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The past is not true

sive.rs

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Re: The past is not true

#121

Post by nostrebored »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #96

I had this moment during the Covid pandemic. I read a lot of history and I saw pictures of the Spanish influenza and was told it killed more people than WW1. Somehow I pictured the world in the late 1910s with everyone sick and in hospital but now I think it was more like Covid. People got sick and died but life went on and some people were completely unaffected. The world doesn't grind to a halt for world wars and p…

The historical context also misses a lot of what we know about the impact of malnutrition and stress on the immune system. Was the spanish flu actually that bad, or was it actually a fairly bad flu that wreaked havoc on a war-torn population?

Reconciling modern information with historical events is hard. But I think it's completely necessary if we're going to make policy decisions based on history.

Re: The past is not true

#122

Post by kelseyfrog »

speak_plainly wrote: post #113
stared wrote: post #72

There is a common conception that we don't know the future, but we know the past. In our heads, we have models of the past and models of the future. Sure, there is an asymmetry between knowing the past and the future - due to thermodynamics. Still, in both cases, it is good to think of these as probabilistic models, far from any certainty.

And neither of those models have any reality, they're a product of imagination.

Yep, and the utility of a model doesn't imply its accuracy. To think that it does is our collective greatest blindspot.

Re: The past is not true

#123

Post by benjaminwootton »

_ea1k wrote: post #64
benjaminwootton wrote: post #7

Would there not be some police investigation and possibly prison time if you recklessly caused such a serious accident? I’m not sure how this misunderstanding could occur for so many years.

Look at it this way, officers see car accidents every day. The majority are cases where someone ran directly into the car in front of them due to inattention. Humans make a lot of mistakes and unless there were extenuating factors (DUI, for example), they are very unlikely to become criminal. In many cases, they wouldn't even be ticketed. Given that there was a yield sign involved, it also may be a known problematic…

That's very surprising to me. Here in the UK, a serious accident where someone broke their spine would be investigated without a shadow of a doubt. They would want to rule out any criminal culpability.

Re: The past is not true

#124

Post by atleastoptimal »

I don't always fully agree with anecdotal feel good stories that seem to imply a greater universal point due to a by-chance outcome. What if the author had paralyzed the woman? What if he was solely and entirely at fault?

It's nicely written, but it speaks to most people's general positivity bias: our yearning for a benign truth underlying all things that are bad, or more specifically, that bad things aren't really real, that they're a mirage over the real state of all things which are actually good and wholesome and better than you could have even guessed. This is the kind of thinking that inexorably draws miserable people to religions that offer eternal salvation.

Re: The past is not true

#125

Post by mega_dingus »

notacoward wrote: post #116
BatFastard wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rip off of the story "Ed" told in the TV show "Northern Exposure", but it has always been one of my favorites from that show.

Maybe you shouldn't have used "rip off" unless you were absolutely sure that you had the relationship the right way around. And it seems you didn't. There's a lesson to be learned there.

Maybe

Re: The past is not true

#126

Post by 0xCMP »

ideamotor wrote: post #106

We lose this when everything is recorded forever. Stated more eloquently: https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1681340407857422336... : “I need to say this, even if it does not make sense until decades ahead: Human intelligence and a foundation of consciousness is just as much the ability to forget somethings as it is to remember. We will have to face eternal memories with AI technologies and this will be hard.”…

Data, information, doesn't rot, but code does because it relies on the implicit promises of the underlying system(s) it runs on top of, the systems it interacts with, and the expectations of it's users.

Information on the other hand usually only gets more useful with time with very minimal relative-cost to maintaining code even though they're both digital.

And, like we're seeing, a lot of the "usefulness" of the information over time is new methods and tools for understanding that information.

Re: The past is not true

#127

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #96

I had this moment during the Covid pandemic. I read a lot of history and I saw pictures of the Spanish influenza and was told it killed more people than WW1. Somehow I pictured the world in the late 1910s with everyone sick and in hospital but now I think it was more like Covid. People got sick and died but life went on and some people were completely unaffected. The world doesn't grind to a halt for world wars and p…

Images play a big role in how events are perceived. Whenever there's a natural disaster you tend to see all of the worst examples, even if they're not fully representative of the event. But I think it's sometimes necessary in order to get people to take these events seriously, since they can negatively affect so many people. Otherwise people might look at images where some things look normal and think that those who were most affected are overstating the impact of the event.

Another example that comes to mind is the 2020 protests. If I looked at how conservative news was reporting on events, it seemed utterly chaotic. But I had multiple friends that were present at many local events, and they were all perfectly safe.

Re: The past is not true

#128

Post by tivert »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #112
BatFastard wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a rip off of the story "Ed" told in the TV show "Northern Exposure", but it has always been one of my favorites from that show.

I don't know exactly when that episode of Northern Exposure aired but this story dates back to 2nd century BCE[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse

> I don't know exactly when that episode of Northern Exposure aired but this story dates back to 2nd century BCE[1]

> [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse

That Wikipedia page was created in 2020. Northern Exposure predates that.

Going with the OP's theme: if we repeat the GP's comment enough times, over a long enough period, we can change history and then history would really show it to have originated from the "story "Ed" told in the TV show 'Northern Exposure.'"

Re: The past is not true

#129

Post by thenerdhead »

anbende wrote: post #84
thenerdhead wrote: post #44

> The actual factual events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is interpretation. This is why it is important to forgive your parents. They interpret events differently and it usually isn’t until you become a parent yourself do you develop enough empathy to see how those interpretations came to be.

Oof, as a psychologist that deals a lot with people who were abused and mistreated, this is a pretty big generalization. Yes, as we age we come to see things from a more experienced perspective and the perspectives of the adults we grew up with and change, but going all the way to "that is why it is important to forgive your parents" is a big big step. It is typically a good idea to try to get to forgiveness, you're…

Forgiveness is a loaded word.

I am not talking about forgiveness as an act, but as an attitude here. You probably know better than most of us what that means.

The attitude can be generalized as you just did in even your response. The act however, shouldn't.

Re: The past is not true

#130

Post by thenerdhead »

simonh wrote: post #87
thenerdhead wrote: post #44

> The actual factual events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is interpretation. This is why it is important to forgive your parents. They interpret events differently and it usually isn’t until you become a parent yourself do you develop enough empathy to see how those interpretations came to be.

Yep, flaws I saw in how my parents brought me up definitely informed the way I approached bringing up my kids. But then I look at the childhoods my parents had, and honestly they did a heck of a lot better job than I could have had any right to expect. So I think overall I did pretty well, with lessons to learn for sure, but it's only fair to think of it as an iterative process.

It is surely a humbling experience. Thank you for sharing!
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