[HN Gopher] Is history written by the winners?
___________________________________________________________________
Is history written by the winners?
Author : benbreen
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-05-26 03:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| thom wrote:
| I don't know if exceptions to the rule are interesting, but the
| best sources for much of Macedon's conquest of Greece come from
| the defeated Athenians (especially tidbits from Demosthenes who,
| alongside Cicero, is one of history's more voluminous losers).
| comprev wrote:
| People rarely remember the first loser - the person with the
| silver medal award.
|
| Regardless of how good/evil the winner was, the simple fact they
| came out on top is used as positive motivational material.
| mongol wrote:
| When speaking about this, it is good to be clear about what kind
| of history is being talked about. In my opinion, the most
| important history is the one being taught in schools, because it
| is the one that everyone will relate to later on.
| sillystuff wrote:
| LMTTM is an excellent book on the subject of (poor state of)
| history being taught in K-12 schools in the US. I bought it for
| my son when he was in elementary school, and the "history" he
| was being taught was mostly just uncritical hero worship of
| famous people combined with made up bullshit to improve
| narrative flow.
|
| "After surveying eighteen leading high school American history
| texts, he [Loewen] has concluded that not one does a decent job
| of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an
| embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless
| optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books
| omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama
| from our past."
|
| "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History
| Textbook Got Wrong" - James W. Loewen
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything-dp-16...
| thriftwy wrote:
| Every country has its own schools and what gets taught there is
| drastically different, evolves with time.
|
| This does indeed seem to work, to my surprise since I can't
| positively remember a word of what were taught at school. Went
| in one ear and out of another.
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| It seems that it's mostly written by their sons. People who
| weren't there but interpret the present based on their glorious
| present and the average depth of historical inquiry will not be
| very high. It's mostly appraisal of the current status-quo.
|
| for instance, people will talk about computing today with
| react/javascript/facebook/google.. maybe good old
| microsoft/apple. But almost nobody will go deeper and read about
| backus team in the first FORTRAN compiler and his later years
| around FP influencing the 70s/80s functional school of thought
| that led to rust, ES6, react and the likes.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I hope historians are keep close track to the facts these days in
| the US. Seems the current political environment is making
| historian's jobs rather tough.
|
| Never mind many colleges and schools seems to be getting rid of
| or pairing down non-corporate majors.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Never mind many colleges and schools seems to be getting rid
| of or pairing down non-corporate majors.
|
| That's called "the market."
|
| Many schools are happy, within reason, to offer whatever
| programs students want to major in--whether they offer good
| post-graduation employment opportunities or not.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| We should stop invoking "the market" as some sort of almighty
| deity who is always right. Sometimes what "the market" does
| is fine, sometimes it is not.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not judging it as a good or bad result. I'm just
| describing a system whereby a student in the US can study
| pretty much anything they want that's offered by the
| schools that have admitted them and that they're able to
| pay for. Individual schools may also require, for example,
| taking some number of liberal arts courses even if you're
| in a technical major and that's part of the bargain you
| sign up for. But, unsurprisingly, courses are different
| than they were 100 years ago in general mostly because
| there's less demand for certain things such as fluency in
| Latin and ancient Greek and more for majors that companies
| are actively seeking. (Although there are still Classics
| majors.)
| mc32 wrote:
| That's not what poster is claiming. Poster is claiming
| Higher Ed provides majors that are in demand by students,
| be the majors useful to gain employment or not.
| adamisom wrote:
| It's just shorthand for something like "what people (show
| they) want".
|
| In the past, college-degree holders were scarce, so a
| history degree had "economic" value.
|
| It's not that the past valued the humanities more. It's
| just that good jobs were a thinner slice of society and
| tended to be filled by the also-thin ranks of degree
| holders.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, plenty of people who get history majors do
| perfectly well professionally. Many of us have mostly
| worked in things only tangentially related to our
| undergraduate major.
| visarga wrote:
| Non-corporate majors should be free because you get almost no
| jobs anyway. Some are so bad they should pay you to take the
| courses.
| mc32 wrote:
| Students who get into low opportunity majors should be
| aware of the drawbacks AND adjust their expectations rather
| than become disillusioned and bitter.
| brent_noorda wrote:
| Yes. And apologies are written by the winners' grandchildren
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I searched for "Carthage" in the original article, and in this
| thread. Crickets.
|
| Did they have a lot of written material that all got destroyed?
| Or is it just that, if they'd won, they _would have_ written a
| lot of stuff?
