[HN Gopher] The past is not true
___________________________________________________________________
The past is not true
Author : swah
Score : 345 points
Date : 2023-07-20 10:52 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sive.rs)
(TXT) w3m dump (sive.rs)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The moral of the story: drive safely, pay attention always!
| JanNash wrote:
| Well put.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Corny:
|
| "The past is history, the future's a mystery, the present's a
| gift".
|
| My memory has been getting worse for years. People can take
| advantage of me by insisting confidently that I've misremembered
| something.
|
| Crime witnesses often confabulate; they don't know what they saw,
| so they "enrich" their memory by adding spurious information.
|
| The title's wrong, though; the past _is_ true, it 's just that we
| can't remember it.
| weare138 wrote:
| The past is real. Your memories, feelings and interpretations of
| it may not be. Reality is not subjective. You are.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Because of quantum mechanics this is a genuinely open
| philosophical question. The equations which time evolve the
| wave function are time-symmetric, which means that even if you
| know the current state of the universe's wave function somehow,
| you still only get a probabilistic projection for the state in
| the past. I think this leaves open the genuine physical
| possibility that the past does not exist in the same way that
| the present exists. A lot comes down to what you think about
| the ontology of quantum mechanics.
| hef19898 wrote:
| We are not living in a Star Trek / MCU multi-verse so.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| This reeks of bullshit.
| azubinski wrote:
| It is too convenient wisdom to be real wisdom.
| youssefabdelm wrote:
| "What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and
| anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have
| been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and
| embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be
| fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have
| forgotten are illusions -- they are metaphors that have become
| worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which
| have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no
| longer as coins." - Nietzsche
| drewcoo wrote:
| The past is not true . . . but self-help author Derek Sivers is?
|
| Somehow I'm not as convinced as he is that it was a really good
| thing to break someone's spine years ago because he was a
| teenager who didn't follow road signs.
| tombert wrote:
| I am not a fan of self help stuff, but I think that's a
| somewhat uncharitable reading of the article; I don't think he
| was implying that it was "good" to break someone's spine.
|
| I think it was saying that it's very easy to convince yourself
| of something much worse than reality. He felt guilty because he
| thought he ruined a woman's life forever, he felt immense guilt
| over that, when in reality the woman mostly recovered, not that
| it was good the accident happened.
|
| I thought The idea is that a slight misunderstanding of the can
| have a severe "compound interest rate".
| UncleMeat wrote:
| If you are interested in this topic but would like to understand
| how historians think about things, look into writing about
| Historiography and Historical Memory. This person appears to just
| be some guy who describes himself as an entrepreneur and TED
| speaker.
|
| The way we understand the past is a deep topic that is analyzed
| and discussed by actual professionals _constantly_. Better to
| read their writing than this kind of stuff, IMO.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This comment reminds me a lot of XKCD "Ten Thousand"
| (https://xkcd.com/1053/). You don't need to denigrate the
| author's credibility to write about their personal experience
| and insight from it in order to provide a reference to the much
| deeper field of study on this to those who are interested.
| Personally, I had heard of "historiography" but had no idea
| this is what it meant. And now I do! And that wouldn't have
| happened today if this author hadn't published their little
| anecdote.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| The author's claim "history is not true" is a huge one and
| it's reasonable to look up his background to understand where
| he might be coming from.
|
| Unfortunately for him (the author) he's not coming from an
| expert's position, and whatever perceptions that creates in
| people is not fault of the commenter you're replying to.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I'm less denigrating the author and more encouraging people
| who found this idea interesting to seek out experts. I'm glad
| that this person is thinking about this topic. I _also_ see a
| frankly huge number of absolute amateurs having their ideas
| about history distributed all over the world while
| professionals are doing everything they can to communicate
| effectively.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think you're doing both things. And I applaud you for the
| encouragement and useful information! I also don't begrudge
| you your frustration about this. But I also find the "ten
| thousand" idea to be a useful re-framing of how to respond
| to this phenomenon where something seems obvious to you
| because you know all about it, but it's actually not
| obvious to most people at all. Maybe you'll find this to be
| a useful re-framing too, I dunno.
|
| I will push back a bit on "professionals are doing
| everything they can to communicate effectively". I don't
| think that's really true. In my experience, it seems like
| most professionals and academics prefer to write and speak
| within their own bubbles. Some few make a concerted effort
| to communicate effectively to the masses, but more often
| they look down their noses at the kinds of communication
| that entails. For instance, my interpretation of your "TED
| speaker" comment is that TED talks are not a suitable way
| to communicate about this topic. But a compelling TED talk
| or blog post or op-ed in a mainstream publication would be
| a great way for a professional to communicate about this
| with a large audience. I think this has a lot to do with
| the way academia is set up. "Publish or perish" provides
| little incentive structure for effectively communicating
| your work for amateurs.
|
| Or in more concrete terms: What professionals do you know
| of in this field who are out there doing everything they
| can to communicate effectively about this to a non-
| professional non-academic audience? What is it that they're
| doing?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > I will push back a bit on "professionals are doing
| everything they can to communicate effectively". I don't
| think that's really true.
|
| For personal reasons, I am very good friends with an
| unusually large number of history faculty. I do not agree
| with your assessment at all. My experience is that
| historians are desperately trying to communicate their
| expertise in the face of an increasingly hostile culture
| that either does not value their expertise or considers
| them to be propagandists. Public History in particular is
| having a renaissance right now and Digital History (which
| is often tightly associated with widespread distribution
| of tools and interactive systems) is comparatively well
| funded.
|
| History doesn't have the same "publish or perish" model
| as say CS because individual journal articles don't
| actually provide much professional clout. You do have the
| publish the book (which are increasingly distributed
| open-access) but there is ample time for communication
| with laypeople (and teaching).
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Is this story made up though?
| zzzeek wrote:
| It does feel a little made up right ? Could be true. Could be
| maybe a little bit dramatized. Derek Sivers seems to have _so
| many_ stories like this
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Had the same feeling. The man is a writer after all and he
| has just way too many stories at this point that I'm
| wondering if they're all true or if he's just using made up
| stories as a tool to convey messages.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Then he should be more careful in public spaces and around
| other people, shouldn't he? Assuming it is true, that is,
| otherwise he should switch to fiction books.
| zzzeek wrote:
| careful about what, that he makes shit up? I think you'd be
| surprised how many people operate at that level by default.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Backing up your point by making up a bullshit story is
| called "lying" and "disinformation" and should be
| rejected outright by anyone who wants a high trust
| society. We should not build policy, intentions, or any
| ideologies based on a single lie from some dude trying to
| push a "nobody is ever guilty of anything" agenda.
|
| This post adds nothing to the world, especially with the
| horrific conclusion it is encouraging you to accept. "The
| past is not real" is utter horseshit, and does not follow
| from "I did something I thought was really bad but was
| only kinda bad actually" in the first place.
| voidhorse wrote:
| Memory is a process. We do not have fixed objects we could call
| representations stored in our brains. Someone asks "what did you
| have for breakfast" and I respond with a word "pancakes" -- a
| process and action occurs and we call it memory, I don't go
| looking up some representation of "the facts" and wheel it out
| before them, nor do I produce an actual pancake.
|
| In other words, of course memory is an interpretation, and
| historical thought is basically a collective form of these kinds
| of processes.
|
| What's fascinating, and what powers the drama of the article is
| that even if we know this scientifically and philosophically, we
| often can't help but act as though our memories were objects,
| were these concrete things that we have at hand. A person can
| remember, but no person actually _possesses_ memories (unless you
| want to talk about the dynamic and constantly changing states of
| a neuronal system).
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Would there not be some police investigation and possibly prison
| time if you recklessly caused such a serious accident?
|
| I'm not sure how this misunderstanding could occur for so many
| years.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because history is true, stories on the other hand can be
| totally made up.
| n6h6 wrote:
| Police aren't known for their investigation skills.
| astura wrote:
| No, even if you kill someone while driving, if you're not drunk
| and don't leave the scene then you don't get more than a
| traffic ticket.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/9bzdpv/you-can-kill-anyone-y...
| PcChip wrote:
| Manslaughter is a traffic ticket these days?
| astura wrote:
| Manslaughter charges only happen if the driver is drunk or
| flees. Otherwise it's a traffic ticket AT MOST.
|
| My friend's teenaged son, while biking, was run over by a
| driver who did it completely intentionally. Zero charges or
| tickets.
|
| From my link above
|
| >Leah Shahum from the San Francisco Bike Coalition told the
| New York Times last year that her organization does "not
| know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the
| driver was prosecuted, except for DUI or hit-and-run."
| Kristin Smith, also of the SF Coalition, says that "Last
| year, four people were hit and killed in San Francisco and
| no charges were ever brought," including for a collision
| captured on video that showed the driver was at fault.
|
| >But if the public is at a loss, so are prosecutors.
| Portland, Oregon, attorney Ray Thomas explains that DAs
| don't like to go after "some soccer dad who made a
| mistake... The police, prosecutors, and courts don't feel
| it's a mistake that should net someone jail time... There
| are criminally negligent homicide laws. But [a crash] has
| got to be really, really bad."
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, accidents do happen, don't they? Thing is so, if
| one party was reckless it amounts, usually, to some
| charges of hurting / injuring someone.
|
| But you show nicely the differemce between history /
| facts (number of accidents from official statistics
| matched against charges and results of analysis of each
| accident) and feelings / story / narrative (someone says
| something to a journalists who then reports on it).
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, this article shocked me more than the post this
| thread is about. What has manslaughter have to do with
| whether you are drunk or not? Does that make the person
| you killed any less dead? Is this a consequence of DAs
| being elected officials in most of the US? So, as long as
| there are more drivers who could see themselves in this
| situation than cyclists who could get mad about this in
| the electorate, drivers killing cyclists will be off the
| hook?
| mowse_winded wrote:
| The definition of vehicular manslaughter is unlawful or
| negligent operation of a vehicle resulting in a death. If
| the driver was not driving unlawfully, such as DUI, then
| it is not manslaughter. Fleeing the scene of an accident
| is unlawful so that also makes it meet the definition.
| Other reasons could include speeding or running a red
| light.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/vehicular_manslaughter
| rob74 wrote:
| That still leaves us with the second part - "...or
| negligent". I find it a bit hard to believe that in all
| those cases the cyclists were at fault? Unless you
| consider that they were already acting recklessly because
| they tried to use a bicycle on a public street (I know a
| lot of people subscribe to this opinion, but I don't).
| hef19898 wrote:
| You can have accidents, even deadly ones, without being
| negligent. Hard to swallow sometimes, but true.
| rob74 wrote:
| I don't want to be too insistent, but: if you get hit by
| lightning or a falling rock while cycling or driving
| along, that's no-ones fault. But as long as two vehicles
| are involved, there is a set of well-defined rules that
| are designed to make sure that these vehicles don't
| collide, and if they do collide, in the overwhelming
| majority of cases one (or both) of the parties involved
| has failed to follow these rules, i.e. negligence.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > What makes Cann's story notable among the 700 or so
| bicyclists who are hit and killed in America each year is
| that San Hamel faces charges in Cann's death.
|
| In the end he got 10 days in jail, 4 years probation, and had
| to pay the cyclist's funeral expenses - for plowing him over
| from behind while driving home drunk from a bar.
|
| So apparently even if you hit someone while DUI nothing
| really happens.
| jsight wrote:
| Look at it this way, officers see car accidents every day. The
| majority are cases where someone ran directly into the car in
| front of them due to inattention.
|
| Humans make a lot of mistakes and unless there were extenuating
| factors (DUI, for example), they are very unlikely to become
| criminal. In many cases, they wouldn't even be ticketed.
|
| Given that there was a yield sign involved, it also may be a
| known problematic intersection. Sadly, we have a lot of those
| in the US too. Yield signs in places with low traffic and poor
| visibility are way more common than they should be.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| That's very surprising to me. Here in the UK, a serious
| accident where someone broke their spine would be
| investigated without a shadow of a doubt. They would want to
| rule out any criminal culpability.
| pharrington wrote:
| Yeah, the US in general is extremely cavalier with our car
| culture. Usually the only police involvement when an
| accident occurs is when they're called to the scene to take
| a report of the incident. Afterwards, the parties usually
| just deal with the aftermath themselves and through
| insurance companies.
|
| Even if you have to show up to court, people almost always
| walk away after pleading "not guilty," because again, the
| officer who reported the incident can rarely be bothered to
| show up on the court date.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| It's probably outsourced to the civil system knowing the
| US.
