The author is talking mostly about teaching history. But what he describes as teaching history is more like history appreciation. It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. It's more about studying the "classics", from Cicero onwards.
Military officers study much history, but in a different way. They look for mistakes. Why did someone lose a battle or a war? Why did they even get into that particular battle? Why was the situation prior to WWI so strategically unstable that the killing of a minor player touched off a world war?
The traditional teaching of history tends to focus on the winners, especially if they write well.
Reading what the losers wrote, or what was written about them, can be more productive than reading the winners.
If you want to understand Cicero's era, for example, read [1]. This is a study of Cicero by an experienced and cynical newspaper political reporter. The author writes that too many historians take Cicero's speeches at face value. The author knows better, having heard many politicians of his own day.
This sort of approach tends to take one out of the area where LLMs are most useful, because, as yet, they're not that good at detecting sycophancy.
> It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction.
This is not what academic historians generally do. The study of history tells us about the story of humanity and exists for wider reasons than direct application to decision making today. This is even true for military history, which is among the slowest subfields at adopting new methods and practices.
Thanks. Came here to say that. Having studied history - esp. in a time where Hayden White's assertion that "history is fiction" was strongly (and sometimes emotionally) discussed in between students and professors alike, taught me, that - while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history.
I also learned to appreciate history on a fundamentally different level than I did, when I loved history as a subject in school. But that would lead too far out from this thread here.
I can relate to the original piece, because - while I use AI daily for work and in private life - I also see the dangers. Yes, it is a new medium - and I heard roughly the same critique about the internet, when I was at university - but I think it is quite a fundamentally different paradigm shift that we are living through.
I feel (used intentionaly here) it is more like the invention of the printing press (from an societal impact standpoint) than the dissemination of the internet into the wider society. But that is just my current working hypothesis.
> Hayden White's assertion that "history is fiction"
Your comment made me dig up "Historical text as literary artifact".
I have several thoughts on that, but one very important analogy stood out to me and is succinct enough to comment here. In statistics, one talks about the population, collecting data (sampling from the popluation), and building a model from the collected data. You may have guessed that the collected data alone does not typically make much sense, but for the patterns encapsulated by the model, which then has explanatory power; yet among the three classes I mentioned, it is the most fictitious and constructed for a particular goal, the most inauthentic.
The thing is, this statistics data-to-model only works on large datasets.
History deals with very small, very heterogeneous datasets. Finding patterns in them (if they even exist) is very difficult, and it's why historical models and grand unified theories are so often bunk.
> this statistics data-to-model only works on large datasets.
> deals with very small, very heterogeneous datasets.
The population itself is a very heterogeneous "dataset", that becomes (perhaps) apprehensible after you interrogate it with respect to the statistical question you have in mind. Let's not forget that the neatness of the data is constructed from the narrowness of the question asked of it, and even still the data is expected (in the colloquial sense) to take on a minimally-informative, max-entropy distribution, except in respect to the statistic of interest. The critical questions levied against historiography also apply here: perhaps the question you are collecting data for is not related to the population the way you think it is.
> why historical models and grand unified theories are so often bunk.
A lot of history practiced today are self-aware of just how much narrative has to be invented to "make sense" of historical events, and so historians value diverse perspectives. One understands that the same events may not hold the same meaning across communities, and so seeks to record and compare how they are perceived across communities or individuals; that perception in that community's narrative is at least subjectively authentic for that community or individual.
To the extent that the historical goal is to predict political/cultural/economic future, perhaps political/cultural theorists/economists are better positioned.
> while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history.
If we don't learn from history, why do we do history? Is it a form of pure entertainment, i.e. of arts? If so, does that give more credence to White's argument?
I have had a PhD colleague who genuinely believed that history ought to be (in the philosophical normative sense) contributing to national propaganda, thus of national interest. By extension, this is why history departments should be funded by tax dollars.
A fun party game is to get some pure mathematicians together, speculate loudly that they must be motivated in their work by the numerous practical applications of maths and watch cheekily to see which of their faces fail to conceal the spasm of fury. 1 point per asymmetric eye twitch.
They're academics, their job is to make true statements and maintain a culture that cares a lot about whether their colleagues can prove them false. Beyond that, it is hard to figure out what purpose they might be fulfilling.
I agree that goal should be to "learn from history" but not in the narrow sense of how could a specific historical catastrophe could have been avoided. We need a general understanding of histopry because it helps us understand human behavior in general. It helps us understand ourselves.
That's a good point, beyond prediction, history does have utility for surfacing "shared stories" that bring people together. Let's not underestimate the real-world impact of such stories. Most big societal movements, both very good and very bad, have been fueled by shared history, or the making of shared history.
What's tricky is that indeed such stories need not be factual to be powerful, just as long as they resonate well-enough with the current "common-sense" and have some kind authority behind it giving it credence.
Historians do have an important responsibility here in making sure that people are aware of the real story so that they are not easily manipulated, just like journalists have a similar responsibility in a democracy, fourth estate and all.
Oh, it's not just the "big stories". History is a pretty big flag that covers a lot of territory. At heart, history is about asking perennial questions like "where do we come from?", "how did the past shape us today?" and "how could the past inform us?".
