3 ms·

> identifying and labeling things that happened in the past prevents them from happening today. I think to a degree it does? To me it made me think of Freud. I

> identifying and labeling things that happened in the past prevents them from happening today. I think to a degree it does? To me it made me think of Freud. I don't think you need to dissect the complex origins of things. Real life is too complicated and it doesn't give you clear answers. Instead you distill human behavior to some rough raw patterns that repeat and build a vocabulary to describe them. You can then short circuit conversations by calling out patterns.

Almondsetat 3y ago
In order to establish an equivalence you have to develop a function that takes a modern situation and perfectly transposes it to a past situation. This way a person that believes that the past situation was bad will have to admit the present situation is also bad. Problem 1: it’s difficult to construct such an equivalence Problem 2: it’s difficult to communicate Problem 3: humans are not logical robots and can easily handwave it and ignore you
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  Right, operating by straight analogy doesn't work. If you say "X and Y are acting like NAZIs" that's generally not effective. That's why it's critical to distill thing and create a new vocabulary. If you take the Salem Witch trials in conjunction with other historical events and distill some general conclusions about human (group?) behavior and give it a label - then you can use history indirectly to improve discourse To the Freud example .. "You're acting like John at the last birthday party" probably won't get through to someone. But saying "I think you're projecting right now" likely can - b/c you're using a term that describes a common phenomena that everyone is familiar with. Before Freud described the defense mechanisms, people probably had a much harder time "calling people out" on these patterns.

3 ms·

> identifying and labeling things that happened in the past prevents them from happening today. I think to a degree it does? To me it made me think of Freud. I

by contrarian1234 3y ago

Almondsetat 3y ago
In order to establish an equivalence you have to develop a function that takes a modern situation and perfectly transposes it to a past situation. This way a person that believes that the past situation was bad will have to admit the present situation is also bad. Problem 1: it’s difficult to construct such an equivalence Problem 2: it’s difficult to communicate Problem 3: humans are not logical robots and can easily handwave it and ignore you
- contrarian1234 3y ago
  Right, operating by straight analogy doesn't work. If you say "X and Y are acting like NAZIs" that's generally not effective. That's why it's critical to distill thing and create a new vocabulary. If you take the Salem Witch trials in conjunction with other historical events and distill some general conclusions about human (group?) behavior and give it a label - then you can use history indirectly to improve discourse To the Freud example .. "You're acting like John at the last birthday party" probably won't get through to someone. But saying "I think you're projecting right now" likely can - b/c you're using a term that describes a common phenomena that everyone is familiar with. Before Freud described the defense mechanisms, people probably had a much harder time "calling people out" on these patterns.