Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
by sixstringtheory on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @02:57PM
(#25851158)
> Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives they always have
And we know this... how? Studying history!
> and there's no library big enough to change that
Who's trying to change human nature? This is a strawman you are thrashing. Studying history is about understanding human nature, not changing it. Just like studying physics is about understanding projectile motion, not about changing the gravitational constant.
The idea behind studying history is that we use the insights gained from it to try to solve new challenges in reasonable ways, instead of ways we'd know were likely to fail if we'd just cracked open a book.
Re:Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @01:25PM
(#25849962)
Fine, but by your own argument, reading history gives you some insight into how the humans of today will react to certain situations. You can read history to find out what humans actually are like, not what theory says they're like.
This is like arguing about whether dieting "works." On the one hand, obviously, yes, it works. There's no credible debate about the efficacy of calorie restriction for losing weight. It simply works. On the other hand, most human beings can't actually follow a diet, so, no, it doesn't actually work, for any reasonable definition of "works."
Reading history is probably a lot like that.