4 ms·

could you point us to any history you've written in this style, as an example? EDIT: for that matter, any history anyone has written in this style? see also h

could you point us to any history you've written in this style, as an example? EDIT: for that matter, any history anyone has written in this style? see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

gsf_emergency 2y ago
I dunno, the only recent-ish historiographer that I remember from uni, because he fits, happens to count N. Ferguson amongst his politically disaligned fans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invented_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invented_tradition >Outside his academic historical writing, Hobsbawm wrote a regular column about jazz for the New Statesman (under the pseudonym Francis Newton, taken from the name of Billie Holiday's communist trumpet player, Frankie Newton). He had become interested in jazz during the 1930s when it was frowned upon by the Communist Party. The gentrification-skeptic before the gentrification!
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  on the (re)invention of tradition, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Skates#Statues_of_the_boy_and_the_dike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Sk... > "Mary Mapes Dodge, who never visited the Netherlands until after the novel was published, wrote..."
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
You mean, entertaining and accurate? Like something that can keep someone's attention, by writing in easy to understand vernacular? Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin? Sapiens, Yuval Harari?
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  We can add prophetic..? >Yuval Noah Harari ... is 100% correct that [the AI class divide] is going to be the biggest problem we are going to face later down the line in the 21st century and it's not going to be rosy. He and Moldbug at least. From Comments on The Superfluity of the Masses https://archive.ph/ngu66 https://archive.ph/ngu66
  - kerkeslager 2y ago
    It's a bit early to call that prophetic, no? I mean, we're facing the possibility of a second cold war which, as with the first, could result in nuclear holocaust. Certainly global pandemics and global warming have both been bigger problems than AI so far and have the potential to continue. I'd also bring up neofascism--but this is HN, so I'm sure some neofascist will object. I get very skeptical when people make superlative claims like "100%" and "biggest" about large, complicated things like "problems we are going to face later down the line in the 21st century". The largest effects of AI at this point are that a lot of AI creators are getting rich and a preponderance of easy fraud--I'm not sure any of the underwhelming uses of AI have yet proven themselves enough to make users of AI a privileged class.
    - gsf_emergency 2y ago
      Yes! Sneer and smarm is 100% a challenge to balance here on HN, seems like I barely got by! Frankly i'd hoped someone would look at the other comments there, e.g. "Donald": https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/the-superfluity-of-the-masses/comment/80971742 https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/the-superfluity-of-the... I don't agree with it all, but what he has going is a preference for first-order thinking: helping out the poor smart kids NOW, over lowering taxes so that entreprise will not be disincentivized (pardon the econspeak!) [You might also be entertained by the historiography from "Anirudh"] The thing NOT to learn from Sweden is how to award prizes. Certainly, the Fields Institute in Ontario (where Hinton built his career, btw) have their priorities at a more reasonable tilt vs Stockholm when it comes to building the future vs trying not to miss out on a piece of it.
kerkeslager 2y ago
> could you point us to any history you've written in this style, as an example? This misses the point: if you want to know why readers aren't connecting with written history or written anything for that matter, ask readers, not writers. Anyone can write something they want to write--that's not skilled, useful, or admirable. Writing something other people want to read is the difficult, useful skill. Writers like Walther are writing what they want to write and complaining that readers don't want to read it. It's like leading a horse to salt water and then complaining the horse won't drink. > EDIT: for that matter, any history anyone has written in this style? The Social History of the Machine Gun or The Serpent and the Rainbow (the book, not the movie). > see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox Is your point here to argue that entertaining, accessible writing and accurate historical writing are mutually exclusive? Why would they be? Do you have any reason at all to believe this to be the case?
- aebtebeten 2y ago
  Thanks! My point wasn't to argue that they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but that given a selection criterion of (entertaining+accurate>threshold), we shouldn't be surprised that it looks very much so. (and I wouldn't wish to discourage anyone from being accurate and writing for a small-circle[0] audience; just as there are people who make pop music, and people who make music for musicians, in the internet age only a mass market publisher should decry history for historians) In particular, entertaining usually involves telling something story-shaped and I'm not convinced —although I'll dig a bit into these recommendations[1]— that "what happened" always, or even often[2], has an entertaining shape. [0] in particular, note the very different reception of the "10 bits/second" paper on HN and on Lobste.rs, https://lobste.rs/s/5hjq6v/unbearable_slowness_being_why_do_we_live https://lobste.rs/s/5hjq6v/unbearable_slowness_being_why_do_... ; it would appear the target audience was much closer to the latter than to the former. [1] my hypothesis going in was that longue durée helps with having "story arcs" that, as they treat generalities, are not beholden to having any particular facts lining up with them, although Team of Rivals looks like it may be a counterexample? [2] then again, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094214 on 'interpretation', for the relative ease of trimming down non-story-shaped material to something story-shaped, simply by omission.

gsf_emergency 2y ago

I dunno, the only recent-ish historiographer that I remember from uni, because he fits, happens to count N. Ferguson amongst his politically disaligned fans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invented_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invented_tradition >Outside his academic historical writing, Hobsbawm wrote a regular column about jazz for the New Statesman (under the pseudonym Francis Newton, taken from the name of Billie Holiday's communist trumpet player, Frankie Newton). He had become interested in jazz during the 1930s when it was frowned upon by the Communist Party. The gentrification-skeptic before the gentrification!

