead]
- pvg 5y agowe've done an okay job of correcting some historical mistakes I don't want to take anything from the generally commendable and impressive German efforts in that regard, as you say, over a period of several generations. At the same time, one has to acknowledge to get there, Germany was physically destroyed, its territory dismembered and occupied, it effectively ceased to exist as a sovereign state for a period, etc, etc. It's not much of an example of a group spontaneously deciding they'd got it wrong.
- _carbyau_ 5y agoInterestingly though, a trip through germany revealed monuments to the atrocities they committed. The general idea being that future peoples need to learn from the mistakes of the past.
- HanaShiratori 5y agoWhy would anyone, especially a large group spontaneously change one of their core beliefs? Don't you need some kind of trigger event to enforce the change of mind?
- pvg 5y agoPeople have been wondering since that time a Wookiee lived on Endor.
- HanaShiratori 5y agoSorry what? I guess I don't get what you're saying
- pvg 5y agoI didn't get what you were asking either!
- HanaShiratori 5y agoOh OK sorry I'm not a native English speaker so I might not chose the right words. I was asking who spontaneously changes their mind without any event that would trigger such a change? If I believe in something, why would I have any motivation to change it if everything is running well / as planned?
- pvg 5y agoOh it's mostly a figure of speech - the point was that Germans 'changing their mind' was not anything close to 'spontaneous' despite the fact most of it was, over the long term, arduously accomplished by Germans themselves.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- posix86 5y agoYes, but in the case of Germany, it wasn't the case that the German government and societal structures changed their beliefs; they were replaced.
- renewiltord 5y agoWell, Germany had to be made to do that. We had to remake the nation into one that has changed its dogma from "we were right" to "we were wrong". The fact that the populace accepted it is awesome, actually, but it needed to be done to them.
- ancode 5y agoPretty sure it took two tries also
- Fnoord 5y agoBlaming WWI entirely on Germany is myopic, and is in part what set the social unrest in the Weimar Republic in the first place. The huge debt was put on Germany, and they were heavily dependent on loans. When the US economy crashed in 1929, they were done for. If Germany did not take the full blame for WWI, WWII arguably never happened. Because someone like Hitler wouldn't have been able to rise to power via a massive social unrest.
- PoignardAzur 5y agoI'd say the economic and political effects of the Versailles treaty are exaggerated (especially given how little it was enforced), but yeah. The idea that Germany was in any way the single country responsible for WWI is absolutely ridiculous.
- watwut 5y agoThat is hard to prove contrafactual. The Germany still lost WWI which was massive sticking points for them. The "stab in the back" myth would existed either way, because Germany being having super militarized culture could not admit loss. The revolution in Bavaria would still happened. And still irk right wing. The democracy would still be rejected and Weimar Republic would still be one massive mess. Hitler did not gained power just because of social issues. (And also, less importantly, had Germany won the WWI, they had plans to ask other countries for large reparations. It is not like those were something unheard of at that time.)
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- atoav 5y agoHowever much I like the German way of dealing with the past, I can't shake the suspicion that all of this is not without it's incentives. As someone living in Germany as well, Germans love to tell others how things are done. This is only possible if you have the moral high ground. Musterschüler an all that.
- text70 5y agoGPT-3 looks like the best answer here. There are more than a few outliers I can think of A then B logic as written, which indicates a limited training set database of, like you said, a few podcasts and biographies.