Same with climate change stories.
Yeah, but we aren't supposed to say that. We are supposed to agree that it's the end of the world and run around screaming and flailing our arms like Kermit the frog.
Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
91–100 of 256 posts
Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I let them know who I am It's striking to see an argument from authority, against the dominant narrative, deployed in service of dismissing those who purportedly aspire to "rewrite history to fit a narrative".
The way the press reported on it was just despicable. P.S. in case it isn't clear, I am not a pilot myself, but friends and family are pilots. One just got his Apache Chopper certification! Wow! Me so proud and so envious.
Honestly, anyone who has domain knowledge about something the press reports on, and doesn't realize that the press is just doing whatever they want and fitting the relevant facts to that, is probably not paying attention much at all.
It's also pretty obvious that the "officially accepted story" around the 737 is better for everyone including Boeing - because it's now been wrapped up and completed; there was a bug, the bug is fixed, the end.
The real story that there are some unknown number of pilots flying planes right now that will not deal correctly with emergency situations - that's a much harder problem, and much scarier to face.
But it's obviously real; any number of air disasters occurred because the pilots didn't follow the basic emergency procedures.
None of that means that the cases where they have to shouldn't be reduced, mind you.
Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#93I would find this piece more convincing if it had sampled stories from different sources in service of its thesis rather than focusing on a single work the author finds particularly galling, as there is no shortage of fictional narratives anywhere — look no further than US state-approved high-school history textbooks. Given the narrowness of the material cited, this piece seems to me like unequal application of skept…
Anytime school textbooks are mentioned I feel the urge to refer anyone who'll listen to the relevant chapter of "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman" Feynman is popular around here and rightly so. Blatant corruption from top to bottom is the norm, it would seem. Feynman also loathed psychology and gave it as an example of "Cargo-cult science." Last I heard every single first year psych texbook contained the Stanford pri…
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Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#94I would find this piece more convincing if it had sampled stories from different sources in service of its thesis rather than focusing on a single work the author finds particularly galling, as there is no shortage of fictional narratives anywhere — look no further than US state-approved high-school history textbooks. Given the narrowness of the material cited, this piece seems to me like unequal application of skept…
Anytime school textbooks are mentioned I feel the urge to refer anyone who'll listen to the relevant chapter of "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman" Feynman is popular around here and rightly so. Blatant corruption from top to bottom is the norm, it would seem. Feynman also loathed psychology and gave it as an example of "Cargo-cult science." Last I heard every single first year psych texbook contained the Stanford pri…
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Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#95These attempts to rewrite history to fit a narrative happen all the time. For example, I see constant attempts to deny that the Wrights' 1903 Flyer was the first powered, controlled flight. The evidence presented is always a pile of fanciful conjecture. This rewrite occurs with modern events, too. For example, the narrative on the 737MAX crashes. I've posted about it here many times. On a recent trip, I ran into a 73…
As far as is publicly known, the failure has occurred three times, and has led to two crashes. It is possible to recover from if you know what you're looking for and you act promptly. However, Boeing did not tell pilots what to look for. The pilots did not diagnose it as stab trim runaway because it's not stab trim runaway. When MCAS is malfunctioning in this way, it engages nose down trim for 9.3 seconds, and then p…
> The pilots did not diagnose it as stab trim runaway because it's not stab trim runaway
Runaway stab trim is uncommanded movement of the trim. MCAS failure exhibits as exactly this. The most likely cause of uncommanded movement is an electrical fault of some sort. Electrical faults are often intermittent. When you don't know why an intermittent fault is happening, you turn it off. This is not rocket science. In the first LA crash, the crew restored normal trim 25 times. The uncommanded trim happened twenty five times. In what universe is this not runaway trim?
From what I've seen the definition you're using is one invented after the fact by parsing word meanings like a lawyer. If it's your butt in the pilot's seat, I recommend thinking like a pilot, not like a lawyer.
From your link:
"in at least one simulator session, Boeing pilots took more than 10 sec. to react to a runaway stabilizer"
First off, they don't seem confused about what a "runaway" is. Secondly, 10 seconds was plenty of time, as in both incidences the crew battled it for several minutes.
"Aerodynamic loads on the mis-trimmed aircraft made the trim wheel hard to turn"
The loads were too high because the pilots were at full throttle and ignored the overspeed warning horn.
> It's very easy as a pilot to say that you would do a better job and something like this would never happen to you.
And in the first incident, that's what the crew did. They just turned it off and continued to their destination.
> the wheels going clack clack is a normal thing at that phase of flight
When the wheels are clack clacking and the nose suddenly pitches sharply down, there's the clue that the stab trim is running away.
> The earth is pockmarked with the smoking holes of these people's airplanes
It sure is, and that's why airline pilots are supposed to know things like what the switches in the cockpit are for and what stabilizer trim runaway is and read and understand all Emergency Airworthiness Directives. Flying an airplane is not a joke and you'd better pay attention in training. My dad flew 23 years in the AF, including combat) and anything less than 100% proficiency was unacceptable.
Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#96These attempts to rewrite history to fit a narrative happen all the time. For example, I see constant attempts to deny that the Wrights' 1903 Flyer was the first powered, controlled flight. The evidence presented is always a pile of fanciful conjecture. This rewrite occurs with modern events, too. For example, the narrative on the 737MAX crashes. I've posted about it here many times. On a recent trip, I ran into a 73…
The Wright brothers story is well worth reading up on. The director of the Smithsonian refused to believe them, and championed an alternate "first powered flight" for a long time. This is why at least one Wright flyer wound up in the Science Museum in London. It only got fixed after he died/retired. The lack of history on display in the Air & Space Museum on this, is quite interesting: it's like the whole "tell the t…
I've seen many current attempts on HackerNews to elevate one or another claimant to the first flight throne. It's not just the Smithsonian a century ago!
Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#97That's why La longue durée put forward by the Annales School and by Braudel is the way to go, because with all its minuses it focuses not on the individuals or on specific events, but on the great "waves" of history. So, and back to the article, in that respect for the Annales School it doesn't really matter if it was Cort or a Jamaican man that "invented" the "Cort process".
Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#98These attempts to rewrite history to fit a narrative happen all the time. For example, I see constant attempts to deny that the Wrights' 1903 Flyer was the first powered, controlled flight. The evidence presented is always a pile of fanciful conjecture. This rewrite occurs with modern events, too. For example, the narrative on the 737MAX crashes. I've posted about it here many times. On a recent trip, I ran into a 73…
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Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#99The title slightly obscures what's going on here. It's not *just* about stories. It's about the propagation of a dogma in academia. The paper in question is 1619, but for Industrial Age metallurgy. And one of the reasons that lies like this make it through the review process is because academics are afraid of challenging racialist narratives. They win their jobs and promotions by toeing an ideological line.
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Re: Historians have an increasingly strong incentive to tell dramatic stories
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> look no further than US state-approved high-school history textbooks. Care to practice what you preach? Which textbooks, specifically? How are they ahistorical?
Here's an article which compares meta-narratives in Texas vs. California: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-c... Fights over textbook content are ancient and written about constantly. Since these battles are more heavily scrutinized outright falsehoods won't be found easily — rather meta-narratives are achieved by omission or emphasis. I would not argue that these meta-narratives are "ahistor…
As I read this thread in the early morning before the family rouses, my tired eyes keep misreading “ahistorical” as “shitstorical”, which, amusingly enough, isn’t far off the intended meaning.