|
| It's a huge contrast between the US and European approach
| though.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's really just another example of cops in the US
| choosing to not do their job. We have plenty of laws on
| the books that could punish inattentive or reckless
| driving especially when it results in a severe outcome,
| but that would require a cop to open an investigation and
| all that noise so they just write up a report for your
| insurance and try to get you to believe there's nothing
| else they can do.
|
| The complete inefficacy and refusal to do any work of
| most american police departments is absurd. It's like
| they still believe their primary mission to be slave
| retrieval and violently suppressing strikes, as if it's
| still 1890.
| jsight wrote:
| In some states in the US, if one party was even 1% at fault
| (like, for example, being distracted like in the story),
| they may not even be able to collect damages from the other
| party.
|
| Our system is really weird.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I feel like the internet has really made the fault ones of our
| memories very apparent. I have a lot of old memories that I will
| think about and then try to research the event online and realize
| a lot of my memories are impossible because of the actual
| timeline of events.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| He did the right thing by seeking her out to apologize.
|
| The rest doesn't hold water.
|
| "There's a small chance that the chaos and ruin I've visited upon
| others may not be as bad as as those people made me think.
| Thanks, I knew my negligence/malice wasn't that big a deal."
|
| The worst people that I've ever met would love for that to be
| true.
|
| They'll stab people in the back or work to damage people's
| careers and when you call them out on it it's always something
| like "We'll if I could damage their career anyone could have." or
| "It's been ten years, why don't they just get over it?"
|
| Basically: "Yes, I stabbed them. But they didn't/couldn't stop
| me, so it's their fault that they're dead, really."
|
| Negative equity is a real and it compounds over time.
|
| Most people who have been told that they've caused actual harm,
| probably did. Telling yourself that the facts of your story don't
| matter or that the people you hurt may even be better off for it
| won't mend the people you've broken.
|
| Just apologize (for real) and attempt to make amends.
| e40 wrote:
| _> Negative equity is a real and it compounds over time._
|
| I don't think this is always true. For me and you, yeah. For
| good people. But, there are a significant percentage of humans
| (I have no idea what the number is) where this is completely
| false. They can move forward in time without a scintilla of
| guilt or negative repercussions. I fact, for some people, it
| seems to be fuel for them. They enjoy it. The percentage of
| those folks is much smaller, I believe. Thankfully.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| I see what you're saying but I think we're using the phrase
| "negative equity" slightly differently.
|
| When I say negative equity I'm talking about the compounding
| opportunity costs of something happening to you. One missed
| opportunity could lead to another and another.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > "There's a small chance that the chaos and ruin I've visited
| upon others may not be as bad as as those people made me think.
| Thanks, I knew my negligence/malice wasn't that big a deal."
|
| > The worst people that I've ever met would love for that to be
| true.
|
| It's worse than that:
|
| > > She said "that little accident" helped her pay more
| attention to her fitness, lose weight, and since then has been
| in better health than ever.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| I think misanthropes aren't being enabled by articles like the
| above.
|
| Many of them honestly don't care deep down about the damage
| they do.
|
| Others like Mark Wahlberg just "forgive themselves" for
| blinding a neighbor as a teen, even if their actual victim
| doesn't forgive them, so they can feel better about themselves
| mentally. https://time.com/3623630/mark-wahlberg-pardon/
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Didn't call it enabling, more of a retroactive salve.
| Responded to a similar comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36802843
| amp108 wrote:
| I don't know what's inside Mark Wahlberg's heart, but let's
| suppose it's someone whom, for the sake of argument, we know
| truly regrets their actions: what are they supposed to do if
| another person doesn't forgive them?
| miiiiiike wrote:
| If they can't or won't forgive you: Try not to make the
| same mistake twice.
|
| You can't control what other people do, only how you react
| to it.
| pmarreck wrote:
| As the article says, they should be pushing for redemption
| opportunities for all convicted felons (based on a
| humanistic perspective), not just themselves (based on some
| confused notion of an "I have become successful enough to
| buy high-priced lawyers to retcon my rap sheet since I have
| redeemed myself" perspective)
| pharrington wrote:
| He did real harm that his victim did not forgive, so he's
| supposed to hold that. You're not supposed to ask the
| governor for an official pardon, erasing his crime from the
| criminal record.
|
| edit: ""My hope is that, if I receive a pardon, troubled
| youths will see this as an inspiration and motivation that
| they too can turn their lives around," he writes." Yeah, I
| DO NOT believe the world famous multimillionaire needs a
| governor's pardon to help kids.
|
| edit2: given the wikipedia article
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36805073's links to,
| it seems like Wahlberg himself now doesn't believe he
| should have tried to obtain a pardon.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Accept that sometimes when you do a bad thing that
| permanently harms someone else you don't deserve
| forgiveness (not everyone is christian FFS) and it's not
| wrong for that to follow you around forever. If that makes
| you uncomfortable, too fucking bad, don't irreversibly
| blind someone.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Accepting those things seems like a miserable way to
| live. No thanks. I prefer to move on with my life, even
| when I was wronged.
| Jiro wrote:
| This is about if you have wronged someone else, not if
| you are wronged,
|
| If you've wronged someone else, maybe you _should_ live
| miserably if you can 't possibly make up for the wrong.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Eh, not that harshly. Not that you should be miserable
| but that such a large event SHOULD have a large impact on
| you as a person and SHOULD maybe cause changes in how you
| live your life. You should still be treated with dignity
| and basic human decency unless and until you show
| yourself to continually harm others for selfish or
| negligent reasons. One bad action doesn't make you a bad
| person but it is still a bad action and that should be
| remembered.
|
| Actions have consequences and we shouldn't try to hand
| wave those away because some people seem uninterested in
| going to therapy and dealing with the guilt they have.
| You can always do better, but that doesn't invalidate the
| bad.
|
| People are complex, the world is not black and white,
| everyone is a huge story with complex rationalizations.
| Reflect on why you do things, reflect on how you affect
| those around you.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| There is also power in discovering how to forgive
| yourself, especially if your wrong was unintentional, or
| you made a mistake that you deeply regret. It's too easy
| to walk around with guilt in your life, and maybe you
| don't ever get to speak to the one you wronged. Should
| you take that to your grave? Does that help anyone?
| superb_dev wrote:
| Are some accidents truly unforgivable?
|
| No one should be punished for the rest of their life
| because they wronged someone in their childhood. If
| they've grown, feel remorse and regret, then they've done
| their time and need to forgive themselves.
|
| There no point in carrying around such a burden. Very few
| people deserve to be miserable.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This post does not limit itself to true accidents.
| Indeed, both people involved were negligent. Preventable
| harm that you do not prevent through your own choices can
| very well be unforgivable. Pretending that everything
| should be forgivable is a heinous thing to do to victims,
| and they have every right to not forgive or forget if you
| have caused them irreversible harm through negligence or
| accident. A victim has the right to never forget how you
| changed their life.
|
| You do not have a right to be free from the burden you
| have caused someone else.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I can't necessarily agree with this. Some people are hurt
| over extremely minor offenses, which may or may not have
| been an accident. What if the perpetrator of the offense
| has grown and tried to make amends for the wrong they've
| done? Do they need to carry the burden of guilt forever?
| I think there is room for forgiveness of oneself, even if
| those you have burdened do not forgive you. Maybe it's
| not the same, but everyone is different. I would hate to
| think that someone in their early teen years did
| something selfish and stupid (like most of us do), and
| they were not forgiven by the victim, and they had to
| carry that with them to the end of their life. Society
| does not grow with an overwhelming sense of guilt (now,
| this is very different if you intentionally cause malice
| and are truly not sorry, and do nothing to make things
| right).
| cayblood wrote:
| One of the profound contributions of Christianity,
| corroborated in other wisdom traditions, is the assertion
| that every single one of us ignorantly does irreparable
| harm to others in the course of our lifetimes.
| Recognizing this is the beginning of wisdom, and figuring
| out how to live life in light of this reality has been
| the driving force behind many different philosophies and
| religious traditions passed down over the ages.
| Pretending other people are the problem is the problem.
| Of course, that doesn't justify gross negligence, but the
| human ego is very good at dismissing selfish, entropy-
| increasing behavior as harmless. May I humbly submit that
| the approach you suggest here is incomplete.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Great system for people who want to do a disproportionate
| amount of harm and not be held accountable in this life.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _One of the profound contributions of Christianity,
| corroborated in other wisdom traditions, is the assertion
| that every single one of us ignorantly does irreparable
| harm to others in the course of our lifetimes._
|
| The problem, though, with Christianity's take on it (or
| at least what some Christians take from it), is that they
| push the idea that all you need to do to achieve
| salvation is to believe in Jesus as savior, and all is
| fine and dandy. Doesn't matter what sins you've
| committed, or if you're even truly repentant. Just
| believe Jesus died for your sins, and you're good.
|
| On one hand I agree that this could promote acceptance
| that we are all flawed beings, and will all end up doing
| bad things here and there, and that it's pretty much
| unavoidable. But I worry that this also can promote a
| sense of invulnerability and unaccountability. "Doesn't
| matter what I do, Jesus will take care of me."
| macksd wrote:
| > or at least what some Christians take from it > Doesn't
| matter what I do, Jesus will take care of me
|
| Well yes let's be clear that only a very selective
| reading of the New Testament allows you to conclude Jesus
| doesn't think it matters what you do. It's the same kind
| of logic that leads one to preach the "prosperity
| gospel". It's very clear that loving Jesus goes hand in
| hand with loving others and living his commandments as
| best you can.
| aodonnell2536 wrote:
| This is a line of thinking that really intrigues me, are
| there any external resources you would suggest to further
| read about it? Other than the Bible, of course
| ImaCake wrote:
| I think this is common theme in eastern religions. I feel
| like I've also seen aspects of this in western
| philosophy. My disclaimer here is I am not well read in
| any of these topics!
|
| My more general insight is that humans have put a lot of
| work into trying to seperate themselves from the
| complications of our obligate social brains. We will
| always feel bad, but maybe it can be ameliorated.
| macksd wrote:
| You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh explores this idea a lot.
| To the extent you consider Buddhist philosophy religious,
| it is still religious, but it is not the Bible. However
| the philisophy is similar enough that the author actually
| references both in harmony. That said it's also a very
| well received book among secular audiences so if you're
| intrigued by the idea and don't care much for the Bible,
| I think you'd like it.
| [deleted]
| JackFr wrote:
| Well that's the thing. No one _deserves_ forgiveness
| (Christians especially should know that forgiveness is
| not earned with merit, but distributed with grace.) But
| genuine forgiveness is a powerful thing, though it's very
| hard.
| bittercynic wrote:
| If you make a mistake like this, where you owe a debt
| that can never be repaid, I think we need some social
| mechanism where you can do your best to make amends and
| get some measure of closure. This probably should follow
| you around forever, but maybe it shouldn't dominate every
| moment of the rest of your life.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, victims are not obligated to forgive you and neither
| is society. Sometimes people do bad things that cannot be
| undone and should not be forgotten. Sometimes that person
| doing the bad thing is you. Even if you didn't intend to
| harm someone, even if you did nothing wrong, even if you
| followed best known procedures and were fully attentive,
| you can still cause irreparable harm to someone else, and
| we shouldn't just pretend that's okay as some coping
| strategy.
|
| Sometimes you hurt someone and you should feel bad about
| that. Deal with it. It's a part of life to be an
| imperfect human and this should help you keep in mind
| that EVERYONE IS AN IMPERFECT HUMAN.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it seems like we're
| in agreement, no?
| bittercynic wrote:
| Replying to myself - I didn't understand the context of
| this conversation before, but I just read Mark Wahlberg's
| wikipedia page. Yikes. Seems like the guy was (and is?) a
| violent, hateful, lunatic. Something smells very off
| about one of his victims releasing a public statement
| that he has forgiven Mark.
|
| I was not intending to argue that he should be pardoned.
| blq10 wrote:
| We do that, it's called imprisoning people for a very
| long time.
|
| This is generally unpopular among liberal and left
| leaning spaces, and is only marginally popular in right
| leaning ones.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My stance says nothing about punishment, imprisonment, or
| retribution, and is more about recognizing that there are
| things humans can do to each other that are irreversibly
| damaging, and that is not an okay thing to do, and
| recognizing that you have caused someone irreparable harm
| that will never be "fixed" is the emotionally mature
| stance. I'm not even saying you should wake up every day
| with a weight on your shoulders for killing someone, but
| rather it's something you should keep in mind, and
| victims owe nothing to the people that harmed them, and I
| do not believe expecting victims to tell people doing bad
| things "everything is okay" is beneficial to society.