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Excellent blog post on this question: https://scholars-
| stage.org/history-is-written-by-the-losers/
| waveBidder wrote:
| Checking to see if someone posted this. those chronicling
| history frequently being the losers is an interesting take.
| aerialfrog wrote:
| History is written by the literate.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In general the answer seemed to be something like: yeah, mostly,
| but not always, and the winners don't always have a perfectly
| unified voice, so this can be mitigated to a great extent by
| careful study. Which seems like a fine answer although not super
| enlightening.
|
| The bit that stuck with me was a little aside near the beginning.
|
| > Whether we like it or not, we view the past from a modern
| standpoint, privileging (consciously or otherwise) the interests
| and ideals of the world we know. As a result, we tend to treat
| developments towards modernity as natural - and disparage the
| apparent dead ends that stood in its path.
|
| I think modern values are pretty good. But we sit on a branch in
| a big tree which history has explored stochastically. The idea
| that, going back, some figures could be seen as good or bad not
| because of the fundamentals of their deeds, or because of the
| propaganda (good or ill) recorded about them, but because the
| just mismatch with modern values is interesting...
|
| But I dunno, I can think of any, I must just be too throughly
| soaked through with modern values.
| momirlan wrote:
| the current desire to rewrite all history as per politically
| correct ideology is remarkable, but it too will pass.
| throwawaydd wrote:
| [flagged]
| nokya wrote:
| History is written by men and selectively erased by other, more
| privileged, men.
|
| Once we acknowledge this and everything it implies, we can only
| assume we know what someone allowed us to know.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Critical race theory is only relevant to a particular time and
| place. The broader concept is that of hegemony in general. Do
| not confuse the former for the latter.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Did I miss something in the previous comment? They don't
| mention anything close to CRT. It sounds more like they're
| talking about feminist history, given the context.
| flybrand wrote:
| It's certainly written by the literate.
| scop wrote:
| > It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys
| have won every single time. What are the odds?
|
| - Norm MacDonald
| cainxinth wrote:
| Are people still hating on GPT-4 summaries? I find them useful:
|
| > _The text notes that while powerful institutions and victorious
| factions may influence the preservation and interpretation of
| historical records, factors such as literacy also play a role.
| History 's portrayal of England's Reformation illustrates how the
| 'winners' can shape historical narratives, in this case favoring
| Protestantism over Catholicism until recent reevaluation. The
| notion of 'winners' itself is questioned as too simplistic,
| potentially obscuring historical diversity. The text also
| explores the fluidity of 'winning', using the example of the Cold
| War's end and the subsequent scrutiny of neoliberal ideals.
| Lastly, the text asserts that contemporary history is largely
| crafted by historians, professionals dedicated to analyzing
| history's complexity and including the voices of marginalized
| groups._
| roenxi wrote:
| It is remarkable to see (in this age of the internet) the huge
| gap between what the media believes about the present vs. what is
| more likely based on the far deeper amount of information made
| available on the internet.
|
| Society is made up of many parallel subcultures, and only a very
| small group of them keep journals, write, or otherwise record
| history. That group appears to be mostly disconnected from the
| nuts and bolts of what is actually going on technologically,
| politically and economically.
|
| It has always been understood that history was unreliable, but
| the collapse of media credibility as we gain access to primary
| sources stands as a stark warning of just how little we really
| know about the past.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I disagree. Historically, having a lot of subcultures wasn't a
| thing in any society I've heard about. Even in the west today,
| what people call a subculture is just people doing stuff that
| is conformant with the dominant culture (mostly individualism
| and progressivism, what indivduality or direction of progress
| might change and people think that's a subculture).
|
| History looks at all available sources not just popular ones.
| Merely surviving up to the present age is a huge feat for any
| historical evidence.
|
| I am constantly seeing disputed history when I look into
| historical events or figures. I only agree with your last
| sentence because much of history was oral and like the game of
| telephone it has gotten distorted or just lost.
| Mezzie wrote:
| > It has always been understood that history was unreliable,
| but the collapse of media credibility as we gain access to
| primary sources stands as a stark warning of just how little we
| really know about the past.
|
| Establishing provenance and reliability post 2020 is going to
| be...interesting...
| anamexis wrote:
| Why 2020 specifically?
