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The author is talking mostly about teaching history. But what he describes as teaching history is more like history appreciation. It's not about how to use hist

The author is talking mostly about teaching history. But what he describes as teaching history is more like history appreciation. It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. It's more about studying the "classics", from Cicero onwards. Military officers study much history, but in a different way. They look for mistakes. Why did someone lose a battle or a war? Why did they even get into that particular battle? Why was the situation prior to WWI so strategically unstable that the killing of a minor player touched off a world war? The traditional teaching of history tends to focus on the winners, especially if they write well. Reading what the losers wrote, or what was written about them, can be more productive than reading the winners. If you want to understand Cicero's era, for example, read [1]. This is a study of Cicero by an experienced and cynical newspaper political reporter. The author writes that too many historians take Cicero's speeches at face value. The author knows better, having heard many politicians of his own day. This sort of approach tends to take one out of the area where LLMs are most useful, because, as yet, they're not that good at detecting sycophancy. [1] https://archive.org/details/thiswasciceromod0000henr https://archive.org/details/thiswasciceromod0000henr

UncleMeat 1y ago
> It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. This is not what academic historians generally do. The study of history tells us about the story of humanity and exists for wider reasons than direct application to decision making today. This is even true for military history, which is among the slowest subfields at adopting new methods and practices.
- sdoering 1y ago
  Thanks. Came here to say that. Having studied history - esp. in a time where Hayden White's assertion that "history is fiction" was strongly (and sometimes emotionally) discussed in between students and professors alike, taught me, that - while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history. I also learned to appreciate history on a fundamentally different level than I did, when I loved history as a subject in school. But that would lead too far out from this thread here. I can relate to the original piece, because - while I use AI daily for work and in private life - I also see the dangers. Yes, it is a new medium - and I heard roughly the same critique about the internet, when I was at university - but I think it is quite a fundamentally different paradigm shift that we are living through. I feel (used intentionaly here) it is more like the invention of the printing press (from an societal impact standpoint) than the dissemination of the internet into the wider society. But that is just my current working hypothesis.
  - quanto 1y ago
    > while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history. If we don't learn from history, why do we do history? Is it a form of pure entertainment, i.e. of arts? If so, does that give more credence to White's argument? I have had a PhD colleague who genuinely believed that history ought to be (in the philosophical normative sense) contributing to national propaganda, thus of national interest. By extension, this is why history departments should be funded by tax dollars.
    - galaxyLogic 1y ago
      I agree that goal should be to "learn from history" but not in the narrow sense of how could a specific historical catastrophe could have been avoided. We need a general understanding of histopry because it helps us understand human behavior in general. It helps us understand ourselves.
    - roenxi 1y ago
      A fun party game is to get some pure mathematicians together, speculate loudly that they must be motivated in their work by the numerous practical applications of maths and watch cheekily to see which of their faces fail to conceal the spasm of fury. 1 point per asymmetric eye twitch. They're academics, their job is to make true statements and maintain a culture that cares a lot about whether their colleagues can prove them false. Beyond that, it is hard to figure out what purpose they might be fulfilling.
    - UncleMeat 1y ago
      > If we don't learn from history, why do we do history? Historians uncover and communicate the story of humanity in as rich and diverse of a way as possible. This is, in my mind, somewhat comparable to the process of doing pure math research or fundamental physics research. While there may be practical outcomes for today (either unexpected or intended as a goal of a particular research direction), we also understand that doing math for its own purposes is valuable. The process of doing archival research, putting sources in dialog with other research, and even simply reading secondary source writing achieves some positive outcomes. It widens and deepens empathy for the rich diversity of human behavior. It builds skills for critical analysis of media and communication. It can provide narrative and argument for people advocating for change today (both good and bad). But these do not need to be the reasons why we embark on history research. They are side outcomes of undirected analysis. I'll also add that concern about "history departments funded by tax dollars" is just factually unfounded. My wife is a history and the size of grants is hilarious coming from my background in CS. Like, a grant for $2,000-$5,000 would be considered chunky. And grants are often coming from weird places like random corporations or donor funding rather than from the government. The NEH was already basically dead before Trump 2.0 and now is dead and buried. People upset about academic history can rest easy knowing that there aren't historians living large on your tax dollars.
spankibalt 1y ago
> Military officers study much history, but in a different way. They look for mistakes. Amongst other things...
FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
> It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. Because this isnt the goal of history. You cant use history to predict the future. > If you want to understand Cicero's era, for example, read [1]. This is a study of Cicero by an experienced and cynical newspaper political reporter. The author writes that too many historians take Cicero's speeches at face value. The author knows better, having heard many politicians of his own day. No they dont. This is yet another example of an outsider looking at another field, thinking he knows better and making a fool of himself. Also, why would you ignore 80 years of scholarship about Cicero and read a book from 1942???
- pixl97 1y ago
  >You cant use history to predict the future. I mean this statement is somewhat false. If I show you a picture of a cup from 100 ms ago and it's in midair probability favors that the cup will be on it's way to the ground to its demise. Statistically this will be true. History is filled with analogous times where by watching the present you can make predictions far better than flipping a coin.
_elephant 1y ago
It makes a good point by separating history as strategic analysis from history as cultural appreciation. Most teaching today leans toward the latter, which is also easier for AI to replicate. But the most valuable historical thinking often comes from uncomfortable questions failure, unintended consequences, and perspectives that usually get ignored.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
HexPhantom 1y ago
When history is approached as a pattern of decisions, risks, and consequences (not just narratives) it starts to feel a lot more relevant to other complex domains, including AI itself. And yeah, studying the losers (or the overlooked) often yields more insight than lionizing the winners.
surgical_fire 1y ago
> But what he describes as teaching history is more like history appreciation. It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. It's more about studying the "classics", from Cicero onwards. How are those things dissociated? I always saw history as a waht to explain "why things are the way they are". Whatever we are now, this amalgamation of good or bad things, is a consequence of what came before. Is "studying the classics" from a historical standpoint even done for "appreciation"? I always presumed that one should do so critically, and that's more or less what I found from actual historians.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  The “explain how we got here” approach to history has some pretty big limitations. The historical actors had no idea where the future was going. When we examine their actions from the perspective of the single contingency that ended up happening we will almost necessarily miss meaningful understanding and make things seem inevitable when they really weren’t. There’s interesting writing to be done in this mode but it is definitely not the primary mode.
  - surgical_fire 1y ago
    > The historical actors had no idea where the future was going. Does it matter in order to explain how things came to be? Understanding their motivations, the incentives that led them to do what they did, the sociopolitical context they were inserted into, the limitations of a historical perspective (quite often the accounts of past historical figures were written by people invested in portraying it in one way or another). All those things would help, when looking at history critically, to make some sense of the present and where things might be going in the future. In a sense, things that happened were inevitable because they came to pass. We are not talking about a possibility, we are talking about a certainty long after the fact. Understanding that it might have been avoided in some ways can be helpful, but also is an exercise in wishful thinking and guesswork.
    - UncleMeat 1y ago
      > Does it matter in order to explain how things came to be? Yes. Writing on historiography has been detailed about the ways that this sort of framing can be limiting.
BeFlatXIII 1y ago
Studying the winners is also a surefire way to learn only survivorship bias.

