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Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned by keiferski on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @10:52AM (#25847860)
Literally everything about the world we live in has been shaped directly and indirectly by historical events and ideas. Everything, from what you wear, what you eat, the shape of the surface of the planet, the ideas you think, your conception of human beings in the universe, and the fact that you are reading this comment (and not listening to it or feeling it.)

The idea that we all just “appear” on Earth from some formless void, then subsequently make totally independent decisions, devoid of any previous influence, is both highly naive and far too common.

Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned by Bakary on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @01:55PM (#25850382)
There is another layer to look at the problem. Studying history often does not do what it says on the tin for a few reasons

1. People are rarely in a position to effect changes or draw from historical lessons in the first place

2. Whatever lessons you can draw are often very contingent on the time and place and even taking into account patterns, we still end up in a situation where the lessons can't really be applied beyond general principles that are already well known without much study involved.

3. Often the understanding we think we have of historical events is hopelessly distorted anyway, and colored by the sources and narratives we have read or composed in our minds.

In the end, the people who do change history tend to barrel away at problems without taking the past all that much into account beyond some general references. Even if we take into account survivorship bias this is still an important phenomenon to consider. Hence the conclusions that there is much to learn from history is either trivial or actually under its own layer of naivete.