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jsalvatier comments on Intellectual insularity and productivity - Less Wrong
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This list noticeably lacks any historical analysis. My sense is that history studies on the level of Bureaucracy or The Politics of the Prussian Army would be met with indifference or disfavor. Analysis like that in Aramis, or the Love of Technology would be met with disfavor or outright hostility.
When the topic is human social engineering (like raising the sanity line), this is not evidence that members of this community are likely to be able to do the impossible.
I find the idea that 'studying history is valuable for trying to do big things' counterintuitive. I think it would be valuable for you to try to share your intuition as a post. I would find a set of several examples (perhaps of the form "1) big idea 2) historical evidence of why this idea won't work well") very useful for getting a sense of what you're talking about. I'd also like to see some discussion of why mere discussion of object level lessons (say for example, "coordinating large groups of people is hard") isn't as good as discussing history.
Until someone does this, I doubt we'll see much historical discussion.
Because society, unlike say physics, is a thick problem, so in order to have any chance to make reasonable decisions is to calibrate yourself by knowing a lot of history.