This particular statement is extremely low-epistemics, but it’s also a broader problem throughout this comment and throughout modern civilization as a whole. I definitely owe you this explanation (since you taught me the dark truth of math a couple months ago): the human race is even worse at teaching human history than teaching math,
Classrooms can’t teach fake math, certainly not for 10 consecutive years. Sure, they can’t torture young children with history the way they do with math, but if someone can’t perform basic calculations then that gets noticed and solved pretty quick. With history, nobody ever learns any of the basic calculations unless from an outside source.
The nice thing about history education is that, unlike math education. you can actually undo most of the losses with a couple hours of reading interesting books. These are the books that are most recommended, they are only two chapters each.
The first two chapters of Schelling’s Arms and Influence (1966), which is on JSTOR. It explains the strategic logic of why being willing to escalate makes your side stronger, even if the aggression is ramped up to a deranged extent.
The first two chapters of Mearshimer’s Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2014), which is not on JSTOR. It explains the strategic logic of why countries choose aggressive and violent foreign policies in the first place, and how much they value strength relative to risking self-destruction.
Would you be willing to summarize the point you’re making at the object level? Is it something like “the Soviets had to make the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, and that doesn’t say anything meaningful about their cultural approach to the interaction of world religions”? I don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything, I just want to understand the “extremely low-epistemics” bit.
It’s something I’m not really comfortable talking about with anonymous people on the internet. I’m really sorry for the inefficiency, but I’ve done as much as I can to share as much as I can.
I think it’s understandable not wanting to talk about present conflicts openly. I’m more surprised about your feeling that you can’t openly talk about what happened more than 50 years ago.
Can you say more about why you believe it’s hard to talk about history?
This particular statement is extremely low-epistemics, but it’s also a broader problem throughout this comment and throughout modern civilization as a whole. I definitely owe you this explanation (since you taught me the dark truth of math a couple months ago): the human race is even worse at teaching human history than teaching math,
Classrooms can’t teach fake math, certainly not for 10 consecutive years. Sure, they can’t torture young children with history the way they do with math, but if someone can’t perform basic calculations then that gets noticed and solved pretty quick. With history, nobody ever learns any of the basic calculations unless from an outside source.
The nice thing about history education is that, unlike math education. you can actually undo most of the losses with a couple hours of reading interesting books. These are the books that are most recommended, they are only two chapters each.
The first two chapters of Schelling’s Arms and Influence (1966), which is on JSTOR. It explains the strategic logic of why being willing to escalate makes your side stronger, even if the aggression is ramped up to a deranged extent.
The first two chapters of Mearshimer’s Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2014), which is not on JSTOR. It explains the strategic logic of why countries choose aggressive and violent foreign policies in the first place, and how much they value strength relative to risking self-destruction.
Would you be willing to summarize the point you’re making at the object level? Is it something like “the Soviets had to make the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, and that doesn’t say anything meaningful about their cultural approach to the interaction of world religions”? I don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything, I just want to understand the “extremely low-epistemics” bit.
It’s something I’m not really comfortable talking about with anonymous people on the internet. I’m really sorry for the inefficiency, but I’ve done as much as I can to share as much as I can.
I think it’s understandable not wanting to talk about present conflicts openly. I’m more surprised about your feeling that you can’t openly talk about what happened more than 50 years ago.
Can you say more about why you believe it’s hard to talk about history?
Both of the books are on lib gen. I would expect that this matters for more people than JSTOR.