082349872349872 2y ago
on the (re)invention of tradition, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Skates#Statues_of_the_boy_and_the_dike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Sk... > "Mary Mapes Dodge, who never visited the Netherlands until after the novel was published, wrote..."

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

You mean, entertaining and accurate? Like something that can keep someone's attention, by writing in easy to understand vernacular? Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin? Sapiens, Yuval Harari?

gsf_emergency 2y ago
We can add prophetic..? >Yuval Noah Harari ... is 100% correct that [the AI class divide] is going to be the biggest problem we are going to face later down the line in the 21st century and it's not going to be rosy. He and Moldbug at least. From Comments on The Superfluity of the Masses https://archive.ph/ngu66 https://archive.ph/ngu66
- kerkeslager 2y ago
  It's a bit early to call that prophetic, no? I mean, we're facing the possibility of a second cold war which, as with the first, could result in nuclear holocaust. Certainly global pandemics and global warming have both been bigger problems than AI so far and have the potential to continue. I'd also bring up neofascism--but this is HN, so I'm sure some neofascist will object. I get very skeptical when people make superlative claims like "100%" and "biggest" about large, complicated things like "problems we are going to face later down the line in the 21st century". The largest effects of AI at this point are that a lot of AI creators are getting rich and a preponderance of easy fraud--I'm not sure any of the underwhelming uses of AI have yet proven themselves enough to make users of AI a privileged class.
  - gsf_emergency 2y ago
    Yes! Sneer and smarm is 100% a challenge to balance here on HN, seems like I barely got by! Frankly i'd hoped someone would look at the other comments there, e.g. "Donald": https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/the-superfluity-of-the-masses/comment/80971742 https://nicholasdecker.substack.com/p/the-superfluity-of-the... I don't agree with it all, but what he has going is a preference for first-order thinking: helping out the poor smart kids NOW, over lowering taxes so that entreprise will not be disincentivized (pardon the econspeak!) [You might also be entertained by the historiography from "Anirudh"] The thing NOT to learn from Sweden is how to award prizes. Certainly, the Fields Institute in Ontario (where Hinton built his career, btw) have their priorities at a more reasonable tilt vs Stockholm when it comes to building the future vs trying not to miss out on a piece of it.

kerkeslager 2y ago

> could you point us to any history you've written in this style, as an example? This misses the point: if you want to know why readers aren't connecting with written history or written anything for that matter, ask readers, not writers. Anyone can write something they want to write--that's not skilled, useful, or admirable. Writing something other people want to read is the difficult, useful skill. Writers like Walther are writing what they want to write and complaining that readers don't want to read it. It's like leading a horse to salt water and then complaining the horse won't drink. > EDIT: for that matter, any history anyone has written in this style? The Social History of the Machine Gun or The Serpent and the Rainbow (the book, not the movie). > see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox Is your point here to argue that entertaining, accessible writing and accurate historical writing are mutually exclusive? Why would they be? Do you have any reason at all to believe this to be the case?

aebtebeten 2y ago
Thanks! My point wasn't to argue that they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but that given a selection criterion of (entertaining+accurate>threshold), we shouldn't be surprised that it looks very much so. (and I wouldn't wish to discourage anyone from being accurate and writing for a small-circle[0] audience; just as there are people who make pop music, and people who make music for musicians, in the internet age only a mass market publisher should decry history for historians) In particular, entertaining usually involves telling something story-shaped and I'm not convinced —although I'll dig a bit into these recommendations[1]— that "what happened" always, or even often[2], has an entertaining shape. [0] in particular, note the very different reception of the "10 bits/second" paper on HN and on Lobste.rs, https://lobste.rs/s/5hjq6v/unbearable_slowness_being_why_do_we_live https://lobste.rs/s/5hjq6v/unbearable_slowness_being_why_do_... ; it would appear the target audience was much closer to the latter than to the former. [1] my hypothesis going in was that longue durée helps with having "story arcs" that, as they treat generalities, are not beholden to having any particular facts lining up with them, although Team of Rivals looks like it may be a counterexample? [2] then again, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094214 on 'interpretation', for the relative ease of trimming down non-story-shaped material to something story-shaped, simply by omission.