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A comment on Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first ... by thewebcount on Sunday January 01, 2023 @05:23PM (#34211672)
I was fine with literature, but yeah, history, what a snooze-fest. Why do I care who fought what war 1,500 years ago and who won? It seemed like it mostly came down to a bunch of pompous elites having dick-measuring contests a lot of the time.

Then one day the teacher didn’t want to teach and instead showed an episode of Connections, and I was blown away. Learning about how and why our science and technology became what it is was something I could related to and seemed actually useful. I still don’t care for military history, though.

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Re:Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first ... by UncleMeat on Sunday January 01, 2023 @09:21PM (#34213487)
Even if there is no connection to our own time, history is one of the most effective teachers of the process of empathy out there. It requires you to be able to place yourself in another time, place, and context. I'll also note that military history and "elites having dick-measuring contests" is far from the trendy side of the last four or so decades of history research and writing. Cultural history, microhistory, and even history of science are all hot topics.
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Re:Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first ... by Balgair on Monday January 02, 2023 @01:01PM (#34221218)
Free to watch here:

https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke

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