| Being without forgiveness from those you harmed is not
| equivalent in any way to being in prison for life.
| civilitty wrote:
| He's an A-list actor who makes tens of millions of
| dollars per film. He can make what most of us would
| consider "fuck you money" in the span of a few months. By
| no means does it dominate his life.
|
| I dont think he shows real contrition either. After that
| Times article he backpedaled on the pardon request and
| told an interviewer months later that he was "pushed into
| it."
| brightlancer wrote:
| > I think we need some social mechanism where you can do
| your best to make amends and get some measure of closure.
|
| It's called prison.
|
| > This probably should follow you around forever, but
| maybe it shouldn't dominate every moment of the rest of
| your life.
|
| Prison (and convictions generally) shouldn't follow folks
| forever because it disincentivizes rehabilitation, it
| incentivizes recidivism, it labels someone based upon
| behavior 20 years ago but not necessarily since, etc.
|
| The victims are not morally obligated to forgive anyone.
| As a society, it's more beneficial to legally and morally
| treat offenders as having paid their sentence.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| >> I think we need some social mechanism where you can do
| your best to make amends and get some measure of closure.
| > It's called prison.
|
| Please explain how prison enables someone to make amends
| and get a sense of closure.
| mike_hock wrote:
| I'm gonna be a bitter cynic here and say that blindness
| also dominates every moment of the rest of the victim's
| life, so why shouldn't the perpetrator suffer the same
| fate?
| norir wrote:
| Judge not, lest ye be judged.
| hiatus wrote:
| As if that were the case. If only those that did not
| judge were spared judgement themselves.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| This is basically the raison d'etre of the American
| justice system today. Of course, I also think it would be
| nice if someone who committed hate crimes was justly
| punished for it, but stepping back from this specific
| example, I think the bloodlust around what constitutes a
| "just punishment" goes too far in most cases.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My stance says nothing about punishment. Punishment has
| nothing to do with lack of forgiveness. Forgiveness is
| also not a necessity to treat other people, including
| those who have harmed you, as inherently flawed humans
| that deserve basic things like dignity.
|
| Forgiveness is a broken concept. Just because you can be
| a better person later in life should not absolve you of
| bad things you did before. This isn't a call for everyone
| to carry grudges, but a call that we should stop trying
| to play this dumb "just keep pretending everything is
| always and will always be 'okay' in some way" ideology.
| People sometimes do bad things because they are bad
| people or do not care about others, and it's okay to not
| forgive that. People sometimes do bad things through no
| real fault of their own and it's okay to still not
| forgive that.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| It's an interesting idea. Law, justice systems, were all
| created in order to adjudicate that level of animosity
| and prevent it passing on to future generations. Holding
| on to a grudge, not even out of a sense of justice, but
| purely out of hate, seems like a path towards poor mental
| health. But I'm lucky enough to not have any hate that
| strong -- those I've chosen not to forgive I've instead
| chosen to forget, which is a privilege relative to the
| level of wrongs done.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| The American justice system seems to be based upon
| profit, and keeping people reoffending in order to
| continue keeping the justice system in place. There is no
| incentive to reform as the system currently stands. It is
| a major failure of society that recidivism is an expected
| consequence of being "in the system."
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| I used to think that it was biased towards profit, but
| after the last 5 or so years, I think that's just a side
| effect. American society believes strict and long
| punishment for wrongdoing is the solution to crime. We
| had a wave of progressive AD's elected into office and
| they barely lasted 3 years, they're all getting booted.
| allturtles wrote:
| Wikipedia says he didn't actually blind the victim[0].
|
| If true, this is fitting given the context of the OP.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Wahlberg#Legal_issues.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Ah, that Wikipedia article changed since last time. Which
| does illustrate the OP's point. Thanks for the correction.
|
| Still, Wahlberg did some terrible stuff and basically just
| said "forgiving myself is enough".
| archon1410 wrote:
| Tangential: those who couldn't care less would be nihilists,
| or sadists. "Misanthrope" is better reserved for something
| else. I guess it all just blends together from certain
| standpoints... it shouldn't.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Supertangential: Nihilists just don't believe existence is
| intrinsically meaningful, and sadists take _pleasure_ in
| inflicting suffering. A more correct term for someone who
| is indifferent to the suffering they cause might be a
| "narcissist" or "sociopath".
| m463 wrote:
| I'm sort of reminded of some of those alcoholics anonymous
| folks who apologize to the people who they have wronged, and
| are dumbfounded to find they are met with anger, or even being
| arrested.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > Most people who have been told that they've caused actual
| harm, probably did.
|
| I think you might be missing the point of the story. To my
| understanding it could have easily have turned from a rosy past
| to a grim presence and it would have worked all the same.
|
| The point of the story is that, supposedly, the difference in
| perception is the entire difference. Something is not true,
| just because it's in the past. The act of reinterpreting is the
| act of reshaping, what is true.
|
| Personally, I don't know how true that is :) But it's a
| somewhat interesting thought.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| No I got it.
|
| Parables are supposed to be stories that teach us something
| about ourselves, the world, and how we engage with it.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with the moral of this story as
| written.
|
| Make it about something other than thinking that you
| paralyzed someone through negligence and it's a different
| ballgame.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > I think you might be missing the point of the story. To my
| understanding it could have easily have turned from a rosy
| past to a grim presence and it would have worked all the
| same.
|
| I think _you_ might be missing the point of the story.
|
| It "could have" but it didn't: the story was about he'd been
| punishing himself for 18 years but Really It Wasn't My Fault.
|
| If it was about a situation where he found out 18 years ago a
| benign situation wasn't, that could teach a lesson about
| misunderstanding history. Here, everything else is
| overshadowed by the fact that "You can change history", where
| history is how he paralyzed a women by driving recklessly.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36803982
| gochi wrote:
| >They'll stab people in the back or work to damage people's
| careers
|
| Why didn't you stop them?
|
| I think your comment was well intended, but it actually comes
| from the same place that causes a lot of the hurt: a lack of
| reflection. Even right there, you are trying to qualify harm
| without recognizing it. "Actual harm" as somehow being far
| greater and more deserving of consequences than regular harm,
| but there isn't. This is another narrative we tell ourselves to
| make ourselves feel better.
|
| So I hope you do take your own advice seriously. Most of the
| time, it's not the "worst people that I've ever met" - it's our
| own image.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Some people are generally good and end up living with Guilt.
|
| Most sad stories do NOT have a healing resolution like this.
| The few times it does happen, then good for them.
| brudgers wrote:
| Everyone is not among the worst people you (or I) have ever
| met.
|
| Not needing to be told that they caused harm is one of the
| things that makes them not among the worst people you (or I)
| have ever met.
|
| Sivers' parable is about his (and our) interpretations of the
| past -- Sive.rs publishes parables not facts. Context is
| relevant, here.
|
| Yes, worst people gonna' worst people. Sociopaths are not
| Sive.rs audience. His point is that we can't change the past
| and only act in the present. What the worst people you (or I)
| ever met did can't be changed. How it affects are behavior can.
|
| Particularly when the worst person you (or I) have ever met is
| you (or I). Biss-ninny 101 stuff. Which Sive.rs (and I) study.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| The people I'm referencing are normal people doing things
| that are accepted as a normal part of doing business. They do
| it because there are no consequences and may even been an
| advantage to engaging in light anti-social behavior.
|
| That lady just had a baby and needs to go home at 5:00 PM
| says one NPR reporter/podcaster/host early in their career?
| Sound like she's not committed, I'll take on her work as I,
| for one, am committed. True story. Told on a podcast.
|
| Or how about the kind of person who takes credit for
| another's work because they can.
|
| I'm not talking about murderers here, I'm talking about
| normal people doing shitty things and making the world just a
| little bit worse for everyone (and a lot worse for some in
| particular) and use whatever to justify their behavior as
| part of their personal story.
| brudgers wrote:
| Those may be the worst people you ever met. I have met
| rather worse people.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Agreed. This seems to almost rationalize being a sociopath. You
| can't change the past. The world has no shortage of extremely
| shitty people who have no regard for others.
| corry wrote:
| Ehhh that seems a bit uncharitable and leading into a slippery-
| slope fallacy.
|
| "Well, because some misanthrope might misinterpret this as
| permission to be terrible means it's bad advice".
|
| Dealing with things directly, as close in time to the event as
| possible, is probably a great idea.
|
| But you'll never get a pure ground-truth on every event in your
| life... so learning that your narrative of the past can act as
| a tyrant in your life (if you let it) seems like a good insight
| to me.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Didn't say it could be interpreted as giving people license.
|
| I'm talking about the people who already do the things -- and
| not giving them a Tums and Tylenol for the indigestion and
| headaches it's causing them.
|
| Stop doing the thing to stop suffering the consequences.
|
| The people also tend to be really brittle. Once someone
| points out that they're running around stabbing people
| they'll get all offended: "See! It's not fair! Everyone I've
| stabbed is out to get me. I'm the victim!"
| confoundcofound wrote:
| This type of mentality is readily observed amongst abusive
| parents. "That was a long time ago, why can't you move on?"
| "You were a sensitive child."
|
| I will never understand people who seem to lack the ability to
| see that their actions may have a rippling effect throughout
| someone's life. One can meaningfully and negatively alter the
| trajectory of someone's life with one action.
|
| I'm not advocating that we live in neurotic paralysis wrecked
| with the fear of unknowingly hurting others, but we should
| accept that whatever hurt we do inflict can have long-lasting
| implications, and when others shed light on ways we may have
| hurt them, that we lean in, understand, and make amends if
| possible.
|
| We are all connected.
| vacuity wrote:
| I think this gap in understanding is more of an underlying
| psychological phenomenon, that those people struggle to grasp
| the concept you're describing because they just don't get it.
| Like how people learn, say, math differently. If they had the
| capacity to understand then they might've already and this
| wouldn't apply. How to deal with this in a society is a
| complicated matter.
| kangalioo wrote:
| This story brought me to tears within two paragraphs, wow
| badrequest wrote:
| Reminds me of The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant:
| https://americanliterature.com/author/guy-de-maupassant/shor...
| vacuity wrote:
| While it's a thought-provoking short story, it's somewhat
| orthogonal to this article.
| stared wrote:
| There is a common conception that we don't know the future, but
| we know the past.
|
| In our heads, we have models of the past and models of the
| future. Sure, there is an asymmetry between knowing the past and
| the future - due to thermodynamics. Still, in both cases, it is
| good to think of these as probabilistic models, far from any
| certainty.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Consciousness as a solution to Maxwell's demon?
|
| Makes sense to me. Consciousness forms a closure over a
| deletion mechanism towards less and less paths over time.
| Eventually inconsistent architecture. It's exactly what the
| universe needs.
| qwnp wrote:
| > there is an asymmetry between knowing the past and the future
| - due to thermodynamics
|
| Would you please elaborate on this?
| bamfly wrote:
| It's physics-enthusiast for "time goes one way".
| yakcyll wrote:
| I think this may refer to the second law of thermodynamics -
| entropy cannot decrease over time in an isolated system. One
| could argue the entire universe is one.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| But our local "system" has a gigantic miasma of
| incandescent plasma on our doorstep. The Earth itself
| should not need to worry about entropy for a long while
| yet...