UncleMeat 1y ago

> It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. This is not what academic historians generally do. The study of history tells us about the story of humanity and exists for wider reasons than direct application to decision making today. This is even true for military history, which is among the slowest subfields at adopting new methods and practices.

sdoering 1y ago
Thanks. Came here to say that. Having studied history - esp. in a time where Hayden White's assertion that "history is fiction" was strongly (and sometimes emotionally) discussed in between students and professors alike, taught me, that - while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history. I also learned to appreciate history on a fundamentally different level than I did, when I loved history as a subject in school. But that would lead too far out from this thread here. I can relate to the original piece, because - while I use AI daily for work and in private life - I also see the dangers. Yes, it is a new medium - and I heard roughly the same critique about the internet, when I was at university - but I think it is quite a fundamentally different paradigm shift that we are living through. I feel (used intentionaly here) it is more like the invention of the printing press (from an societal impact standpoint) than the dissemination of the internet into the wider society. But that is just my current working hypothesis.
- quanto 1y ago
  > while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history. If we don't learn from history, why do we do history? Is it a form of pure entertainment, i.e. of arts? If so, does that give more credence to White's argument? I have had a PhD colleague who genuinely believed that history ought to be (in the philosophical normative sense) contributing to national propaganda, thus of national interest. By extension, this is why history departments should be funded by tax dollars.
  - galaxyLogic 1y ago
    I agree that goal should be to "learn from history" but not in the narrow sense of how could a specific historical catastrophe could have been avoided. We need a general understanding of histopry because it helps us understand human behavior in general. It helps us understand ourselves.
  - roenxi 1y ago
    A fun party game is to get some pure mathematicians together, speculate loudly that they must be motivated in their work by the numerous practical applications of maths and watch cheekily to see which of their faces fail to conceal the spasm of fury. 1 point per asymmetric eye twitch. They're academics, their job is to make true statements and maintain a culture that cares a lot about whether their colleagues can prove them false. Beyond that, it is hard to figure out what purpose they might be fulfilling.
  - UncleMeat 1y ago
    > If we don't learn from history, why do we do history? Historians uncover and communicate the story of humanity in as rich and diverse of a way as possible. This is, in my mind, somewhat comparable to the process of doing pure math research or fundamental physics research. While there may be practical outcomes for today (either unexpected or intended as a goal of a particular research direction), we also understand that doing math for its own purposes is valuable. The process of doing archival research, putting sources in dialog with other research, and even simply reading secondary source writing achieves some positive outcomes. It widens and deepens empathy for the rich diversity of human behavior. It builds skills for critical analysis of media and communication. It can provide narrative and argument for people advocating for change today (both good and bad). But these do not need to be the reasons why we embark on history research. They are side outcomes of undirected analysis. I'll also add that concern about "history departments funded by tax dollars" is just factually unfounded. My wife is a history and the size of grants is hilarious coming from my background in CS. Like, a grant for $2,000-$5,000 would be considered chunky. And grants are often coming from weird places like random corporations or donor funding rather than from the government. The NEH was already basically dead before Trump 2.0 and now is dead and buried. People upset about academic history can rest easy knowing that there aren't historians living large on your tax dollars.

