1/ *cracks knuckles* So... Once you know one field well, you get comfortable with (or at least aware of) how many people are very good at presenting smart-sounding and compelling evidence in favor of [anything].https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1170476053002776576 …
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2/ I don't mean that in a nefarious way. Complex systems are complex and often complicated, and well-trained people will present coherent and smart-sounding simplifications as arguments.
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3/ For this reason, history intimidates me. A LOT. And, it's why I hate historical claims as attacks of particular positions. I don't have enough historical knowledge to evaluate my own claims critically, let alone someone else's.
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4/ I mean, history is *really* BIG. But it's also lost by, like, thermodynamics. So you better know a lot of the pieces and how they fit together if you want to be robust against bullshit. And even then, I bet scholarship drifts for lack of information.
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5/ So most of the time now, when I hear historical arguments, I just assume people are generating projections backwards onto the past to suit what they want to "prove" in the present to select the future they want. Which...isn't terribly useful, except rhetorically.
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6/ I don't really have a point to this. It's just something I've been thinking about lately. If those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, what about those who hallucinate it?
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Replying to @generativist
This thread reminds me of this quote, “Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”. ― Francis Bacon 1/2
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Replying to @kareem_carr @generativist
I agree. Hard not to read whatever we want into the past and it's tempting to focus on now. But one issue that gives me pause is scientific racism/sexism. It's hard to address why current scientific racism/sexism isn't just science-as-usual without pointing to phrenology etc. 2/2
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Oh yea. I’m not in anyway discounting history or historians. I’m just saying history seems to be the most fertile ground for fooling yourself or others or, often, both.
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