I don't think we should stop "wasting energy" disputing "affective truths". Even supposing this category of "affective truth" is useful, the main example you give is presented as empirical truth. I think such "affective truths" are usually presented as empirical truth. This is destroying the public's ability to reason. Let us at least point out the distinction.
Have you noticed a Flynn Effect in historical patterns?
Literacy and numeracy are huge, and universal literacy and numeracy anywhere at all is relatively extremely new. Those both make people think much better.
Better communications, transportation, medicine, and agricultural production also mean better mental development for all involved. So, across the board, I'd say yes, people are getting "smarter" for most definitions of smarter.
Given that you've read a lot of history, what are the top 15-25, books you'd recommend? Which one's best push you closer to level 2 and level 3 insight?
In general, do you have advice for how to best work towards that higher level understanding?
Perhaps more importantly, which books have you read that you would recommend that I skip?
There's plenty of good places to start. Far more important than having a sort of "best" book on history would be having one that highly engages you. In that regard, biographies of particular leaders tend to be more engaging, since there's a protagonist and we can generally understand their story. Ron Chernow is an excellent biographer, and both "Titan" (about John Rockefeller) and "Washington: A Life" are both pretty good starting places, since if you're American, you already know at least a basic understanding of the major cities of the time, the economy, the laws, etc.
Again, when starting, I think being engaging is key. Eiji Yoshikawa wrote two excellent period accurate historical fictions, "Musashi" about the famous samurai and "Taiko" about the second greater unifier of Japan, Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Both are very engaging and great jumping-off points into Japan's Sengoku Warring States era.
I generally recommend against broad historical overviews of a time period of large nation as a starting place, because it's too easy to get lost. One possible exception might be Jan Morris's "Heaven's Command" about the British Empire. Morris takes an approach that makes history much more understandable and relatable by telling the story of the British Empire through the lens of individual characters. Morris will, for instance, take a British lieutenant who is being sent to India and follow his journey by steamship in getting to India, the ports he stopped at, discussions of the sights he saw, discussions of the treatment he received for malaria, etc. Morris uses all real figures and reals from letters, newspapers, telegraphs, archived records, war plans, etc. It makes the history really come alive even if you don't necessarily have the whole regional context. Morris's followup "Pax Britannica" is also excellent, though you'd want to read Heaven's Command first. Morris is very pro-British and says so in the introduction to the book, but I think is also very fair about British mishandlings of Ireland, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Kabul Retreat, etc.
I think there's a lot of value in reading histories written 100 to 200 years ago, because you learn about two eras: the era that is written about, and the recent past. Count Egon Corti's 1927 "Rise of House Rothschild" is a masterpiece for understanding both the establishment of the international banking system and for (indirectly) understanding Monarchical Europe at its final apex.
Again, the work being engaging and meaningful to you is really important. H.W. Brands's "The First American" about Benjamin Franklin is excellent but I wouldn't recommend it; too long and boring. (I'm listening to it on audiobook and it's 95% complete, yet taking a lot of discipline to finish it; Brands is thorough and rigorous, arguably too rigorous). Getting pleasure out of the book and engaging well with it builds momentum, which is key.
Audiobooks can be great for a couple reasons: first, a compelling narrator can really make a story come alive. Second, if there's (for instance) some confusing troop movements between cities that have since been renamed, if it's written it'll throw you off (at least, that throws me off), but if it's audio, you'll just keep moving. Early on when studying history, names and places you don't recognize come at you frequently -- in my experience, the work to dig into relatively minor characters early on isn't worth it. Like, when learning about the end of the Roman Republic and its transition to Roman Empire, the names Marius, Sulla, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Mithradates, and a whole lot more come up -- but on your first goings-through, I'd say don't dig too deeply. Eventually you'll want to follow up with all of these characters and understand them, but it's nearly impossible to fully get one's mind simultaneously around Caesar/Pompey/Crassus/Cicero (and all the other supporting characters) and likewise Marius/Sulla and their supporting characters, and the intervening years after Sulla's dictatorship and before the next wave of civil wars and threats.
