Debate: History is only useful to the extent that it can predict the future \ stacker news ~history

Debate: History is only useful to the extent that it can predict the future

1890 sats \ 34 comments \ @kr 24 Mar history

Am I wrong?

Would love to hear your views on the statement I posted above

300 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Mar

Value is subjective, which means usefulness is also subjective. History can be valuable as a pure leisure good, if nothing else.

242 sats \ 6 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

good point, when i wrote “useful” i was thinking more along the lines of being economically useful

118 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Mar

I'd still make the same point: subjective utility is the fundamental insight of economics.

I would wager that more of the demand for history comes from it's value as entertainment than it's value for guiding decision making.

122 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

yeah i think you’re right about people enjoying history more for the entertainment than the decision making.

for now let’s assume your only goal is to make better decisions, and let’s also replace the word “history” with “historical data”.

is there a point in collecting more historical data if at a certain point it doesn’t help you better understand the future?

85 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 24 Mar

It depends on exactly what your caveats mean. Generally, we don't know which data will be useful for answering economic questions. So, the point would be that it might be valuable now or perhaps it will be useful in the future.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

yeah that makes sense

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @ratiotile 24 Mar

If subjective utility is the fundamental insight of economics, doesn't that necessarily imply that the value of economics itself is subjective? In which case, we can't ever know if anything we "discover" in economics is of inherent value.

Seems to me that if subjective utility is the fundamental insight of economics then we can't know if anything in economics is non-subjectively useful? In which case, why study it?

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Mar

Because we're human beings and it helps us understand things we want to understand. Most people don't study economics, btw, because they don't value it enough to do so.

167 sats \ 1 reply \ @ratiotile 24 Mar

No, I think history is least useful to the extent we try to apply it to predict what will happen. I would even say anti-useful. So much suffering has sprung from the idea that the past should be used to predict what's going to happen in the future. It's anti-scientific, because we have no way of testing the claims until they happen. It tends to lead to totalitarianism, since it tricks intellectuals (and subsequently the people who read them, i.e. future leaders of governments) into thinking their study of history has provided them with the prescription to fix society for the rest of us.

I think it's very ingrained in us to want to think that the primary task of history should be prescriptive -- after all, if we're not using it to better the future, then what's the point? But if we're not being scientific about the claims we make, then whatever conclusions we come to from our false premises are likely to do us more harm than good. And we can't apply the scientific method to history the same way we can to the hard sciences, for example, because we can't control the variables and we can't make repeat-experiments. History is one long continuous event with an essentially infinite number of factors working together to bring it about. We should stop tempting ourselves into thinking we can predict it with certainty. I think we can even notice strains of totalitarian thought in ourselves when we start to dream about figuring out how to predict the future -- if you can predict the future, then it's just a matter of finding the answer to "what got us here?" and then once you convince yourself you've found that truth, you'll be tempted make demands from others in accordance with that truth, especially if you're a political leader.

So what's the point of history then?

I think it is much better to look at history in terms of what could happen or what has happened as opposed to what will. We should use it to falsify universal claims, claims of the type "X can never happen". If X has happened, then great! You disproved the claim. There are a lot of false claims out there that need disproving, and so thorough knowledge of history can get us closer not by finding the "one true take" on history that predicts the future, but rather through a process of elimination of disproving all the false claims that people make all the time. If we just started there, instead of wasting our time trying to predict the future, we'd make a lot more progress already.

You'd be surprised how many preconceived notions you have about history that need disproving, about what people were like, the ways in which they were different than us and surprisingly the same as us, etc. I remember once reading this diary entry by a 20-year old John Adams talking about the likely existence of aliens, and what that implied about their morals and faith. I didn't think people had the perceptual framework to think about aliens at the time. I was wrong. Not a very "important" thing to be wrong about I guess but still fascinating to me.

The book that completely changed my take on this, by the way, is The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper, who, it's worth mentioning here, was a friend of F.A Hayek. Absolutely fantastic defense of democracy, but begins by talking about how this view on being able to predict the future basically provided the intellectual basis for totalitarianism going all the way back to Plato and Aristotle and then moving from there to Hegel and Marx.

He also wrote a whole book about the impossibility of predicting the future and how dangerous the idea was called The Poverty of Historicism, which is on my reading list.

Finally, another big reason for me personally to study history, is that it's just so interesting. There are better, more interesting stories that actually happened than most TV shows and movies that people can even make up. And studying history also gives you a view into essentially the best and worst people who lived and what they were like, those who rise to the top to influence events. And while there are definitely a lot of terrible people, there are a lot of absolutely amazing ones too who willingly gave everything with the goal of improving our lives (not knowing who "we" would be), despite no tangible benefit to themselves except maybe being remembered by posterity. To study the heritage we received from them can be an inspiring and liberating experience.