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >But our local "system" has a gigantic miasma of
| incandescent plasma on our doorstep. The Earth itself
| should not need to worry about entropy for a long while
| yet...
|
| I interpret GP's reference to thermodynamics/entropy as
| generating the "arrow (asymmetry) of time,"[0]
|
| Which exists (at least for us matter-based beings) as
| remembering the "past," but not the "future," and local
| fluctuations in entropy don't affect that at all.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time
| high_priest wrote:
| What @stared means with the entropy quote is that in a
| world tending from organised to disorganised, it is
| impossible to KNOW the future, but also very hard to
| TRULY KNOW the past. As each step into the future causes
| the remnants of past to decay.
| speak_plainly wrote:
| And neither of those models have any reality, they're a product
| of imagination.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Yep, and the utility of a model doesn't imply its accuracy.
| To think that it does is our collective greatest blindspot.
| abirch wrote:
| The past also suffers from survivorship bias. Although there's
| a 1 in 8 chance of flipping 3 consecutive heads, in the future
| after flipping 3 consecutive heads you forget about the other
| possibilities. E.g., there was a 1 in 8 chance that Hitler,
| Stalin, and Mao could have all been born women before they were
| conceived.
| firebirdn99 wrote:
| > Although there's a 1 in 8 chance of flipping 3 consecutive
| heads, in the future after flipping 3 consecutive heads you
| forget about the other possibilities.
|
| In other contexts, also known as the gambler's fallacy if I
| recall.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| If you are specifically looking for a result of 3 coin
| flips, then it's 1 in 8 chance of getting 3 of the same.
| The gambler's fallacy is seeing 2 coin flips come up heads
| and thinking there's only a 1 in 8 chance that the last one
| will come up heads.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| We have partial impressions of the past. We have seen, felt,
| thought something at various points in time and then we
| construct a sequential story of what happened, often employing
| abstract cause-effect reasoning. Two different observers might
| come up with different stories. To reach a consensus, they have
| to exchange their points of view.
|
| Once all the observers forget their story or they disappear,
| the past "fact" disappears from collective memory, unless that
| story was passed to newer generations by speech, writing, etc.
| pstuart wrote:
| Ugh. Of course we should be mindful that "history" is created by
| people and people are fallible (and worse, e.g., intentionally
| biased), so caveat emptor.
|
| But it doesn't mean that historical facts don't exist (shit
| happens - those are facts), but the recounting of such should be
| consumed knowing that there are likely inaccuracies.
|
| This is not license to only take in the history we like or
| rewrite it to suit our agendas.
|
| I'm technically a Boomer and my education on the history of the
| US was amazingly light on any details that would today seem
| unsavory (e.g., the expansion to the West was not simply moving
| into uninhabited territory, etc.).
|
| A People's History of the United States was eye opening and a
| welcome revisiting of the "official story". Some might say that
| Zinn had an agenda to shit on White Men, but I saw it as a
| heartfelt attempt to correct the record.
|
| I didn't learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre until about 10 years
| ago, and already there are attempts to squash that because, and I
| kid you not, "it makes white people feel bad".
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I don't always fully agree with anecdotal feel good stories that
| seem to imply a greater universal point due to a by-chance
| outcome. What if the author _had_ paralyzed the woman? What if he
| was solely and entirely at fault?
|
| It's nicely written, but it speaks to most people's general
| positivity bias: our yearning for a benign truth underlying all
| things that are bad, or more specifically, that bad things aren't
| really real, that they're a mirage over the real state of all
| things which are actually good and wholesome and better than you
| could have even guessed. This is the kind of thinking that
| inexorably draws miserable people to religions that offer eternal
| salvation.
| sbob wrote:
| > What if the author had paralyzed the woman? What if he was
| solely and entirely at fault?
|
| In this case his story would have never been written. Thus we
| get a big survivorship bias to hear only about unlikely events
| and get some kind of wisdom tidbits from those.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >> What if the author had paralyzed the woman? What if he was
| solely and entirely at fault?
|
| >In this case his story would have never been written. Thus
| we get a big survivorship bias to hear only about unlikely
| events and get some kind of wisdom tidbits from those.
|
| That's not _necessarily_ true. Many years ago, I _killed_ a
| 77 year-old woman by striking her with my bicycle. Her skull
| fractured when she hit the pavement. I _heard_ her skull
| being crushed, but I didn 't realize it at the time -- after
| I realized what that sound was, it's haunted me to this day.
|
| I was completely at fault (I blew through a red light and hit
| her after avoiding someone else) and while I don't think
| about it every day _any more_ , I bear the responsibility for
| her injury, eventual death and the grief it caused her
| family.
|
| While I don't consider myself a bad or evil person, I made a
| really bad decision that cost someone their life. And I will
| bear the guilt of that bad decision forever.
|
| I don't give myself a pass because it wasn't a _malicious_
| act, mostly because that poor woman is still dead regardless
| of my motivations.
|
| I can't go back and change the past, but I've tried to make
| better decisions since then. That's not enough, but it's all
| I can do to avoid such things moving forward.
| kritiko wrote:
| I think magical, positive thinking is protective even in the
| most dire times or atrocities. This is an intuition that's
| based on anecdotes from watching the documentary Shoah and
| reading Man's Search for Meaning, both of which cover how
| survivors dealt with the Holocaust.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| True. If humans didn't have a positivity bias our own
| intelligence would be unbearable. We have to be able to
| viscerally imagine and reckon with the worst possible
| realities while keeping our heads above water. It's also why
| I believe humor exists: it provides a psychological and
| social reward for effectively navigating negative
| circumstances.
| vacuity wrote:
| I think that people tend to mix emotion and reason too
| readily. To an extent we are governed by our emotions, but
| we shouldn't let them consume us. Negativity bias is
| definitely detrimental but so is positivity bias. That's
| different from being compassionate. Compassion is a
| principle, a moral axiom that many people hold, but
| positivity bias is saying we should feel blindly feel good.
| We should have a tempered view of our principles and
| personalities.
|
| Your explanation of humor seems woefully inadequate. What
| is the corresponding solution to a negative solution in
| making a dad joke?
| user8501 wrote:
| This is quite profound. Consider a sentence. Every additional
| word has the ability to completely change the meaning of the
| whole sentence. In the same way, every passing moment is an
| opportunity to completely change the preceding moments. Sure
| facts are "real" in the sense that atoms are real. Atoms might be
| the building blocks of "reality" but it is up to the individual
| how clusters of atoms are interpreted, used, etc. Facts in the
| same way are surely the building blocks for the universe of
| emotion and dynamic interaction, but when you zoom in on them, as
| with atoms, they vanish. Even if this woman had answered the door
| in a wheelchair, an interaction filled with love and forgiveness
| would've left the author with the same feeling.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Seems we had both been told the accident was our fault, and
| had spent eighteen years feeling bad about it._
|
| Did they both have the same insurance company?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Rubbish. You can't extrapolate anything from this.
| keepamovin wrote:
| So sad that you missed the point. Open up to it man
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What point? That this person is saying "I believed I did a
| bad thing and it turned out to be wrong so I exclaim that
| there is no objective reality and you shouldn't beat yourself
| up over bad things you think you did because maybe they
| weren't really that bad"?
|
| Come on, this fails even basic logic. One event being
| misremembered is not valid proof that all or even many events
| are misremembered to your advantage.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Thanks for the concern, but I didn't miss the point. There is
| no wisdom in extrapolating absolute statements from fringe
| coincidences.
| mistermann wrote:
| > There is no wisdom in extrapolating absolute statements
| from fringe coincidences.
|
| What method did you use to determine this is
| comprehensively true, _in fact_ , rather than simply
| intuition?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Just save us both the time and call me a
| hypocrite/inconsistent based on whatever figment you have
| in your mind.
| keepamovin wrote:
| I stand by my comment, your interpretation misses a lot :(
|
| But, maybe I'm the one missing your view here--could you
| explain more what you mean specifically?
| swombat wrote:
| A saying that's stayed with me recently is:
|
| > You can only change the past. The future is unchangeable.
|
| Which is an interesting reversal of the usual perspective, I
| think. You can change how you perceive the past. You can learn
| new things about the past. You can change your stories about it.
| You can even assist others in doing that.
|
| But the future? That is always out of reach, and already
| encompasses all your attempts to change it.
| polyterative wrote:
| expected more from Sivers
| dandanua wrote:
| Wrong. The human knowledge is subjective, but we believe (for
| good reasons!) that there exists an objective past, which is true
| for everyone.
| bmacho wrote:
| Do you know the concept of space-time, block universe, B-theory
| of time, etc? How physics assumes that the laws of physics don't
| know the notion of "now"? And how physicists usually start every
| calculation with "let X denote the set of events", all the past
| and future events?
|
| Isn't that depressing? The future is true, even if we can't
| _know_ it. (Even in a finite, discrete and deterministic
| universe, which we can compute on computers, habitants of the
| universe can 't _know_ the future. A software can 't compute its
| future. A similar reasoning to the halting problem can show
| this.)
|
| May I interest you in an other view? Slice Universe to the
| rescue! There is only now, and the now is true. There is matter,
| in a particular, ever changing spatial configuration. In 3d. The
| now is _true_ , also it changes. Only the _real_ people, made out
| of matter can experience things, simulated people, or the people
| that are not even simulated don 't have real experiences. The
| past is not _true_ , but we have some information about it, what
| the past can possibly be. So is the future, it is not true, but
| we have some information about it. There is no ontological or
| qualitative difference between the past and the future, only
| quantitative (which comes from the ridiculous amount of
| negentropy at the beginning of our universe).
| abiro wrote:
| What to read on the slice universe?
| zogrodea wrote:
| It sounds similar to (but possibly different from since I
| never heard the term "slice universe") the theory of
| presentism in the philosophy of time.
|
| That's the view that all that exists is the present. What we
| call the past is what used to be present and what we call the
| future is what one day will be present, but neither the past
| or future exist so long as they are not the present.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presentism/
| hef19898 wrote:
| https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Slice/Legends
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > Isn't that depressing?
|
| No? Why would it be?
| sobellian wrote:
| How could that possibly support the relativity of simultaneity?
| Different reference frames disagree on what is happening "now."
| [deleted]
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| I mean, relativity already means everything depends on
| location, so this should just fit right in, right? The
| contents of your "slice" are from right now at your location,
| from 20 years ago at locations 20ly from you, 30 years ago at
| 30ly, etc. We literally _can't_ know what's happening at any
| time other than 20 years ago at locations 20ly from us, after
| all. So I'd say this jives well with the various "curves"
| relativity implies exist in spacetime. (Note: I am not a
| physicist so I'm happy to learn why /if I'm wrong here!)
| notjoemama wrote:
| How do you think this conceptual model fits at the
| subatomic scale; everything being a warping of fields? At
| first glance I can't tell if it works because there is no
| such thing as a slice at the quantum level. Well, depending
| on which theoretical model you're looking at. I suppose
| either way it's might be considered true if mathematically
| we're talking about the properties of a particle. But even
| then no one alive today can say for certain why those
| properties exist, conclusively I mean, outside of theory.
| We barely have a grasp on the manor in which they exist,
| which is the theory. For example, based on what we know
| about the proposed axion particle, how does this slicing
| concept affect the nature of it warping spacetime? Bringing
| something new to the table there would be quite the
| accomplishment here!
|
| edit: typo
| thfuran wrote:
| The people in other reference frames must just be
| simulations, so their experiences are invalid.
| bmacho wrote:
| Lol.
|
| Nah, if we allow virtual experiences, than any model
| naturally becomes the block universe.
|
| I believe, that question of experience is still unsolved.
| Why do we seem to live in a world made of matter and
| governed by physics? Is it the same for people that are
| simulated in a computer? Is it the same for people that are
| not simulated by a computer (because it is plugged out)?
| How do they perceive if the data is mangled? Etc. BTW the
| block universe also needs to solve this problem. But in
| order to not to be in a block universe, we need the answer
| that being material based is _different_ than being
| simulated on a material based simulator, or not even being
| simulated, just the possibility of it.
|
| @sobellian: relativity doesn't _need_ the block universe.
| It works perfectly fine if people just get shorter when
| they speed up. Then the simultaneity of events in a frame
| is not the same as being in a slice.
| mistermann wrote:
| Maybe I misunderstand, but could an alternate theory be
| that reality and the universe are not the same thing?
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is interesting! What do you make of retrocausal effects in
| "image exposure" experiments, and other psi related phenomena.
| I'm curious if you have ideas for a physical theory that speaks
| to precognition and remove viewing?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| What are these image exposure experiments?
| keepamovin wrote:
| I'm no scholar, so I may be missing crucial papers, but
| here are some:
|
| -
| https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/psp-a0021524.pdf
| (original experiments)
|
| - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706048/
| (replications review)
|
| - https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pd
| f&d... (review of related evidence)
|
| Here's something more far out I just found trying to
| connect physical theories to some of this:
| https://old.hessdalen.org/sse/program/Antonella.pdf
|
| Some related light discussion of similar issues and
| intersection of physics and consciousness:
| https://quantumphysics-
| consciousness.eu/index.php/en/2022/06...
|
| And a few other ones:
|
| - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4141237/
| (review of many experiments)
|
| - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.6584.pdf (discussion of
| possibly physics)
| nathan_compton wrote:
| There is no fixed way to slice up the universe into 3d slices.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| We live in a set of time slices that we are able to control
| through the choices that we make as we slide through the deck.
| The past is done and locked up, carved in stone and can be
| recalled with high fidelity if we choose to dwell there. The
| future is always in your face - another decision to make, lives
| to influence, bullets to dodge - all presented as you color the
| current time slice with the events your choices allow. Choices
| are filters on possible paths for your future, some can be
| looped many times while others permanently exclude specific
| outcomes. As we color the time slice we can know parts of the
| future by understanding consequences of the choices we are
| making though we can't know it will all fit far into the
| future. The past is left as an exercise in recollection to
| serve up reminders of all the unpleasant loops we threw in our
| life path and most importantly, to help us choose a better,
| more productive path when we find ourselves at a similar node
| in the future.
| narag wrote:
| I love HN but, let's be honest, we are often tone-deaf. Very
| much.
|
| When the author writes "the past is not true", he's not trying to
| make a Physics or Epistemology point of any kind.
|
| He's just telling that we torture and limit ourselves with things
| that no longer matter or, in this case, never happened. The
| anecdote might not be what you wanted to read or what would have
| fit the "message" best, but real world stories seldom do.
|
| Let me ask you something: do you have something in your past
| that's holding you back?
