[HN Gopher] History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
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History Is Written by the Losers (2016)
Author : delichon
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-01-18 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scholars-stage.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (scholars-stage.org)
| growingkittens wrote:
| Sima Qian chose suffering and mutilation over death to complete
| his life's work.
|
| The written word can persist throughout space and time. What will
| happen to our digital archives?
| AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote:
| Even paper needs shelter. It must be kept from moths, because
| they eat holes in it. It must be kept from humidity, because it
| causes the fibres to expand and the ink to run.
|
| It stands to reason that Sima Qian, if he cared about
| posterity, would have submitted his works to people who make it
| a point on preserving records.
|
| Similarly a person is writing a digital work, they will need to
| go through a digital analogue of the same process, if they want
| to preserve their work.
|
| The process of bit entropy acts like digital moths.
| growingkittens wrote:
| In 100 years with minimal, passive effort, a piece of paper
| will be fragile, but usable.
|
| In 100 years, a hard drive will degrade without multiple
| transfers to new media - an active process.
|
| The barrier to digital archival is much higher than paper
| archival for the average person, and the internet _does_
| forget. There 's not really an equivalent authority who
| preserves records for digital works, is there? The Internet
| Archive works toward this goal, but their mission is not
| enshrined anywhere permanent and could be gutted.
| geodel wrote:
| Yes. The amount of digital data will be like, I don't know,
| 10 order of magnitude more than paper content. So I think
| archiving even 0.00001% for long term maybe tall order.
| jbandela1 wrote:
| Also don't forget Anna Komnene.
|
| She was the oldest daughter of Alexios I (who unwittingly kicked
| off the Crusades).
|
| After unsuccessfully trying to overthrow her younger brother, she
| was exiled to a monastery where she ended up writing the Alexiad
| which provides much of our information about the early crusades
| including first hand descriptions of some of the key players as
| well as as weapons and tactics.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Tanner is one of those people I might disagree politically with
| from time to time but who nevertheless convinces me of the
| alternative point of view regularly. I see he disses my man
| Herodotus right off, so now I need to read this to see why.
|
| There is, of course, a margin of "losing" from which no history
| can return. Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to
| those guys? The Mongols happened.
|
| His series on the Soviet "cybernetics" movement was also
| fascinating.
| miroljub wrote:
| > Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to those
| guys? The Mongols happened.
|
| No. The Russians happened. Mongols came later.
|
| And rest assured Khazars did not disappear. According to some
| theories they infiltrate governments of the world and they are
| ruling the world. You just need to read the true sources, not
| some fake history. :)
| beretguy wrote:
| Would you mind providing links to those "true sources",
| please? I'm curious to do some research for myself.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| They are probably alluding to antisemitic conspiracy
| therories.
| shakow wrote:
| He is probably alluding to the Khazar hypothesis, according
| to which at least part of the Eastern European (and thus
| Ashkenazi in general) Jews have Khazar ascendancy.
|
| The scale is very much subject to discussion, but genetic
| evidences[0] support the core idea.
|
| [0] https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/5/1/75/730630
| fjoireoipe wrote:
| they are probably referencing an antisemitic conspiracy
| theory. I can't tell whether as a joke, or seriously. In
| any case, it should probably be downvoted, or dang should
| remove it. it's psuedohistory, invented to spead hate.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I think it's obviously it's a joke. However, there's even
| a smiley at the end of the comment, as a clue for the
| people with broken humour detector. I hope you saw it.
| korse wrote:
| Why is cybernetics quoted?
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Had a different shade of meaning in the Soviet context from
| the way we use the word today - more like "Computer Science"
| or "Automatic Theory", rather than robotic or human-robotic
| or "cyberpunky".
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It had the same different meaning outside the Soviet
| context too. Check out, for example, Norbert Wiener, as
| American as they come and considered the inventor of
| "cybernetics" in that "old-school" sense.
| korse wrote:
| https://bailiping.github.io/assets/docs/Books/Cybernetics
| ,%2...
| korse wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the correct
| one. The robotics tie in isn't far off though, as some of
| the earliest autonomous mobile robots spawned from
| cybernetics research.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the
| correct one.
|
| Just to clarify, do you mean that the Soviet context is
| the same as the modern context or that the modern context
| misuses the term in some way (or something else that I
| missed)?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > A man dies only once
|
| Interesting words from a man who has died but of whom we still
| speak. And fitting that they come from a person who some say
| invented history; there wouldn't have been counterexamples.
| wtbdrgb wrote:
| History is written by the corrupt and corrupted and those who
| still have to survive.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _History Is Written by the Losers (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21228034 - Oct 2019 (20
| comments)
|
| _History is Written by the Losers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13037214 - Nov 2016 (17
| comments)
|
| _Thucydides Roundtable, Book IV: History Is Written by the
| Losers_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011872 - Nov
| 2016 (47 comments)
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