Sorry for the rant haha, didn't think I'd type this much but this is such an important question.

Final reasons history is useful put into much better words, from Will Durant's The Lessons of History:

The heritage that we can now more fully transmit is richer than ever before. It is richer than that of Pericles, for it includes all the Greek flowering that followed him; richer than Leonardo’s, for it includes him and the Italian Renaissance; richer than Voltaire’s, for it embraces all the French Enlightenment and its ecumenical dissemination. If progress is real despite our whining, it is not because we are born any healthier, better, or wiser than infants were in the past, but because we are born to a richer heritage, born on a higher level of that pedestal which the accumulation of knowledge and art raises as the ground and support of our being. The heritage rises, and man rises in proportion as he receives it.

History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors; it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

great post.

you’re right that overconfidence in the past predicting the future can create problems.

142 sats \ 1 reply \ @PlebeiusG 24 Mar

I would adjust it to:

...the extent it can explain current events and likely outcomes.

Take evil dictators, for example. They still exist. So reading about past warlords and authoritarian monsters can shed light into just why current leaders are acting the way they are. Sometimes it just makes ZERO sense to me, then i remember the history books and how its all a repeating story of human behavior.

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

good point, “predict the future” is short and sweet, but might not be the most technically accurate phrase.

113 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 24 Mar

What if something only happens once. One could argue those events should have more need of being recorded if they are never repeated.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

good point, extremely rare events may not happen often enough for anyone to use them to predict the future.

one counterpoint is that by being aware of their existence, people understand that long-tail events are possible, and may make different decisions as a result.

113 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 24 Mar

Hmm, this seems like a very narrow view. How would one know if history will predict the future until one sees it do so? What is the cost vs benefit of studying history. This is also hard to evaluate except in hindsight.

Where is this question coming from? There are many other things one could spend their time on that would arguably be less fruitful. Wouldn't you agree?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

Good point, time only moves in one direction so nobody can really be sure whether some piece of history is worth studying.

This came to my mind as I was thinking about data collection in AI and whether there is value in collecting more historical data if it does not improve the performance of an AI model

117 sats \ 0 replies \ @jakoyoh629 24 Mar

History is supposed to be a guide, teaching us not to make the same mistakes again, but it seems we never learn.

85 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 24 Mar

We learn many lessons from history whether past events predict the future or not.

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

Are the lessons of history useful if we never get a chance to apply them in the future?

75 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 24 Mar

May not apply them directly but if they contribute to the collective knowledge of humanity I would argue it’s useful.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 24 Mar

right, so even if i don’t apply them myself, as long as someone in the world does, they are worth passing on

25 sats \ 0 replies \ @026180d3a3 24 Mar

The old quote is "It doesn't repeat but it rhymes".

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 24 Mar

"History" is nothing short of our "curriculum vitae", and it keeps on expanding: only the last 3-4 years have greatly added to the book again, and its to be seen how this decade will end- most likely with a blast, but in what way remains to be seen as well.

17 sats \ 1 reply \ @jgbtc 24 Mar

It can help us understand the present, and help us make choices to avoid past mistakes. Unfortunately this seems to rarely happen.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @UCantDoThatDotNet 24 Mar

This is it. It helps to understand things to learn what others have been through, and helps in decisionmaking. (In addition to being helpful in predicting the future).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @dillon 24 Mar

Learning from history is valuable and can help you create the future you want.

Learning from historical mistakes and accomplishments is really valuable for acting in the present

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @frostdragon 24 Mar

Oh man, I love this challenge. Too much to put into a comment… post incoming.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @frostdragon 24 Mar

Posted here: #478690

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 24 Mar

in my opinion. rather than seeking to predict the future by studying history, I think! It is more essential to learn from what has happened to be able to better protect ourselves in the future, it is not about predicting the future but being prepared. remember! "Always hope for the best, but still prepare for the worst"

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 24 Mar

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @expatriotic 24 Mar

Hmm, can history predict the future? I think we as humans tend to love to rationalize events. E.g., think of how many times you heard, "The Germans lost the war because XYZ" I've probably heard 5-10 different narratives... What's my point? Simply that no matter what happens in the past, we'll probably force a narrative on it, and we may not get it right.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsCats 24 Mar

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 24 Mar

Historians like most people cannot predict the future. Their predictions are almost always wrong

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 24 Mar

History cant predict the future because it is the past. It can only help guide us towards not making the same mistakes.