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Then his example is so garbage as to be worthless. He DID DO
| SOMETHING OBJECTIVELY BAD by driving recklessly and harming
| someone else. It doesn't matter after that point what narrative
| is spun by who, that reality happened. You don't get to absolve
| yourself of guilt by pretending actually it usually ends up
| better than you remember"
| [deleted]
| ngvrnd wrote:
| Celebrity death match: Olin Shivers vs. Derek Sivers
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| This reminds me of the "second arrow." A buddhist idea.
|
| What happened in the story, the ground truth, is real. There was
| an accident, people were injured.
|
| That this story really highlights is the danger of a second arrow
| that is not that we tell ourselves stories about the past. The
| danger is that we tell ourselves stories so false they cause
| undue suffering.
|
| The point isn't that the past isn't true. The issue is the story.
| nightpool wrote:
| ("undue" suffering, in the sense of "unwarranted",
| "disproportionate" or "more than your due". "undo" suffering
| would be removing it or undoing it.)
| csours wrote:
| Every history book is a narrative.
|
| Do you listen to:
|
| The generals and presidents and industrialists?
|
| or
|
| The privates and citizens and workers?
|
| Most of the narrative of WWII I learned in high school is built
| off of grains of truth, but other grains of truth are much more
| important, depending on where you live.
|
| You learn that Japan surrendered because of the atom bombs, then
| you learn that they surrendered because the Soviets invaded
| Korea, then you learn that it's a combination of factors.
|
| People want to hold a complete story in their heads, with a
| satisfying conclusion. If you can find someone or something to
| blame, that is a very satisfying conclusion. If you are fighting
| a fight, you will read that fight into all of the history you
| encounter.
| anbende wrote:
| I think the article is sending a pretty problematic overall
| message.
|
| The underlying story is somewhat interesting. The author went
| through life with a lot of unnecessary guilt and suffering
| because he was carrying around a false narrative, and it is true
| that false narratives happen. But the larger conclusion he tries
| to draw from it seems really problematic:
|
| >History is not true. You can change history. The actual factual
| events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is
| interpretation.
|
| But this is NOT the moral of the story in my view. The moral is
| that one can have an erroneous _belief_ about what happened, and
| THAT can cause a lot of problems. The author even experienced
| feeling better when he learned what ACTUALLY happened, not when
| he decided on a new interpretation of events. Because his
| original belief about the event was NOT an interpretation of
| events, it was an erroneous belief about what the events were.
|
| And in fact, in the anecdote, learning the "factual events" was
| everything.
|
| In general, I struggle with the idea that calling something
| that's just factually wrong "an interpretation". That seems to
| stretch the word "interpretation" to the point where it stops
| being useful. If I am convinced that Napoleon was, in fact, a
| black man, do we really want to call that an "interpretation of
| events". What events am I interpreting? None, I would argue. I'm
| just making things up. Just like someone made up that the woman
| in the story broke her spine. It just never happened. It's not an
| interpretation of anything.
| mmusson wrote:
| I think the point is that interpretation is all we really have.
| We believe that memories are these absolute things, but
| rigorous studies show that no human being remembers things
| perfectly, even when they believe they do.
|
| For many years as a kid, I knew Santa Claus was real because I
| had seen him come to my house. My faith was unshakable, because
| I had observed it with my own eyes. Years later, I found out
| that on Christmas morning. My dad had left the room changed
| into the Santa outfit, snuck outside and came to the back door
| to surprise me with my mom. I was too young to realize that my
| dad had snuck away and wasn't there at the same time as Santa.
|
| If we could look back in time and see things just as they were
| I think it would be disconcerting how many little details we
| remember wrong that our mind fills in, without us realizing it.
| simonh wrote:
| I did that once. After I snuck back into the house I heard
| our 3 year old say to my wife "Mummy, did you know that Santa
| Clause looks like my Daddy?"
| denton-scratch wrote:
| As a parent-governor, the headmaster shanghai'ed me into
| performing as Father Christmas; I had to put on the costume,
| and go round all the classrooms going "ho ho ho".
|
| When I got to my daughter's classroom, she didn't recognize
| me. But some other kids did; they told her "That's your
| Dad!". She was mortified, and burst into tears.
|
| I always despised the Father Christmas lie, and I should have
| refused; but the headmaster was very dominant and
| manipulative.
| anbende wrote:
| Yes, I agree that "interpretation is all we have" is the
| point they are trying to make. I also agree that there is an
| important point there. Memories are often not what we think
| they are.
|
| However, in the story, the author did NOT have a memory of
| breaking a woman's back. He had a memory of getting in an
| accident. He interpreted it as his fault. He was _told_ that
| he broke her back. Not his interpretation. It was a belief
| about events that he wasn't present to (what happened in the
| woman's car and inside the woman's body) not really any
| different than anything else we're told but don't witness
| firsthand. It sounds like it may even have been a lie the
| police told him to scare him.
|
| Your story is different because you did have an actual
| experience and misinterpreted it's meaning (man in red suit =
| real Santa Claus).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I am not sure that differentiating between "that which I
| physically sensed with my own body" and "information I
| received from others" leads to particularly good place.
| Yes, we should probably put a little more weight on things
| we experienced, but even they are subject to massive
| differences of interpretation based on prior experience and
| knowledge. Humanity has made enormous strides by being able
| to believe in information we obtained from others, and
| discarding that is something I am convinced does not lead
| to positive outcomes.
|
| I acknowledge that not discarding it can also lead to
| negative outcomes, as in TFA.
| anbende wrote:
| I agree with this point. I hadn't meant to suggest that
| we should discard information received from others.
|
| But I think it would be crazy to not to differentiate
| between immediate experience and what we've been told.
| Not even because immediate experience is always more
| accurate. Sometimes it is NOT, but it's a different
| source of information subject to different problems.
| Often more trustworthy but not always, though the "not
| always" can be ameliorated a bit by understanding some of
| the limits of personal experience.
|
| I was really only taking issue with "interpretation is
| all we have" applying in the original story - that there
| is a difference between "my interpretation about
| something I experienced" and "my beliefs about a thing I
| did not experience".
|
| Yes the author's story changed, but it changed because he
| found out that he was lied to by the police (or perhaps,
| if we want to be generous, "unintentionally misled") not
| because his memory was fallible.
|
| To get back to the point I took issue with, in the story
| "the facts" mattered an awful lot. It was a lack of
| access to the facts that caused the problem not "an
| incorrect interpretation" of what the author experienced.
| The latter happens all the time, but interpreting our
| experience differently (e.g., reprocessing a traumatic
| memory with self-compassion and seeing it as unfortunate
| and something to learn from) is a different thing than
| finding out what we were told was a lie. Both change our
| story, but one is indeed a reinterpretation and the other
| is a change in belief or knowledge.
|
| I think it's important to separate those two things. I
| think some want to treat them as the same. I think that
| can cause problems.
| javert wrote:
| I am impressed with the clarity of your thinking on this.
| Since you value epistemological hygiene, you might like
| Ayn Rand's work in metaphysics and epistemology.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| This story made me realize a common pattern. A story in your
| life may lead to an insight. This does not mean the series of
| events make a good argument, like the conclusion is supported
| by the events that lead up to it.
|
| I think that's what happened here. Author carries guilt about
| an event. Finds out the guilt was unfounded. This makes them
| realize a story can change at any moment. So _you_ can change a
| story at any moment, change the narrative around a situation.
|
| Is this conclusion supported by the story? To your point, no,
| not really. That doesn't mean it's wrong or absurd, either.
| There may have been a ton of other information in the author's
| head and this event unlocked it. Maybe it will for some
| readers, to. But it's not something that will stand up to
| scrutiny.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Fair point. Indeed, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
| hnmullany wrote:
| "The Sense of an Ending" is a good book (then movie) with this
| theme (although in the opposite way)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_an_Ending
| dmje wrote:
| There's certainly a lot of baggage carried by almost everyone
| almost all the time. We spend a big chunk of our lives worrying
| that X thing will happen, and another big chunk of our lives
| worrying that Y thing did happen.
|
| And yet we only ever live in now, so the baggage that we carry
| can be adapted. For some of this - eg in the case of trauma -
| it's severe, and difficult, and requires lots of working through
| with therapy and drugs etc, and sometimes you just can't escape
| the fear or the past. But sometimes if you spend time examining
| what the fear or regret or guilt or whatever actually is, what it
| actually feels like, you can come to understand it much better -
| and it is possible to make peace with these feelings.
|
| MBSR / meditation / psychedelics / etc are all about providing
| new forms of perspective to help manage and come to understand
| these different angles.
| WA wrote:
| In an alternate universe: the lady couldn't walk, got obese and
| died of a heart attack 10 years ago.
|
| So, the past isn't true until it is and then, maybe, it's even
| worse.
|
| Not sure what to make of this story.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| It reads more like someone wrote it at 17 imagining what it'd
| be like to cripple someone and have this elaborate 'moment'
| where all is forgiven because nothing is real.
| dubeye wrote:
| My exact response too. I guess the point of the story stands
| either way, so you might as well pick the positive outcome.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Reminds me of: https://thedailyzen.org/2015/03/20/zen-story-
| maybe/
|
| _There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his
| crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing
| the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they
| said sympathetically. "Maybe," the farmer replied._
|
| _The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three
| other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.
| "Maybe," replied the old man._
|
| _The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed
| horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came
| to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered
| the farmer._
|
| _The day after, military officials came to the village to
| draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was
| broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the
| farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the
| farmer._
| bze12 wrote:
| this story is in Charlie Wilson's War
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2cjVhUrmII
| BatFastard wrote:
| This is a rip off of the story "Ed" told in the TV show
| "Northern Exposure", but it has always been one of my
| favorites from that show.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I don't know exactly when that episode of Northern Exposure
| aired but this story dates back to 2nd century BCE[1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse
| tivert wrote:
| > I don't know exactly when that episode of Northern
| Exposure aired but this story dates back to 2nd century
| BCE[1]
|
| > [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_h
| orse
|
| That Wikipedia page was created in 2020. Northern
| Exposure predates that.
|
| Going with the OP's theme: if we repeat the GP's comment
| enough times, over a long enough period, we can change
| history and then history would _really_ show it to have
| originated from the "story "Ed" told in the TV show
| 'Northern Exposure.'"
| wpietri wrote:
| That only shows how wily the Chinese are about IP theft,
| building time-viewing technology 2,000 years ago so that
| they could rip off American pop culture. Especially
| clever of them to steal things that sound like ancient
| parables and plant them in ancient times.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Taoism has its root run back to at least the 4th century
| BCE, and quite possibly earlier. Even though this specific
| telling is probably considerably newer, it carries motives
| that are very common in Taoism in general. Claiming that
| the story is then a rip-off from a TV show from the 90s
| is... Well, it's possible, but not very likely.
| notacoward wrote:
| Maybe you shouldn't have used "rip off" unless you were
| _absolutely_ sure that you had the relationship the right
| way around. And it seems you didn 't. There's a lesson to
| be learned there.
| mega_dingus wrote:
| Maybe
| thieving_magpie wrote:
| Complete tangent here. My favorite book to read my kids is
| Zen Shorts by Jon J Muth.
|
| It features a panda named Stillwater who tells this story
| (among others) in it.
| javert wrote:
| I would highly recommend "The Parent's Tao Te Ching" by
| William Martin.
|
| It's a retelling of the Tao Te Ching into plain English,
| using parent/child relationships to make the points.
|
| I recommend this both to parents, and to children. Which is
| all of us. We never stop being children of our parents.