So -- audio can help. On that score, the narrator is key -- I'll often choose audiobooks based on narrator instead of author. Adequate-writing-great-narration tends to be more engaging than great-writing-adequate-narration. I really, really like Charlton Griffin as a narrator; "Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross" is nearly mesmerizing at times and is almost perfectly produced. His audio version of Julius Caesar's autobiographical Commentaries about the Gallic Wars is also terrific.
Whilst on the audio kick, the "Hardcore History" podcast by Dan Carlin is exceptional. "Death Throes of the Roman Republic" would be a terrific series to start with from that podcast. "Ghosts of the Ostfront" is horrific and will likely put you in a bad mood for a few weeks (so be careful), but it was the first time I fully started to grasp the savagery and desperation of the Eastern Front in World War II.
What else? Autobiographies are usually worthwhile, as are technical books or histories, especially ones written by leading figures. Machiavelli's "The Prince" should be read sooner or later. If you wind up deciding to read about the early German Empire, "Moltke on War" translates and curates orders, military texts, and doctrine documents from Helmuth von Moltke, who is perhaps the single most underrated military figure in history. (He was the Chief of the military when Bismarck was Chancellor; Bismarck, being a genius at multiple disciplines and immensely quotable, gets more attention from as a symbolic figure of the era, but in terms of adjusting disciplines to emerging technology -- telegraphs, railroads, troop movements, reporting structures, resources, munitions, setting hierarchies of objectives, etc -- Moltke is one of the greatest at this, and he's probably the best general ever to dictate and write the sheer volume of writings for the military academy and instructions for his officers).
To get to "threshold 2" insight, fall in love with a particular region's history, and follow it forwards and backwards multiple generations, and examine individual lives of important figures from multiple perspectives. Read about Julius Caesar from multiple perspectives, read about Pompey, read about Crassus, etc. Go east a bit and read about Mithradates the Great ("The Poison King" is a good book on him). Read about Cleopatra and Anthony. Go back in time and read about Hannibal, Fabius, and Scipio. ("Scipio Africanus" by BH Liddel-Hart is really, really good; an amazing short work). Start connecting the dots. Read Cicero and Caesar's works.
"Threshold 3" guidance is harder to give. But you start looking for trends. Carthage is a naval power that is rich (from trade) that relies on a largely mercenary army. You'll come across that, note it down, note the disastrous "Mercenary War" of Carthage, and move on.
Then, maybe you're studying the American Revolution, and you realize that the British Empire (also a rich naval trading empire) relied on mercenary soldiers, and maybe you note that Washington ambushed foreign mercenaries -- Hessians -- at Trenton after he crossed the Delaware. That's interesting, isn't it? You note it down and keep moving on.
Over time, you start learning about the defensive ability of maritime powers with great navies, but also their relative vulnerabilities.
Maybe, over time, you start noticing that certain personality types and backgrounds that rise to the height of power often overreach in their lifetimes: note Napoleon's overreach in Spain and then invading Russia while the Spanish situation was still a problem; note Hideyoshi Toyotomi declaring war on the Ming and Joseon Dynasties with his still-not-consolidated unified Japan; note Adolf Hitler. Similar patterns; minimal consolidation. You file in that in your memory as you notice it.
Eventually you start connecting dots.
What else? If you really like a historical era, sooner or later you'll want to head over to Wikipedia and start Wiki-walking heavily to familiarize yourself with the names, places, maps, timetables, and everything of the era. "Sengoku" and its many offshoots was one of the big catalysts for me. Eventually you'll want to start reading less personal histories like Weatherford's History of Money that traces technologies, cultures, or trends... I'm wary of these types of histories, since they're far more likely to be seemingly-convincing-but-wrong, but sooner or later you'll have to get into them. Like, if you read about how the huge force was destroyed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae you'll draw your own conclusions but regardless of what conclusions you draw, you'll be dealing largely in facts. If you read "The Blundering Battle Syndrome" (I just made that up) you'll get a hand-picked list that supports the author's point but probably lacks counterexamples; I want to deal in facts and start identifying trends on my own primarily.
Whew. Long comment. Hope there's some useful jumping-off points for you there. Let me know if you take up any of the suggestions, and how it goes for you.
Everyone agrees doesn't imply that something is true. Just take a look at any decent science to see how hard it is to detect causality.