spankibalt 1y ago

> Military officers study much history, but in a different way. They look for mistakes. Amongst other things...

FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago

> It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. Because this isnt the goal of history. You cant use history to predict the future. > If you want to understand Cicero's era, for example, read [1]. This is a study of Cicero by an experienced and cynical newspaper political reporter. The author writes that too many historians take Cicero's speeches at face value. The author knows better, having heard many politicians of his own day. No they dont. This is yet another example of an outsider looking at another field, thinking he knows better and making a fool of himself. Also, why would you ignore 80 years of scholarship about Cicero and read a book from 1942???

pixl97 1y ago
>You cant use history to predict the future. I mean this statement is somewhat false. If I show you a picture of a cup from 100 ms ago and it's in midair probability favors that the cup will be on it's way to the ground to its demise. Statistically this will be true. History is filled with analogous times where by watching the present you can make predictions far better than flipping a coin.

_elephant 1y ago

It makes a good point by separating history as strategic analysis from history as cultural appreciation. Most teaching today leans toward the latter, which is also easier for AI to replicate. But the most valuable historical thinking often comes from uncomfortable questions failure, unintended consequences, and perspectives that usually get ignored.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

HexPhantom 1y ago

When history is approached as a pattern of decisions, risks, and consequences (not just narratives) it starts to feel a lot more relevant to other complex domains, including AI itself. And yeah, studying the losers (or the overlooked) often yields more insight than lionizing the winners.

surgical_fire 1y ago

> But what he describes as teaching history is more like history appreciation. It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. It's more about studying the "classics", from Cicero onwards. How are those things dissociated? I always saw history as a waht to explain "why things are the way they are". Whatever we are now, this amalgamation of good or bad things, is a consequence of what came before. Is "studying the classics" from a historical standpoint even done for "appreciation"? I always presumed that one should do so critically, and that's more or less what I found from actual historians.

UncleMeat 1y ago
The “explain how we got here” approach to history has some pretty big limitations. The historical actors had no idea where the future was going. When we examine their actions from the perspective of the single contingency that ended up happening we will almost necessarily miss meaningful understanding and make things seem inevitable when they really weren’t. There’s interesting writing to be done in this mode but it is definitely not the primary mode.
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  > The historical actors had no idea where the future was going. Does it matter in order to explain how things came to be? Understanding their motivations, the incentives that led them to do what they did, the sociopolitical context they were inserted into, the limitations of a historical perspective (quite often the accounts of past historical figures were written by people invested in portraying it in one way or another). All those things would help, when looking at history critically, to make some sense of the present and where things might be going in the future. In a sense, things that happened were inevitable because they came to pass. We are not talking about a possibility, we are talking about a certainty long after the fact. Understanding that it might have been avoided in some ways can be helpful, but also is an exercise in wishful thinking and guesswork.
  - UncleMeat 1y ago
    > Does it matter in order to explain how things came to be? Yes. Writing on historiography has been detailed about the ways that this sort of framing can be limiting.

BeFlatXIII 1y ago

Studying the winners is also a surefire way to learn only survivorship bias.