|
| I don't have children, nor do I plan to, yet this is one of
| the most powerful books I've read.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| This is a versatile trick, it works for cars with one victim and
| it works for camps with millions of victims
| chad1n wrote:
| Once, my physics teacher from high school told the class that the
| only history we should "trust" is the one that we rationally felt
| and maybe, the one that was told by our parents, while the other
| historical "facts" are just the result of tons and tons of
| interpretations of random people that you end up taking as
| universal "truths".
| vacuity wrote:
| By that model I wouldn't be able to say anything about the
| Holocaust (extreme example, I know) or its implications.
| electrondood wrote:
| Not only the past, but all thoughts of the future, all
| interpretations about present events, all religions, all
| expressions in any language, even the seemingly separate self
| "you" take yourself to be... the very center of the narrative,
| are all only stories.
|
| They are only conceptual representations made of thought.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| A couple things are being confused by the author. Correcting bad
| memories is one thing. That occurs when we receive new evidence
| or knowledge that contradicts the memory. This is simply your
| every day revision of beliefs in practice. Nothing new to see
| here. But note: there is a justification here. There is knowledge
| that motivates the revision. There is also good will, a desire to
| submit to the truth. Willfulness, on the other hand, puts what we
| _want_ to be the case _above_ what _is_ the case. This is at the
| core of pride, queen of the vices, and delusion.
|
| "History is not true. You can change history. The actual factual
| events are such a small part of the story."
|
| Well...no. Facts are a huge page of the story. They're kind of
| the whole point, if by facts we mean that which is true (the word
| "fact" is problematic, but the quotation, as well as the title of
| the article, draw an equivalence between fact and truth). We may
| not have all the facts, we may be mistaken about them, or we may
| not yet have inferred some truth. And where we can't reasonable
| know the truth, we will simply lack that knowledge, leaving us
| capable of only speculating about possibilities. But there is a
| truth of the matter. It's not whatever you want it to be.
|
| Once in the past, facts are immutable, as it were. That the past
| only exists as a memory does not give you license to toy with
| that memory in one direction or the other, in your (ostensible)
| favor. I say "ostensible" because willful self-deception (which
| is what attempts to tweak memories is) does a few things that are
| harmful. First, it destroys our connection with reality. I don't
| think I need to explain why that's bad. Second, denial is
| repression of uncomfortable truths (or at least what we hold to
| be true), and not like overwriting a file on disk. It's more like
| sweeping a dangerous animal under the rug. It reach out from
| under and bite you, you will trip over it even when it is
| sleeping. Occasionally, it will lash out from under the rug and
| cause terror. There will always be a lingering anxiety about the
| ever present possibility that it will escape from under our
| control and attack us or something we care about. A repressed
| truth introduces all sorts of weird tensions into the psyche,
| perverting our perception of reality, enslaving us to fear.
| That's the paradox: caging uncomfortable truths makes them our
| greatest enemy and gives them power over us. Acknowledging them
| sets us free. Repression is only something we use to suppress
| inappropriate impulses or desires (the basis for self-discipline
| and the moral life), not the truth; indeed, failing to repress
| inappropriate impulses alienates us from the truth, not least of
| all because it entails a repression of the truth to enable the
| indulgence of that desire and a weakening of the intellectual
| faculties. Repressing guilt always leads to self-destruction.
| It's why human history is full of human and animal sacrifice.
| (It's also why, in Christianity, God provides Himself as the
| perfect sacrifice, _as the Lamb of God_ , bloodlessly offered at
| each Catholic mass on the _altar_ , and why the sacrament of
| penance exists: to accuse oneself before God and receive
| absolution.) Guilt will destroy you, but denial only doubles its
| power, not to mention the added guilt of having repressed the
| guilt. The psychotherapy industry is funded by the guilty
| conscience. But if you think denial is some kind of escape hatch,
| sorry. That ways lies madness.
| sirodoht wrote:
| "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the
| present controls the past."
|
| -- George Orwell
| cortesoft wrote:
| I never knew this was the source of the Rage Against the
| Machine lyric.
| philipov wrote:
| I think this story is meant to be uplifting to those who are
| troubled by their past, but to me, I just see all the politicians
| and grifters looking on hungrily like "Yeaaaaaah?"
| dandanua wrote:
| Yeah, many corrupt politicians, fascists, murderers and other
| criminals would love the idea that "the past is not true". I'd
| bet that the story is fake because of the conclusion "you can
| change history". Both of them didn't change the history, they
| have changed their knowledge about history, which was given to
| them by third parties.
| keepamovin wrote:
| He's saying what happened, happened. What you make it mean, is up
| to you. The story you tell yourself, is a story you can rewrite.
|
| This beautiful story is one of the truest things I've read on HN
| in 8 years.
|
| This guy lived crippled by what the story he told himself about
| what happened for half his life. Then with a new story, a new
| encounter, he set himself free. Incredibly brave to tell this
| tale. Some people live in their story about something for their
| whole lives. They never do rewrite what they make it mean into
| one that works better for them. People live imprisoned by things
| that happened 40 years in the past. It's so sad to see, but so
| common.
|
| It's true that you can revisit the trauma of the past, and
| transform it and yourself. It will probably sound like woo, but
| it's not. Lots of protocols now being tested in studies that
| combine guided traumatic memory replay, with an adjuvant, like
| inderol (to create emotional distance), or psylocybin (to help
| shift perspective), all with the goal of producing a
| transformative reorientation of your relationship to the past
| trauma. Powerful stuff. "Plant medicine" retreats run in the
| Caribbean, the Netherlands, and Central America (iboga,
| ayahuasca) have similar aims: re-experiencing the traumatic
| memory through an altered state aids you in rewriting your story
| about it, and helps you get new liberating perspective and
| transform what you make what happened mean for you.
|
| If you think you suffer from that kind of traumatic memory, you
| probably already know what I'm talking about. If not, I encourage
| you to investigate it for yourself. :)
| carapace wrote:
| Just wanted to add that you don't need external chemicals to do
| this sort of thing. It's pretty easy to learn to enter trance
| at will and then do things like, e.g. "Parental Timeline Re-
| imprinting" where you go back in time, give your parents
| resources to be better, then live forward a whole new life with
| the new, resourceful parents. Afterward your nervous system
| will respond as if the fictional, imaginary life was real. (The
| brain is an evolved organ, it always chooses the best available
| options. There isn't really any free will, because evolution.)
| Of course, this only really helps if lousy parenting was a
| source of your current problems.
| pdonis wrote:
| The article's main point is that you can change the story, but
| the actual example he gives is a change in the _facts_ --the
| actual facts weren't what he thought they were. _That_ is why the
| story changed--because he found out that the actual facts weren
| 't as bad as the "facts" he had previously believed were true.
|
| So it's not true that "the actual facts are a small part of the
| story". They _are_ the story; you can 't change the story unless
| you find out the facts were different. At least, not if you're
| being honest.
| gochi wrote:
| >actual facts
|
| You see how quickly you are to believe these are the "actual
| facts"? That's how quickly they were to believe their "actual
| facts" as well.
|
| That is the story. Not the facts. What we tell ourselves, what
| we tell others. This is why they brought up memories, an
| unstable collection of flashes in our mind, and we use these to
| craft a story. The story has changed, and will continue to
| change, you're in the process of writing it right now.
|
| Unless you don't believe in free will and that your
| story/stories are already written. That's a very fun thought!
|
| This is why "facts" is misleading here. We aren't talking about
| observed realities (she is going to the park, I am eating an
| ice cream), we're talking about our feelings, thoughts,
| memories, perceived consequences, ambitions, projections,
| assumptions. None of these are objective. Despite our best
| attempt to come together and make it so.
| gtirloni wrote:
| So both of them based their story on flimsy/incomplete
| evidence and they keep reshaping their stories.
|
| If only there were an objective reality to know which car was
| in the wrong. /s
| pdonis wrote:
| _> If only there were an objective reality to know which
| car was in the wrong._
|
| That's not what I was referring to as a change in facts.
| The change I was referring to is that he thought the woman
| was permanently disabled, but then found out she wasn't.
| That's the key fact that enabled both of them to change
| their stories about what happened. The fact that the woman
| also believed the accident was her fault was a nice bit of
| icing on the cake, but it wasn't the key fact.
| function_seven wrote:
| Sorry if I'm misinterpreting the /s here, but:
|
| > _If only there were an objective reality to know which
| car was in the wrong /s_
|
| This, but sincerely! Problem is there isn't an objective
| reality to know which car was in the wrong. There's only
| each participants' recollection of the event--both flawed.
| She thought her inattention was the cause of the wreck, he
| thought his failing to yield was the cause. Who is right?
| Both of them? Just her? Just him? 80% him, 20% her?
|
| There is no objective way to answer any of this. What
| happened during that accident only exists today in the
| minds of the drivers. Sure, you can look at photos of the
| aftermath and determine that this fender was bent, or that
| airbag deployed. But you can't get a similar (objective)
| level of understanding about the actions of the drivers
| leading up to the wreck.
|
| When they met, he learned that she was not paralyzed (and
| that his understanding of the past was wrong in that
| aspect), and she learned that he blamed himself rather than
| blaming her. By comparing notes, they both got a better
| version of "the past" in their minds, but there's still
| room for more variances and disagreements on what exactly
| happened.
|
| There may be an objective reality. But there's no way we
| can completely understand it. We can only know what our
| limited senses tell us. As time marches on, those senses
| get recorded in memories, and further distorted. For the
| tiny slice of events that get recorded in audio, video,
| contemporaneous notes, etc.; we have even better
| understanding. But those methods of capturing events still
| leave a lot out. You can hear the words, but not the
| thoughts. You can see the actions, but not the motivations.
| You can read the written diary, but there are no entries
| there for things considered irrelevant by the author.
|
| There are untold numbers of events that occurred millennia
| ago that we know absolutely nothing about. But they
| contribute to how the world works today just the same. Long
| after the cause is lost to time, the effect chain keeps
| adding links.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > You see how quickly you are to believe these are the
| "actual facts"?
|
| The actual facts is that a person who is walking is certainly
| not a person who "has irreversible spine damage and can't
| walk as a result".
|
| The rest is absolutely irrelevant and philosophical bike-
| shedding.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> You see how quickly you are to believe these are the
| "actual facts"?_
|
| I am taking the author at his word that when he reports
| something as fact, he is not lying. If you think he's lying,
| then obviously we're not going to find any common ground
| here.
|
| _> We aren 't talking about observed realities (she is going
| to the park, I am eating an ice cream)_
|
| Um, yes, we are. The woman was _not_ permanently disabled,
| although he previously thought she was. That 's not a
| "feeling", "thought", "flash in the mind". It's a fact.
| Unless you think the author was lying.
| aristofun wrote:
| The story is not about past, but about how many middlemen there
| these days.
|
| And how people got used to not taking responsibility for their
| own actions, communication etc.
|
| People are not speaking directly anymore, only through layers of
| unnecessary, corrupted, stupid and ignorant lawyers, insurance
| companies, agents and other meaningless units.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| > The actual factual events are such a small part of the story.
| Everything else is interpretation.
|
| This is why it is important to forgive your parents. They
| interpret events differently and it usually isn't until you
| become a parent yourself do you develop enough empathy to see how
| those interpretations came to be.
| anbende wrote:
| Oof, as a psychologist that deals a lot with people who were
| abused and mistreated, this is a pretty big generalization.
|
| Yes, as we age we come to see things from a more experienced
| perspective and the perspectives of the adults we grew up with
| and change, but going all the way to "that is why it is
| important to forgive your parents" is a big big step.
|
| It is typically a good idea to try to get to forgiveness,
| you're right, but there's a lot of very indefensible behavior
| out there.
| thanksbucko wrote:
| You may have a skewed view of the frequency of that level of
| abuse, due to the (very important) work you do. When it comes
| to humans there are exceptions to every rule, but not every
| single exception needs be called out. Not everything is
| "problematic" nor worth an "oof".
| anbende wrote:
| It's simply an example, though a somewhat extreme one, of
| the problem with the GP's generalization.
|
| I think it actually relates to the original article.
| There's a difference between mere interpretation and what
| actually happened.
|
| "You should forgive your parents, because one day you'll be
| older and see their perspective" collapses "interpretations
| develop and mature" with "some events are a problem".
|
| Both can be forgiven and it's probably a good idea to do
| so. I think it's not helpful to generalize in that way.
|
| Also abuse happens a lot. It may not be the majority but it
| is NOT rare.