It's quite easy to tell a story of how Giuliani implemented the broken windows doctrine and then crime rates fall. Then it might be that it's all just effects of lead on children brain development. It might be some other random reason. Freakonomics did suggest that it was abortions.
Your history analysis that focuses on governments as actors completely ignores effects such as the environmental effects of lead. There quite a lot that happened in the 19th century as far as the industrial revolution goes.
You are ignoring the meta-level. In the 19th century we got schools with compulsory education and children where taught that nation states are really important. History was told as a bunch of actions of state actors. Things happened because of ministers, princes and kings. If your goal is getting people to believe in nation states that's useful. But that goal is different from the goal of truth.
Niall Ferguson for example manages to tell a quite different history. There's money. The importing of good math notation, allows calculation of new forms of debt. The French Revolution happened because the French state sunk in debt. Bankers amassed a lot of money and picked winners and losers in wars. Many times corruption wasn't even illegal in the early 19th century. Some politicians didn't get a salary because they made more than enough money via bribes.
it risks being one of those serious-sounding cautions that doesn't actually throw much light on situations.
Sometimes the keys just don't lie under the street light.
You're falling into a trap -- you're saying things that are technically true, but are out of context. Just your opening sentence --
Everyone agrees doesn't imply that something is true.
Of course not. But "just about everyone who has looked at it from every angle agrees the Treaty of Versailles was a major contributor to World War II" is... true.
You know? If you don't think the Treaty of Versailles -- the reparations, Germany's poverty levels, the fact that the Nazi party had armed militia/thugs that were larger than the official German army due to the troop limitation clauses it, etc -- if you don't think that was a major contributing factor to WWII, then I don't know what else to say to you.
Your history analysis that focuses on governments as actors completely ignores effects such as the environmental effects of lead. ... You are ignoring the meta-level.
Assumption on your part which are false. Actually, nutrition levels and environmental effects are huge. It's also worth studying.
Making points like the fact that universal education (modeled on the Prussian Education System -- I'd find you links but you don't appear to have made any effort to read the last set of links) -- this is, like, History 201 level stuff here. You're saying things that are true but not applicable; you're also assuming a lower level of rigor (why?) without just asking if I've looked into environmental effects. Come on man, this is bad form.
Sometimes the keys just don't lie under the street light.
The witty quips are lame. Come on, dude, pseudo-wisdom slogans aren't the way. Also picking pop narratives in the vein of Freakonomics or Gladwell type stuff to beat down is strawmanning.
The sad thing is, you actually have some valuable points and a lot of smart things to say -- but witty quipping and making blind assumptions is an easy way to derail discussions.
That's the second threshold of history to me: when isolated events start becoming regional chains; that's tracing Napoleon's invasion of Germany to Bismarck to the to World War I to the Treaty of Versailles to WWII.
Some people get to this level of history, and it makes you quickly an expert in a particular country.
It's very easy to think that you understand causality on that level. However given how hard it is to determine causality you are very likely just telling yourself a story.
Generally a good thing to be wary of, but I don't think it applies in this case.
In this case, I don't think so. Since the Charlemagne, Germans divided estates between their children (instead of primogeniture, eldest child inheriting) which is why Germany would keep fragmenting even when they had good rulers. [1] [2]
Napoleon showed the need for greater security in confederation and sparked modern nationalism. That's all largely uncontroversial. [3]
I think the best explanation of World War I's causes -- more than the alliance structure -- is Great Power Rivalty; [4] see the Realist scholars in general [5] for what I think is the most convincing description of how international relations usually plays out (specifically, defensive realism). [6]
There's also possible explanations, though in terms of looking at causality, the other major cause that's most often advanced is the alliance structure; but that, too, was developed by Prince Metternich in response to Napoleon. [7] [8]
Then of course the Treaty of Versailles, I think everyone agrees about that being a major cause of World War II.