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Generative AI
| Mezzie wrote:
| Specifically the combination of generative AI and the
| lack of _current_ understanding of it by the history-
| making professions (archivists and historians).
| Historians and archivists rely a lot on primary sources
| and right now digital provenance is already a dumpster
| fire - I don 't even want to think of what generative AI
| is going to do. A lot of the methods traditionally used
| for identifying an authentic primary source aren't going
| to work with generative AI.
| kiba wrote:
| It isn't particularly new, given that most of our media
| are either doctored, touched up, or manipulated in some
| ways.
|
| Most of us don't have VFX knowledge or the ability to
| detect minute flaws in Deepfake works.
|
| We do it through by filtering and selecting sources of
| information.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| This reminds me of old shows about Big Foot, Yeti, the Loch
| Ness Monster, etc...
|
| Now that many people can easily take videos/photos on there
| phones, it turns out there's a lot of official and police
| misconduct, bigotry, and people acting like dilholes in
| general, and not many monsters. At least not yet.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There have been far more sightings and phone recordings of
| the LNM than there used to be. They just don't make the
| headlines any more.
|
| I'm agnostic about the LNM and don't lean either way.
|
| And of course this is now History Channel click-tainment, so
| it's not a serious topic.
|
| Even so - it's not factually correct to suggest there are no
| recent photos or videos of surface phenomena that seem to
| match the profile.
| sbuk wrote:
| > ...it turns out there's a lot of official and police
| misconduct, bigotry, and people acting like dilholes in
| general, and not many monsters.
|
| One can argue they _are_ the monsters
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Similarly, miracles and credible supernatural events have all
| but stopped. Odd.
| signalToNose wrote:
| Didn't they just release a lot of military ufo videos. Most
| of them already debunked by several YouTubeers
| HellDunkel wrote:
| > It is remarkable to see (in this age of the internet) the
| huge gap between what the media believes about the present vs.
| what is more likely based on the far deeper amount of
| information made available on the internet.
|
| So "the media" has no internet?
|
| > Society is made up of many parallel subcultures, and only a
| very small group of them keep journals, write, or otherwise
| record history. That group appears to be mostly disconnected
| from the nuts and bolts of what is actually going on
| technologically, politically and economically.
|
| Is the fact they write or record history stopping them from
| digging out those real deep youtube videos about the truth
| behind everything?
|
| > It has always been understood that history was unreliable,
| but the collapse of media credibility as we gain access to
| primary sources stands as a stark warning of just how little we
| really know about the past.
|
| Did "the media credibility" collapse in that very moment when
| you found out that the pentagon was behind 9/11?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Did "the media credibility" collapse in that very moment
| when you found out that the pentagon was behind 9/11?
|
| That's a funny question to ask, because a huge amount of
| people on the US lost confidence on the media exactly because
| most of them conspired to lie to the public about Iraq's WMDs
| shortly after 9/11.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I don't think they conspired to lie, they just reported the
| information they were getting from the government. They
| didn't have any way to independently verify any of it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The information they got from the government was
| literally ridiculous. Outside of the US it was more
| reported on comedy shows than on the news.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Even funnier: most US citizen were pro Iraq war first, then
| embarrassed, then looking for someone else to blame...
| esafak wrote:
| I don't remember the embarrassment stage. I think it went
| from pro-war to forgetting about it. President Obama said
| it himself: "we need to look forward as opposed to
| looking backwards".
| revskill wrote:
| History is written by not the winner, but those who accuire
| power.
| visarga wrote:
| History is written by those who know how to write.
|
| For a long time they were a small minority. Even poor monks
| could leave manuscripts. Not necessarily the "winners".
| nicbou wrote:
| Although certain writing has a greater chance of being
| considered important, and of surviving through time.
| echelon wrote:
| Is this why "defeatist" narratives feel so much more
| prevalent lately? Those at the bottom are sharing their
| pain and suffering more widely on social media?