|
| I stand by my objection in this case
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We have statistics and they are not pretty. The CDC reports
| that 1 out of every 7 children have experienced child abuse
| or neglect in the last year. That doesn't even include
| stuff that technically isn't abuse or neglect but rather
| just damaging parenting: Plenty of kids had their parents
| impress upon them some personal neurosis out of their own
| traumatized problems, and now you start another cycle of
| that person causing issues in their kids unless they get
| help for that or find ways to avoid it.
|
| I would consider one out of seven to be "problematic" and
| "oof" worthy
| simonh wrote:
| I think it's fair to say it's something we should all strive
| for if we're able.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Forgiveness is a loaded word.
|
| I am not talking about forgiveness as an act, but as an
| attitude here. You probably know better than most of us what
| that means.
|
| The attitude can be generalized as you just did in even your
| response. The act however, shouldn't.
| simonh wrote:
| Yep, flaws I saw in how my parents brought me up definitely
| informed the way I approached bringing up my kids. But then I
| look at the childhoods my parents had, and honestly they did a
| heck of a lot better job than I could have had any right to
| expect. So I think overall I did pretty well, with lessons to
| learn for sure, but it's only fair to think of it as an
| iterative process.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| It is surely a humbling experience. Thank you for sharing!
| Goronmon wrote:
| I've had the opposite experience where as I've grown older
| and had kids of my own, I've began to judge my parent's even
| more harshly than I had when I was younger.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| That sounds as understanding, not forgiving. I think that when
| it comes to parents, understanding makes forgiving unnecessary,
| as there is actually nothing to forgive. Except for the cases
| of actual, malicious abuse, of course.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| The conclusion to this article should have been: it's important
| to study the past, and find out what the truth is. Memory is
| fallible, and people often misunderstand or lie. But by
| investigating -- going to more people, consulting more sources,
| you can get closer to knowing what really happened.
|
| Finding and preserving the truth about the past is more important
| than ever. Truth is under attack from all sides, with politicians
| moving the Overton window on lying, LLMs, the decline of
| centralized news, fake reviews and comment farms.
|
| If the author meant to say "History is often wrong and
| surprisingly easy to set right with a bit of investigation,"
| great, but "The past is not true" is an absurd and harmful
| statement. How would you feel if I hit you with my car and ran,
| or tried to overturn an election and then said "I'm not guilty
| because the past is not true"?
| mmusson wrote:
| The question is what you really believe to be true. If your car
| hit me and you truly didn't remember it that way then you are
| proving the author's point.
|
| Maybe you do remember hitting me. There will still be
| innumerable questions that you couldn't answer because they
| were out of your perception in the moment. What if it turns out
| that in hitting me you stopped me from running over an old
| lady.
|
| Whether or not you learn of that detail will have a big effect
| on how you remember the accident.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Right. The past is true, but your memories are flawed, and
| your experience is incomplete. You have to make an effort to
| get the facts right. To get a full understanding of any
| situation, a good start is to talk to anyone you can who was
| there when it happened.
| mistermann wrote:
| The tricky part is: that's also often a good way to get a
| _misunderstanding_.
|
| Above you say "tried to overturn an election" - I'm not
| sure who it is you are referring to here, but that charge
| was laid at the feet of thousands of January 6th protesters
| by thousands of journalists and armchair experts, _few of
| whom even ever considered if that was the actual intent of
| the people_.
|
| People often don't wonder what is true, because they are
| not able to even try.
| b450 wrote:
| Anytime some even vaguely anti-realist claim shows up in a HN
| headline, such as "the past is not true", a bunch of predictable
| and dull comments inevitably show up to perform some table
| thumping about reality being factual and objective, likely paired
| with some sanctimonious moral panic about the dangers of
| relativism (normally with a political slant one way or another).
|
| I think these comments are sincere and well-intentioned in their
| concern for the truth, but I also think that they speak to the
| impoverished state of anything like public philosophical
| discourse today. Lest I waste too much time and emotional energy
| on an internet comment, I'll wrap up by stating my endorsement of
| the seemingly forgotten, and distinctly American philosophical
| tradition of pragmatism. It is a picture in which truth and
| falsity exists, but being products of inquiry, experience,
| adversarial disagreement, and experiment, remain permanently open
| to revision. The pragmatist statement of the author's (fine)
| thesis might be "the past is never finished", since the past
| exists and is real, but our discoveries, experiences, interests,
| etc. in the future might demand a revision or reinterpretation of
| it.
| 50 wrote:
| worth looking into c.s. peirce's[1][2] pragmatism material
|
| 1: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-
| Sowa-2/publication...
|
| 2: https://newcriterion.com/issues/1997/11/vulgar-rortyism
| jajag wrote:
| > "the past is never finished"
|
| Very well said.
| brudgers wrote:
| It's not even past.
| whispersnow wrote:
| There's also a chance he went to apologize and never get a relief
| or forgiveness as the person was really paralyzed. It is not fair
| to judge based on the result. Mistake made, apologize
| immediately, don't wait. And take the consequences whether it is
| good or bad - that's a true move on from the past.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| history doesn't exist. at most we have "historiography": the made
| up mythical tale of the past[3]. why? it's easier to
| remember[2,4]
|
| in oral cultures people just re-adjust their memory,
| subconsciously[1]
|
| in written culture, people burn books, driven by their
| leaders.[2]
|
| in transitional cultures, 'bad' comments are donwvoted, or
| moderated away, or the users get shadowbanned[2]
|
| [1] "Orality and Literacy" by Walter J. Ong, An american jesuit
| monk and academic.
|
| [2] I made this up just now
|
| [3] my highschool history teacher taught me this
|
| [4] arguably, [1] also says this
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I think you're wrong about historiography (and your highschool
| history teacher too).
|
| "History" is accounts (stories) about the past.
|
| "Historiography" isn't about the past; it's an account of how
| historians "do" history. I mean, historiography would include
| accounts of how past historians used to do history.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| > I think you're wrong about historiography (and your
| highschool history teacher too).
|
| you're wrong about me being wrong. I remembered a little
| better now:
|
| "there is no history, the proper name of this subject is
| historiography" he taught us this
|
| but also, your reply suggests you missed the point (and my
| teacher's) that there is no history, it's all accounts by
| some "historian"
|
| I would use the name meta-history, or 'philosophy of history'
| for what you describe as 'historiography'.
|
| then again, maybe you're just being nitpicky about things and
| are focusing on what I said wrong instead of on the point i
| was trying to make
|
| further again, I cannot help but notice how going forwards
| "metahistory" may even be understood as the story behind Mark
| Zuckerberg's giant coorporation
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Well, I said that history consists of accounts (stories).
|
| I agree that what I (and most historians) call
| "historiography" could be called "meta-history". But that
| activity already has a name; we don't need to construct a
| new term (with a Greek prefix and a Latin suffix) to stand-
| in for a word that already works fine.
|
| Historiography isn't some handwavey version of the past;
| it's the study of how historians do their work. That's the
| word historians use. Honestly, I think your history teacher
| got the wrong end of the stick.
|
| Like, Humpty Dumpty had a point: you can use words to mean
| whatever you want. But it's not helpful for intelligent
| discourse to redefine commonly-understood terms.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| yes, it's usually the end of the stick they give to
| people in countries other than 1st world
|
| it is in a sense poetic that the stick is sourced in the
| 3rd world
|
| but I get it, you're both, correctly nitpicking and I'm
| wrong. this is the hierarchy of the "worlds". I feel
| really bad now, highly recommended.
|
| nonetheless, you refuse the deeper point. may somebody
| form the 0th world help you
| zacksiri wrote:
| It's not that the past is not true. The past is true, what was
| reported is not. We know very clearly where the problem lies. The
| media is a lie. Headlines like "she'll never walk again" sells
| more than "she'll be fine".
| rob74 wrote:
| Your statement is only partly true. The article just says "I
| found out that I broke the other driver's spine, and she'll
| never walk again" - so you're reading into it that he read it
| in a newspaper, but maybe it was just hearsay from someone who
| talked to someone who worked at the hospital who had talked to
| the doctor who may have treated her (or maybe someone else who
| also had a car accident that day)? I think the vague
| formulation is intentional to make it apply more widely.
|
| But I agree with the point that it's not "the past" that's at
| fault here, it's unreliable sources of information.
| zacksiri wrote:
| Yes I did assume the "news" being local news media covering
| the case. I guess this is a prime example of what could have
| also happened. Sweet irony.
| tivert wrote:
| > It's not that the past is not true. The past is true, what
| was reported is not.
|
| How do you know the past even exists? All you have is memory
| and reports, which are unreliable. You can only make the
| _assumption_ that "the past is true."
|
| > We know very clearly where the problem lies. The media is a
| lie.
|
| You're understating that. It's not just "the media" boogeyman,
| it's memory and records that are the problem. They're never
| complete and always get stuff wrong.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X3HpE8tMXz4m4w6Rz/the-
| simple...
| [deleted]
| athenot wrote:
| This touches on Narrative Therapy. Events happened, yes. Facts
| are immutable and can't be changed or wished away simply because
| they are inconvenient.
|
| Rather, _how_ we make sense of them--and internalize them--
| affects our lives in significant ways, especially if the
| prevaling narrative we believe about ourselves prevents us from
| thriving.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/narrative-t...
| frankthedog wrote:
| Similar message, among many other valuable bits, in the book
| The Courage to be Disliked. Very good read, no fluff like a lot
| of psychology books. The title is misleading, there's a strong
| element of being helpful to others rather than being disliked.
| I'd recommend it to anyone.
| akkad33 wrote:
| I've read this book and many others like it. I completely
| agree with your assessment. I felt really good when I read
| this book and others. But afterwards I go back to feeling bad
| about myself as always
| rodelrod wrote:
| "History is not true. You can change history. The actual factual
| events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is
| interpretation."
|
| OK, you've discovered post-modernism.
|
| Next step is to avoid its pitfalls.
|
| The actual factual events are infinite and one is exposed to a
| small subset to interpret. That does not mean you're allowed to
| make up, distort, and selectively ignore facts to suit whatever
| narrative you'd like to push. You need to construct the narrative
| in good faith, based on the best possible set of facts you're
| exposed to, and adjusting it when you're exposed to new facts.
|
| Unless you want to organize a cult or a totalitarian regime, in
| which case go as crazy as possible with the narrative. People
| love it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| History is absolutely true, factually true at that. Facts are
| sometimes hard to come by, heck some facks of modern history
| are still classified, but that does not give people carte
| blanche to make up stuff as they go...
|
| Like yeah, he was in an accident, media misreported it. Thing
| is so, how comes he, and the women, never knew who was at
| fault? Insuramce sure did some investigation as did police. Not
| knowing the facts, and coming to conclusions based on feelings,
| is the problem. But it doesn't mean history is wrong...
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| And if he was driving recklessly that fact doesn't change
| simply because the other driver also wasn't paying attention
| and didn't blame him for it. Past mistakes are also painful
| to remember but the best way to deal with them is to
| acknowledge the reality and then change what you need to in
| your character to make sure we don't repeat them.
| ttonkytonk wrote:
| History is true, but the history anyone knows is selective, a
| mental model, often guessed or interpreted, and usually
| secondhand information.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Thermodynamics is true, everything else is an
| interpretation.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Reality is true, but the reality anyone knows is selective,
| a mental model, often guessed or interpreted, and usually
| secondhand information.
| mistermann wrote:
| Is "the reality anyone knows" not also part of greater
| aggregate reality though (conflicting with reality is
| true), or is it an ontological component of something
| else?
| hef19898 wrote:
| The worst historical accounts, if lookrd at without
| context, are _first hand_ ones... Those are the most
| selective and subjective takes you can have.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Which is why nobody considers it good practice to do
| anything with a SINGLE first hand source.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| To some extent what you're disagreeing about is linguistics.
| Is history the actual events that took place or our knowledge
| of events that took place. And to be honest, there's also a
| question of whether there'sa difference because what we don't
| know about the past might as will not have happened.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I hate hyperbole. The correct title is that your memory of the
| past is incorrect.
| ideamotor wrote:
| We lose this when everything is recorded forever.
|
| Stated more eloquently:
| https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1681340407857422336...:
|
| "I need to say this, even if it does not make sense until decades
| ahead:
|
| Human intelligence and a foundation of consciousness is just as
| much the ability to forget somethings as it is to remember.
|
| We will have to face eternal memories with AI technologies and
| this will be hard."
|
| I'd replace AI with just IT in general. Relatedly, I used to
| believe in digital rot but now I'm not sure. I can for example
| search all the photos on my phone instantly to return images with
| a given text string. So the technology is improving to comprehend
| any data format and effectively retain its data.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| > We lose this when everything is recorded forever.