This is true on an individual as well as a collective level, and goes well beyond academia. Consider genealogy & family history, local and regional culture and traditions, remembrance,... There is always a personal connection, and that tends to become extremely tangible in individual stories. Whether that's finding a lost relative, honoring one's culture, or just being able to empathize with the lives of people who are centuries gone and discovering that they weren't all that different from us today.
Historians do carry a big responsibility. That's why accountability is at the heart of anyone who does historical research on a professional level; or are motivated to spread their interpretation of the historical record well beyond a few listeners. That's why historians are instilled with a reflex to keep a pragmatic attitude and ask critical questions.
> If we don't learn from history, why do we do history?
Historians uncover and communicate the story of humanity in as rich and diverse of a way as possible. This is, in my mind, somewhat comparable to the process of doing pure math research or fundamental physics research. While there may be practical outcomes for today (either unexpected or intended as a goal of a particular research direction), we also understand that doing math for its own purposes is valuable.
The process of doing archival research, putting sources in dialog with other research, and even simply reading secondary source writing achieves some positive outcomes. It widens and deepens empathy for the rich diversity of human behavior. It builds skills for critical analysis of media and communication. It can provide narrative and argument for people advocating for change today (both good and bad). But these do not need to be the reasons why we embark on history research. They are side outcomes of undirected analysis.
I'll also add that concern about "history departments funded by tax dollars" is just factually unfounded. My wife is a history and the size of grants is hilarious coming from my background in CS. Like, a grant for $2,000-$5,000 would be considered chunky. And grants are often coming from weird places like random corporations or donor funding rather than from the government. The NEH was already basically dead before Trump 2.0 and now is dead and buried. People upset about academic history can rest easy knowing that there aren't historians living large on your tax dollars.
One of the primary advantages of having a software engineer (or lawyer, for that matter) on staff isn't that they produce software, not exactly. It's that they guide the flow of process, and can adapt the river as needed to keep the business running smoothly.
Historians, imho, serve a similar purpose for society at large. They digest the information of the past to make sense of it for today, and sometimes they build dams that redirect the informational flow of future history.
> But what he describes as teaching history is more like history appreciation. It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction. It's more about studying the "classics", from Cicero onwards.
How are those things dissociated?
I always saw history as a waht to explain "why things are the way they are". Whatever we are now, this amalgamation of good or bad things, is a consequence of what came before.
Is "studying the classics" from a historical standpoint even done for "appreciation"? I always presumed that one should do so critically, and that's more or less what I found from actual historians.
The “explain how we got here” approach to history has some pretty big limitations. The historical actors had no idea where the future was going. When we examine their actions from the perspective of the single contingency that ended up happening we will almost necessarily miss meaningful understanding and make things seem inevitable when they really weren’t.
There’s interesting writing to be done in this mode but it is definitely not the primary mode.
> The historical actors had no idea where the future was going.
Does it matter in order to explain how things came to be?
Understanding their motivations, the incentives that led them to do what they did, the sociopolitical context they were inserted into, the limitations of a historical perspective (quite often the accounts of past historical figures were written by people invested in portraying it in one way or another).
All those things would help, when looking at history critically, to make some sense of the present and where things might be going in the future.
In a sense, things that happened were inevitable because they came to pass. We are not talking about a possibility, we are talking about a certainty long after the fact. Understanding that it might have been avoided in some ways can be helpful, but also is an exercise in wishful thinking and guesswork.
> It's not about how to use history as an aid to prediction.
Because this isnt the goal of history. You cant use history to predict the future.
> If you want to understand Cicero's era, for example, read [1]. This is a study of Cicero by an experienced and cynical newspaper political reporter. The author writes that too many historians take Cicero's speeches at face value. The author knows better, having heard many politicians of his own day.
No they dont. This is yet another example of an outsider looking at another field, thinking he knows better and making a fool of himself. Also, why would you ignore 80 years of scholarship about Cicero and read a book from 1942???
If I show you a picture of a cup from 100 ms ago and it's in midair probability favors that the cup will be on it's way to the ground to its demise. Statistically this will be true.
History is filled with analogous times where by watching the present you can make predictions far better than flipping a coin.
It makes a good point by separating history as strategic analysis from history as cultural appreciation. Most teaching today leans toward the latter, which is also easier for AI to replicate.
But the most valuable historical thinking often comes from uncomfortable questions failure, unintended consequences, and perspectives that usually get ignored.
When history is approached as a pattern of decisions, risks, and consequences (not just narratives) it starts to feel a lot more relevant to other complex domains, including AI itself. And yeah, studying the losers (or the overlooked) often yields more insight than lionizing the winners.
Military officers study much history, but in a different way. They look for mistakes. Why did someone lose a battle or a war? Why did they even get into that particular battle? Why was the situation prior to WWI so strategically unstable that the killing of a minor player touched off a world war? The traditional teaching of history tends to focus on the winners, especially if they write well. Reading what the losers wrote, or what was written about them, can be more productive than reading the winners.
If you want to understand Cicero's era, for example, read [1]. This is a study of Cicero by an experienced and cynical newspaper political reporter. The author writes that too many historians take Cicero's speeches at face value. The author knows better, having heard many politicians of his own day.
This sort of approach tends to take one out of the area where LLMs are most useful, because, as yet, they're not that good at detecting sycophancy.
[1] https://archive.org/details/thiswasciceromod0000henr