|
| Not that their experiences aren't valid, but that there is
| an overwhelming feeling that "America sucks and is failing"
| when this isn't a true assessment. Not for the middle class
| and above, and especially not relative to the rest of the
| world on average.
|
| Social media lumps all voices in together and tends to
| amplify strong feelings. But if you zoomed out, you'd see a
| very different picture of what constitutes this collective
| voice.
| waboremo wrote:
| There are a couple things happening here:
|
| 1) We benefit from social media lumping voices together
| because it's easier to argue against and internally
| reason with. They aren't individuals with individual
| experiences, they're the unwashed entitled masses crying
| on social media spreading their lies. See how easy that
| was? We do this a lot for everything we don't agree with.
|
| 2) Spend any time anywhere and it's easy to start seeing
| "narratives". Online bubbles are real: most people do not
| comment on any given platform. Therefore, commenters are
| already a bubble in themselves. So we do what humans do
| and start seeking patterns, and then extract these
| patterns into narratives. Note: this does not mean that
| there aren't groups of people who do share whatever
| "narrative" idea, but the reality is their views on it
| tend to be more nuanced than the narrative we've imagined
| in our minds. For example, 'America sucks and is failing'
| could be a common vague narrative people share, but you
| would get so many varied explanations that it stops
| existing as such a simple narrative until you reduce it
| again into a vague narrative.
|
| 3) Social media has its pros and cons, but one of its
| neutrals is it forces people from entirely different
| groups to interact with each other. This winds up
| becoming world shattering a lot of the times, because as
| humans we tend to create these internal stories that
| justifies our world views. We seek out things that
| justify these internal stories. We seek out people who
| reflect what we want, and this feeds into #2 and makes it
| harder to break out of. So, if you are optimistic you'll
| seek others who are also optimistic, and when social
| media does its recommendation/random thing, you'll
| encounter people who do not share this view and then it
| leads right back into #1 turning this into tribes. A
| beautiful self powering triangle if you will.
| mxkopy wrote:
| ...is your solution to have those sharing their pain and
| suffering made to stop?
|
| I seriously don't understand your point, nor the level of
| mental gymnastics it takes to see a trend of
| independently dissatisfied people and say - oh, my
| neighborhood is doing fine, you're just being defeatist.
|
| I'd wager that if you "zoom out" what you see is a
| dangerously reckless societal experiment for some, and a
| life of modern amenities for others. Both can be true at
| the same time.
| echelon wrote:
| Good news is seldom shared or amplified. It's also seldom
| relevant, but I'd argue the same is true of the
| negativity.
|
| Online content is overwhelmingly negative. Bad things
| happen, but in reality the proportionality is much
| smaller than you encounter online. But negativity is what
| gets amplified, since that drives engagement. The
| smallest grievances become threads that take up
| disproportional space in the attention feed and crowd out
| the rest.
|
| I guess I'm wondering if this isn't just the algorithm,
| but also an amplification of certain subpopulations over
| others. The ones that tend to be angry.
|
| > ...is your solution to have those sharing their pain
| and suffering made to stop?
|
| I want a mute button. Or a threshold that caps it past a
| certain point.
|
| Or, if this is just some people contributing to most of
| the problem, maybe just a way to opt out of their
| noisiest signals.
|
| People can say all they want, but it doesn't mean they
| deserve a place in my limited attention and emotional
| energy feed.
|
| Emotion is contagious.
|
| I want my media use to drop to only the most salient
| bits. And I want it to be more positive.
| [deleted]
| mxkopy wrote:
| Nobody is forcing you to use social media. If you don't
| want to see something you don't have to.
|
| On the flip side you should consider that some people
| like the affirmation and validity they get out of hearing
| stories similar to their own. People have their own needs
| that are met by social media. If yours aren't, maybe
| consider that you aren't the target audience?
| echelon wrote:
| > Nobody is forcing you to use social media. If you don't
| want to see something you don't have to.
|
| > People have their own needs that are met by social
| media. If yours aren't, maybe consider that you aren't
| the target audience?
|
| The internet isn't for me?
|
| That's interesting. I was here first and then the
| platforms came and ripped apart our old methods of high-
| signal communication. RSS, IRC, and forums are ghost
| towns or dead. Replaced with anger amplification and
| marketing money printers.