|
| I'd argue the opposite, we've amplified this affect. Off-hand
| statements from the past recorded forever get re-examined
| through a new lens in the present. What previously might have
| been totally innocuous become a scandal later. Whenever someone
| rockets into being main character for the day on the internet,
| their entire history is pulled up and re-assessed.
|
| So like many things, it's amplified by the internet, but
| largely for the negative.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| Data, information, doesn't rot, but code does because it relies
| on the implicit promises of the underlying system(s) it runs on
| top of, the systems it interacts with, and the expectations of
| it's users.
|
| Information on the other hand usually only gets more useful
| with time with very minimal relative-cost to maintaining code
| even though they're both digital.
|
| And, like we're seeing, a lot of the "usefulness" of the
| information over time is new methods and tools for
| understanding that information.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| That distinction is not rigorous. To be rigorous the
| distinction must not be made.
| polygotdomain wrote:
| >Data, information, doesn't rot...
|
| Can you tell me what hieroglyphics mean? What about a phrase
| of latin or another dead language? Information is only as
| "fresh" as our ability to interpret and understand it. Dead
| languagues are the same as a file who's format we no longer
| have the spec for. Yes, the ones and zeros may still be
| there, but without the ability to understand what they mean,
| there's little we can do with that information. We're still
| at risk of losing those capabilities for data.
| rcoveson wrote:
| > Human intelligence and a foundation of consciousness is just
| as much the ability to forget somethings as it is to remember.
|
| What's the word for something that's phrased like wisdom but
| doesn't hold up at all to mild scrutiny?
|
| " _Just as much_ the ability to _forget_ as to _remember_ ",
| feh. One of those things is a bit more important, isn't it?
| ambicapter wrote:
| The entire point of the quote is that the answer to your
| question is "No".
| [deleted]
| Jun8 wrote:
| For an excellent story on this theme you can read Ted Chiang's "
| The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_and_the_Alchemi....
|
| I think it's one his best.
| 123sereusername wrote:
| why is this even worth talking about?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >The past is never dead. It's not even past.
|
| -- William Faulkner, 'Requiem for a Nun' (1951)
| signa11 wrote:
| check out the movie 'rashomon' by kurosawa, one incident recalled
| from different folks and it is all colored by their own
| perspective, Truth, is hard to glean.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I had this moment during the Covid pandemic. I read a lot of
| history and I saw pictures of the Spanish influenza and was told
| it killed more people than WW1. Somehow I pictured the world in
| the late 1910s with everyone sick and in hospital but now I think
| it was more like Covid. People got sick and died but life went on
| and some people were completely unaffected. The world doesn't
| grind to a halt for world wars and pandemics. People still have
| kids and get married and start businesses and hike and play the
| guitar, etc. History is just what we decide to deem important or
| not.
| nostrebored wrote:
| The historical context also misses a lot of what we know about
| the impact of malnutrition and stress on the immune system. Was
| the spanish flu actually that bad, or was it actually a fairly
| bad flu that wreaked havoc on a war-torn population?
|
| Reconciling modern information with historical events is hard.
| But I think it's completely necessary if we're going to make
| policy decisions based on history.
| gmarx wrote:
| The Spanish flu really was very bad but would not have killed
| as many people if it occurred today. Malnutrition might have
| been a factor (though today's obesity rate might also be a
| problem) but the bigger thing was lack of antibiotics. Flu
| almost never kills you directly- it's the bacterial pneumonia
| you develop on top of it that does. Without antibiotics back
| then there would have been little they could do
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Bacterial Pneumonia was not the novel danger of the
| "Spanish" flu; They cytokine storm it caused in perfectly
| healthy people was horrifying, with perfectly healthy
| people who would normally fight off any flu dying from this
| one. A lot of young twenty somethings, strong people who
| were not malnourished died from it.
|
| Hell, people got cytokine storms from COVID-19 and we still
| can only treat it if we catch it really early, otherwise
| it's still a great way to die for a normal person.
| gmarx wrote:
| That's a hypothesis. It is known that (supposedly) that
| strain can cause cytokine storm more than other flus do.
| I would not assume that means cytokine storm was the
| primary cause of death or even the primary cause of death
| in young adults. Based on my experience my guess is that
| the pneumonia was a much bigger cause of death than the
| storm
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Right I wasn't expressing the cytokine storm as the
| primary cause of death but rather a phenomenon that
| definitely pushed it above a normal flu, especially for
| healthy young adults.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Was the spanish flu actually that bad_
|
| Yes.
|
| _> was it actually a fairly bad flu that wreaked havoc on a
| war-torn population?_
|
| No, because those affected worst by it were young adults in
| relatively good health. Small children and the elderly were
| proportionally spared. The prevailing theory for why Spanish
| flu killed more healthy young adults was because it was an
| over-reaction of the immune system itself that was most
| harmful:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm
|
| It is definitely the case that the war led to many young
| adults being moved around the world and kept in close
| quarters, which certainly exacerbated the spread and effect
| of the pandemic.
| agumonkey wrote:
| This is important, history will remember emotionally charged
| comments but indeed a lot of what happens is "normal" and
| forgotten. We could see that in syria or even ukraine.. the
| geopolitical tension level was completely removed from most day
| to day stream we could see.
|
| I wonder if this bias/memory-capacity is studied, I assume so
| but I don't know the name :)
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think this is an important lesson for folks struggling with
| anxiety about what will happen with climate change as well. It
| is already awful for lots of people and will continue to be,
| increasingly so to some degree and up to some point, but like
| it did during Covid and the Cold War and the world wars and the
| flu pandemic, in aggregate, life will also go on.
|
| But I think it's also important to remember that that's only
| the case in aggregate. For many many individual people, life
| did not go on during all these events (and all the other
| tragedies that are constantly happening), they lost their own
| lives, or their parents, or their children, or their friends.
|
| I personally find it really hard to hold both of these truths
| in my head at once.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Images play a big role in how events are perceived. Whenever
| there's a natural disaster you tend to see all of the worst
| examples, even if they're not fully representative of the
| event. But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get
| people to take these events seriously, since they can
| negatively affect so many people. Otherwise people might look
| at images where some things look normal and think that those
| who were most affected are overstating the impact of the event.
|
| Another example that comes to mind is the 2020 protests. If I
| looked at how conservative news was reporting on events, it
| seemed utterly chaotic. But I had multiple friends that were
| present at many local events, and they were all perfectly safe.
| rexpop wrote:
| If you are interested in images' role in public perception of
| events--particularly suffering and tragedy--you might look to
| read Susan Sontag's essay collection "Regarding the Pain of
| Others," published in 2003:
|
| > To the militant, identity is everything. And all
| photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their
| captions. During the fighting between Serbs and Croats at the
| beginning of the recent Balkan wars, the same photographs of
| children killed in the shelling of a village were passed
| around at both Serb and Croat propaganda briefings. Alter the
| caption, and the children's deaths could be used and reused.
|
| > a single photograph or filmstrip claims to represent
| exactly what was before the camera's lens. A photograph is
| supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs,
| unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. But evidence
| of what?
|
| > Indeed, the very notion of atrocity, of war crime, is
| associated with the expectation of photographic evidence.
| Such evidence is, usually, of something posthumous.
|
| > And, of course, atrocities that are not secured in our
| minds by well-known photographic images, or of which we
| simply have had very few images--the total extermination of
| the Herero people in Namibia decreed by the German colonial
| administration in 1904; the Japanese onslaught in China,
| notably the massacre of nearly four hundred thousand, and the
| rape of eighty thousand, Chinese in December 1937, the so-
| called Rape of Nanking; the rape of some one hundred and
| thirty thousand women and girls (ten thousand of whom
| committed suicide) by victorious Soviet soldiers unleashed by
| their commanding officers in Berlin in 1945--seem more
| remote. These are memories that few have cared to claim.
|
| > Shock can become familiar. Shock can wear off. Even if it
| doesn't, one can not look. People have means to defend
| themselves against what is upsetting--in this instance,
| unpleasant information for those wishing to continue to
| smoke. This seems normal, that is, adaptive. As one can
| become habituated to horror in real life, one can become
| habituated to the horror of certain images.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That
| is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as
| evidence.
|
| While this is mostly a good piece of writing, in the real
| world handmade images (and handwritten notes) are, like
| photographs, potentially evidence, and the issues raised
| with photographs are the reasons both photographs and hand-
| written/hand-drawn items (and all other physical items) as
| evidence tend to demand supporting (and admit opposing)
| testimonial and physical evidence of provenance (and, the
| physical evidence offered for this purpose has the same
| features, such that ultimately, it all rests on testimonial
| evidence of provenance.)
|
| I also don't think the first parr of the sentence is true:
| pictures may be supposed to show, but pictures have been
| noted for their evocative power long before this piece was
| written--pictures are in certaim circumstances understood
| to show, and under other and frequently overlapping
| circumstances to evoke; there is certainly a common danger
| in mistaking evocative power for also indicating
| informative power, but few anywhere have denied the
| existence of the evocative power of photography.
| yeetyoteyoten wrote:
| > But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get people
| to take these events seriously, since they can negatively
| affect so many people.
|
| Overreacting can have equally bad outcomes, I think. Social
| isolation sanctioned by pandemic era school lockdowns left me
| with depression, social anxiety and suicidal ideations - none
| of which I have managed to fix so far. And I know I'm not
| alone with this in my age group (in high-school at the start
| of the pandemic).
|
| Now, I think the resulting number of suicides does not reach
| the amount of people saved by the countermeasures in total,
| but it's nevertheless something to consider. (Well, but it's
| much harder to find a direct correlation in the first place,
| so really who knows.)
|
| (Re-reading your comment, I now realize that maybe I was
| completely missing your point, in which case I'm sorry.)
| munificent wrote:
| As someone who has experienced several serious floods, this
| is my favorite example of imagery's ability to craft a
| reality:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgm3_jzcNm4
|
| Floodwaters tend to stir up a lot of dirt and mud, so the
| water is usually totally opaque. That makes it very hard to
| tell how deep it is. A lot of overhead views of flooded
| neighborhoods look completely disastrous, but in reality it's
| just a foot or two of water that will just go away once the
| drains can handle it.
|
| But, sometimes, flooding really is severe and the damage is
| monumental. But it can be hard to distinguish those from
| imagery. Every picture of a flood looks biblical.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Is your oar hitting ground
|
| I thought it was really weird the way she was paddling but
| that line at the end of the video is probably the
| explanation.
| Goronmon wrote:
| A couple feet of water is still disastrous though. You're
| insurance most likely doesn't cover it and you could be
| left with tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage
| easily.
| munificent wrote:
| It really depends. In my neighborhood in Louisiana, most
| yards sloped down to the street. So when the flood was a
| couple of feet at its deepest, most houses were still
| fully above the waterline. It's just that the streets
| were impassable and you needed a boat to get around.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| People also completely underestimate how much force flowing
| water has. It's hard enough to walk in waist-deep water
| when it's still. Somehow they see a few feet of rushing
| water and they think "hey, I'm gonna drive my car through
| that"
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Arizona has a law, aptly titled "stupid motorist law" or
| "idiot's law", which specifically addresses this.
|
| Yet people still drive into flooded roads and get swept
| downstream on a regular basis because "it's just a couple
| inches of water".
| hammock wrote:
| Why have you been downvoted?
| jrpt wrote:
| The 2020 protests were either dangerous or ok depending on
| where you were and the time of day. Minneapolis had a lot of
| damage and someone was even burned to death in their store.
| US insurance costs were over $1B.
| rout39574 wrote:
| COVID is not a good model for the Spanish influenza.
|
| I highly recommend The Great Influenza:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-Hi...
|
| We were so desperately lucky. It was not "like covid".
| pharrington wrote:
| Having an incomplete understanding of history goes both ways.
| Consider the myriad of diseases that were widespread then, but
| have practically vanished in modern countries with modern
| healthcare. Getting brutally-to-fatally sick was common in the
| early 1900s, and day-to-day life was alot worse because of it.
|
| Life in general is better now, and we can keep doing better!
| And to do better, we have to be honest about history.
| throwaway106382 wrote:
| It doesn't help that a lot of "history" is actually just
| propaganda, for example the infamous "iron lungs in the gym"
| photo during the polio pandemic.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| On the flip side, if you're a Gen Xer, you almost certainly
| grew up knowing an adult whose health was directly impacted
| by polio. And if you don't, Mitch McConnell is sitting up
| there in Congress. One of the reasons he didn't push back so
| much when they were passing COVID legislation was because of
| his own experiences as a child.
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