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History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

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Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#31

Post by hnbad »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #19
fjoireoipe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are probably referencing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. I can't tell whether as a joke, or seriously. In any case, it should probably be downvoted, or dang should remove it. it's psuedohistory, invented to spead hate.

I think it’s obviously it’s a joke. However, there’s even a smiley at the end of the comment, as a clue for the people with broken humour detector. I hope you saw it.

If you have any familiarity with the kind of people seriously spreading these kinds of conspiracy theories, you'll know that framing "truth bombs" as jokes is par for the course because it creates plausible deniability.

If it really is a joke, what is the punchline? How does it work? What's being made fun of? That it would be outrageous for someone to say that seriously? As "red pillers" like to say: keep making jokes until the joke really lands (i.e. accustom people to hearing it by framing it as a crass joke so they'll no longer flinch when it is said in earnest).

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#32

Post by timeagain »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #24
korse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the correct one. The robotics tie in isn't far off though, as some of the earliest autonomous mobile robots spawned from cybernetics research.

> I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the correct one. Just to clarify, do you mean that the Soviet context is the same as the modern context or that the modern context misuses the term in some way (or something else that I missed)?

Is the modern definition any different than the older one? It just means systems with feedback loops. A motion sensitive video camera is “cybernetic”. So is the Facebook feed algorithm and self-checkout at the grocery store.

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#33

Post by cassepipe »

fjoireoipe wrote: post #16
beretguy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind providing links to those “true sources”, please? I’m curious to do some research for myself.

they are probably referencing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. I can't tell whether as a joke, or seriously. In any case, it should probably be downvoted, or dang should remove it. it's psuedohistory, invented to spead hate.

Fine but this one seems weirdly specific so we'd like to know which conspiracy it is.

How is it antisemitic ? Are Khazars secretly running the world from Atlantis ?

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#34

Post by jhbadger »

timeagain wrote: post #32
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the correct one. Just to clarify, do you mean that the Soviet context is the same as the modern context or that the modern context misuses the term in some way (or something else that I missed)?

Is the modern definition any different than the older one? It just means systems with feedback loops. A motion sensitive video camera is “cybernetic”. So is the Facebook feed algorithm and self-checkout at the grocery store.

Not in the technical meaning, no. But the general public thinks anything "cyber-" has to do with the Internet

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#35

Post by hnbad »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #6

> A man dies only once Interesting words from a man who has died but of whom we still speak. And fitting that they come from a person who some say invented history; there wouldn't have been counterexamples.

Well, they say you die twice: you die again, when you're forgotten. So in a way he ensured his immortality (with a good helping of luck through the ages).

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#36

Post by bsdpufferfish »

timeagain wrote: post #32
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the correct one. Just to clarify, do you mean that the Soviet context is the same as the modern context or that the modern context misuses the term in some way (or something else that I missed)?

Is the modern definition any different than the older one? It just means systems with feedback loops. A motion sensitive video camera is “cybernetic”. So is the Facebook feed algorithm and self-checkout at the grocery store.

If you read old cybernetics writing it’s hard not to see a striking analogy with the excitement around machine learning. They had all kinds of medical experiments showing the usage of feedback mechanisms on the body and brain and how they were just on the edge of unlocking artificial humans.

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#37

Post by klyrs »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #19
fjoireoipe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are probably referencing an antisemitic conspiracy theory. I can't tell whether as a joke, or seriously. In any case, it should probably be downvoted, or dang should remove it. it's psuedohistory, invented to spead hate.

I think it’s obviously it’s a joke. However, there’s even a smiley at the end of the comment, as a clue for the people with broken humour detector. I hope you saw it.

Ah yes, the "humor" of repeating an obscure antisemitic conspiracy theory. It's "funny" because it's obscure enough that the majority of the audience will assume it to be innocent, and liable to jump to the the speaker's defense against the apparent "crazies" who take offense. Like a silent fart, the "joke" is on the audience, and a smile merely indicates that the author is amused.

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#38

Post by tnecniv »

korse wrote: post #22
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a different shade of meaning in the Soviet context from the way we use the word today - more like "Computer Science" or "Automatic Theory", rather than robotic or human-robotic or "cyberpunky".

I'm pretty sure the Soviet context is actually the correct one. The robotics tie in isn't far off though, as some of the earliest autonomous mobile robots spawned from cybernetics research.

I think that was the original idea of the term in the West as well, we just got it distorted via sci-fi over time

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#39

Post by miroljub »

miroljub wrote: post #7
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #5

Tanner is one of those people I might disagree politically with from time to time but who nevertheless convinces me of the alternative point of view regularly. I see he disses my man Herodotus right off, so now I need to read this to see why. There is, of course, a margin of "losing" from which no history can return. Anyone know about Khazar history? What happened to those guys? The Mongols happened. His series on th…

[flagged]

Sorry people, in this post I was mocking the conspiracy theorists, and you take it as a conspiracy theory itself and accuse me of being an antisemite? WTF? If that's the consensus, dang should delete the post.

Besides, you know that Khazars are not alone? They are supported by the Nazis from the dark side of the moon. "They" just don't want you to see this truth. But they are all just servants of the lizards from the Earth, who only leave their habitat when they show up masked as a royal family in Buckingham Palace.

Should I put a :) or a /s or some other sign to make it clear it's a joke or sarcasm?

Re: History Is Written by the Losers (2016)

#40

Post by lorax »

growingkittens wrote: post #8
AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even paper needs shelter. It must be kept from moths, because they eat holes in it. It must be kept from humidity, because it causes the fibres to expand and the ink to run. It stands to reason that Sima Qian, if he cared about posterity, would have submitted his works to people who make it a point on preserving records. Similarly a person is writing a digital work, they will need to go through a digital analogue of…

In 100 years with minimal, passive effort, a piece of paper will be fragile, but usable. In 100 years, a hard drive will degrade without multiple transfers to new media - an active process. The barrier to digital archival is much higher than paper archival for the average person, and the internet does forget. There's not really an equivalent authority who preserves records for digital works, is there? The Internet Ar…

In 100 years most paper will be gone, thrown out, without any attempt to archive it. In 100 years most digital will be gone for the same reason. The exceptions in both cases is where something is “fortuitously forgotten”, a box left in an attic after a move, or a web page that remains in a fossilized state.

Preserving both paper and digital records requires the active effort of convincing people (some of whom haven't been born yet) that the records should be saved. That's the hard part.

Disaster recovery for millions of paper records is hard. So hard that even the US Government, which has been archiving paper records since its inception, sometimes fails. The majority of the 1890 census records were lost to a fire as well as a chunk of military service records (to a different fire). Disaster recovery for millions of digital records is much easier, make a copy on a different disk and give it to someone to hold. Repeat once a decade.

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