|
| My response to this is that we can perhaps begin
| filtering out these voices and negative remarks with AI
| and NLP. That could make social media broadly useful
| again, even if the platform owners themselves would be
| opposed.
| mxkopy wrote:
| No, the internet is not for you. It's used by billions of
| people around the planet.
|
| What I'm hearing is basically "the poors are making too
| much noise for my liking." Well, prepare to get eaten I
| guess.
| [deleted]
| ramblenode wrote:
| Most records don't survive. Over any considerable timespan,
| the ones that do have been copied and rewritten dozens or
| hundreds of times (with the exception of a few
| archeological gems). Every generation is curating the past
| based on what they think is important.
| macrolime wrote:
| Or by those who make the headlines that get the most clicks.
|
| Often stories are exaggerated or twisted, not for any
| particular side, but for attention and clicks.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Potato, potato.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| After rewatching Fog of War the other day, it reminds me of a
| McNamara quote of Lemay regarding the fire bombings of Japan.
|
| McNamara: "LeMay said, if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been
| prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He, and I'd
| say, we were behaving as war criminals."
| zabzonk wrote:
| Chuck Yeager to his wingman (or vice versa, can't remember) in
| WW2 after being given orders to strafe everything, including
| civilians, when coming back from escort missions - "Jesus, we
| had better win this!"
| 13of40 wrote:
| "Our seventy-five Mustangs were assigned an area of fifty
| miles by fifty miles inside Germany and ordered to strafe
| anything that moved. The object was to demoralize the German
| population...We weren't asked how we felt zapping people. It
| was a miserable, dirty mission, but we all took off on time
| and did it."
|
| Gosh.
|
| https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=89735
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| How many people have actually been prosecuted as war criminals
| even on the losing side?
| 77pt77 wrote:
| "The only war-crime is losing."
| Animats wrote:
| It's amazing what's been covered up.
|
| - The Tiananmen Square demonstrations. (1989)[1] At least in
| China.
|
| - Britain's efforts to get the US into WWII before Pearl Harbor.
| (early 1940s) [2]
|
| - DuPont's attempt at a US coup (1933) [3]
|
| - The Israeli nuclear bomb test. (1979) [4]
|
| The first one is a successful outright suppression. The rest were
| obfuscated and obscured at the time, but the historical record
| exists.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
|
| [2] https://www.history.com/news/wwii-us-entry-secret-british-
| ca...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
| max_ wrote:
| Add COINTELPRO to the list
|
| [0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
|
| [1]:https://youtu.be/IGIYam3p-Yc
| rajin444 wrote:
| With regards to #2, Wendell Willkie winning the republican
| nomination over the isolationist candidates was extremely
| fortuitous for FDR and Churchill. There was no real desire from
| the US population to get involved in another European war, but
| Willkie (lifelong democrat with no previous political
| experience) securing the republican slot (and basically
| guaranteeing FDR's win with no policy adjustments) made that
| issue a moot point since his stance on the war was similar to
| FDRs. Willkie eventually ended up with a position in FDR's
| administration.
|
| The only truths taught in US schools are those beneficial to
| the empire - it's best viewed as propaganda.
| oblak wrote:
| Concludes with
|
| > So yes, of course history tends to be written by the winners.
| But luckily there is a dedicated band of highly trained, poorly
| paid and badly dressed historians out there trying to circumvent
| that.
|
| Duh. But these unsung heroes don't have the means to pump out an
| endless amount of hollywood movies, cop dramas, and _historical_
| pieces. Even if one is educated and smart, they don 't get to
| decide what society, at large, has accepted as truth. Even these
| days, I'd think propaganda is most potent once it reaches word of
| mouth.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| A rare exception to the almost universal rule that when the
| title of an article is a yes or no question, the answer is no.
| bee_rider wrote:
| At no point in history have we been free from propaganda. I
| mean various rulers in ancient time claimed that their position
| was literally ordained by their society's god(s). I dunno,
| things aren't always great, but we muddle along and somebody
| usually writes down what actually happened, or at least gives
| the future some hints.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| The reach of propaganda has increased immensely though with
| technology. Everyone has a little box in their pockets and
| many of them use it to read propaganda many times per day.
| Not true in Roman times!
