History illuminates the present. A lot of people care about it, a lot of feuds stem from it, and a lot of situations echo it. You can't understand the Ukrainian adventures Putin is going on without a) knowing about the collapse of the Soviet Union to understand why the Russians want it, b) knowing about the Holodomor to understand why the Ukrainians aren't such big fans of Russian domination, and arguably c) knowing about the mistakes the west made with Hitler, to get a sense of what we should do about it.
History gives you a chance to learn from mistakes without needing to make them yourself.
History is basically a collection of the coolest stories in human history. How can you not love that?
History gives you a chance to learn from mistakes without needing to make them yourself.
Given how hard it is to establish causality, history where you don't have a lot of the relevant information and there a lot of motivated reasoning going on is often a bad source for learning.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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