| bee_rider wrote:
| The propaganda devices in our pockets point every which
| way, they might have a great reach, but they don't seem to
| be as good at producing a unified message as, say, a state-
| sponsored religion.
| thom wrote:
| If you wanted to read or hear propaganda multiple times a
| day in Rome, it wasn't actually hard.
| pseudostem wrote:
| I am a history enthusiast. I have a reason to believe this
| belief by populations in untruths is short term (I'd define it
| as <50 years, YMMV).
|
| Long term chronicling goes beyond short term propoganda.
| Society eventually (IMO) accepts the truth. And the highly
| trained, poorly dressed, unsung heroes are to be credited for
| it. Unfortunately, society at large pays importance to the
| short term "stuff". Regardless, I feel these guys stand for
| correctness and should be recognised (preferably much before
| they die).
| AStrangeMorrow wrote:
| We still have people believing WW1 and WW2 propaganda, or
| have a very cliche view of the middle ages for example. With
| tons of fact that have been debunked over and over again
| being spread.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This may come as a surprise, but most professional historians
| don't accept the idea of there being a singular "truth" to be
| known. I'll link some different perspectives discussing this
| ([0], [1], [2]), but suffice to say that most historical work
| becomes dramatically less useful to society if the primary
| purposes of history are to satisfy our idle curiosity about
| the past and figure out some objective temporal ordering of
| events. Those fuzzy questions of narrative and "propaganda"
| are a huge part of why we do history, even if they cause all
| sorts of issues.
|
| [0] https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/01his
| t.h...
|
| [1] https://www.historians.org/research-and-
| publications/perspec...
|
| [2] https://www.historians.org/research-and-
| publications/perspec...
| brabel wrote:
| Are we past World War II propaganda yet?
|
| I have a feeling that most of us still believe a pretty
| twisted narrative where things are just black and white,
| which frankly, can absolutely never be the case. Humans are
| never completely evil or completely good, but that's the
| narrative I hear most of the time, not just with current
| events but with a lot of wars more recent than I would say
| 200 years... for example, today, Napoleon is not considered
| to have been the devil himself, though for at least 100 years
| after his defeat, I believe the countries he briefly
| overpowered thought of him as such. What do you think about
| that?
| mynameishere wrote:
| I got the impression that the UK WWII vets had come around
| on the issue already, as they faded to oblivion. "Was that
| other guy going to put mosques everywhere? Was he going to
| operate a vast white slave trade? Was he going to destroy
| us eternally, like this?"
| Retric wrote:
| We are very much past most WWII propaganda. It's not just
| that words like Nip have lost their negative connotations
| in most peoples minds, people don't even know what they
| were referring to.
|
| Some propaganda that was around in WWII continued to be
| pushed, but it's not WWII specific.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| That's the difference between history and historical memory,
| largely.
| webdoodle wrote:
| Yep. Like a virus, once an idea's replication rate is high
| enough, it doesn't need to be seeded by propagandists.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I trust historians even less than i trust Hollywood. Hollywood
| (eventually) has to make a profit, historians have no incentive
| except to push a narrative.
| esafak wrote:
| The narrative they want push is the truth. Why would they go
| to the trouble of inventing a falsehood about something that
| happened in the past? Nobody reads academic history.
|
| Hollywood's profit motive is exactly the problem. Who wants
| to pay to see an uncomfortable or boring truth? Do you really
| look to Hollywood for accuracy?
| tmn wrote:
| Historians seeking truth makes sense, but this principle is
| corrupted when ego/credibility enter the fray. Historians
| are human like the rest of us and they will dig and defend
| their bias. Beyond that there are those who enter the
| profession in order to push a preconceived bias or
| narrative. I'm differentiating the first (unconscious
| bias)and the second (historical manipulation). None of this
| is specific to historians, historians simply aren't exempt.
| Robustly principled truth seekers seem to be a small
| minority of the population. ~1% seems like a good
| approximation.
|
| As far as the why.. every case has its own reason. But
| there seems to be no shortage of humans who want to
| convince others of how to think on a given subject.
| [deleted]
| qubex wrote:
| History is written by the drives, the literate, whatever side
| they're on. Those who are on the side of the victorious get
| exhaled in the immediate aftermath, but the writings of the
| defeated re-emerge in due course.
|
| The illiterate leave no trace.
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