In any event, it took me longer to get links together than I expected, so I'll leave on this note: you're right be wary of just-so stories, but I'd recommend equal vigilance against whimsically throwing out a line like "just telling yourself a story" -- certainly, popular media has lots of examples of that and it's a good thing to generally be wary of, but there's a night-and-day difference between detailed free-ranging non-biased analysis and coming up with a just-so story. Any analysis might be wrong, of course, but if so, it deserves critique rather than just a caution that it might be incorrect, no?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francia#Dividedempire.2Cafter840 [2] http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/206280?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104947106503 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GermanEmpire#Background [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Germannavalarmsrace [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism(internationalrelations) [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensiverealism [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KlemensvonMetternich [8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConcertofEurope
On thrust work, drag work, and why creative work is perpetually frustrating --
"Each individual creative episode is unsustainable by its very nature. As a given episode accelerates, surpassing the sustainable long term trajectory, the thrust engine overwhelms the available supporting capabilities. ... Just as momentum build to truly exciting levels…some new limitation appears squelching that momentum. ...The problem is that you outran your supporting capabilities and that deficit became a source of drag. Perhaps you didn’t have systems in place to capture leads. Perhaps you lacked the bandwidth necessary to follow up on all the new opportunities. Perhaps, due to lack of experience, you pursued the wrong opportunities. Perhaps you just didn’t know what to do next – you outran your existing knowledge base. In one way or another new varieties of drag emerge. The accelerating curve you had been riding becomes unsustainable and you find yourself mired in the slow build of the next episode. This is what we experience as anti-climax and temporary stagnation." -- Greg Raider, from his essay "A Pilgrimage Through Stagnation and Acceleration"
The whole piece is worth reading, it's really good -- http://onthespiral.com/pilgrimage-through-stagnation-acceleration
Hat tip to Zach Obront for linking me to it originally.
Arrive somewhere with good horses and poor leadership on the edge of the Roman Empire, implement Mongolian horsemanship/mobility/unit-tactics, most of which should be possible with the current day's technology in a horsemanship culture -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_military_tactics_and_organization
Consolidate/build up for a couple decades, then lead an invasion against Rome sometime during one of the low points of Tiberius's reign (between AD 14 to and AD 37) -
I would suggest that it is very easy to concentrate on the 85% chance of getting nothing, and so ignore the difference in EV.
Indeed yeah. But we're not talking $500 vs. $900, we're talking orders of magnitude...
This comment might not be popular on a quick knee-jerk level, but it's worth getting out there for accuracy.
Under "Many partners" you've got Singlehood, Friendship 'with benefits', Polyamory.
You're missing one of the most common historical kinds of relationships - monogamous commitment from woman to man, man taking care of multiple households in a committed way.
The first Tokugawa Shogun, for instance -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu#Ieyasu_as_a_person
16 children with 11 wives and concubines.
King Ts'ao Ts'ao of Wei -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cao_Cao#Family
Muhammad -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad#Wives_and_children
It's not a Western tradition. The West has a strong romantic/platonic love ideal, that moves into monogamy under Christianity, and some non-monogamy later built on some mix of liberalism, enlightenment values, and humanism.
But still, it's been a very common family/dating/relationship through history. It still persists, though it doesn't get much media coverage.
Current Sheik of Dubai -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum#Personal_life_and_education
Current Prime Minister of Italy -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi#Sexual_scandals
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There is a certain relationship between the statement "snow is white" and what you see if you look at snow. The same relationship holds between the statement "my partner is cheating on me" and what you will see if you covertly follow your partner around all day. Between the weather forecast and the weather. Between what a government says about its military activities and what you will see if find all its forces and watch what they are doing.
This concept is of fundamental importance to every aspect of life: thinking, doing, feeling, everything. It deserves a single, short, familiar word that means that thing and nothing else. That word exists: it is the word "truth". To discover truth, you must look and see, and experiment.
All of the extensions of that word to other concepts, such as "affective truth", "my truth", "spiritual truth", and so on, apply it to things that lack that fundamentally important quality: that the words match the way things are. They are ways of passing off ignorance as truth, feelings as truth, lies as truth. It saves you the trouble of looking, seeing, experimenting, and updating. You can say "this is true for me" and pull the wool over your own eyes while claiming that blindness is but truer vision.
Likewise, replacing "truth" tout court by adding limitative modifiers, like "empirical truth", "scientific truth", "rational truth", and so on, is an attempt to pretend that that fundamentally important quality is not of fundamental importance, but just one small part of a rich panoply of other ways of relating to the world. But it is not.
Feelings exist. True statements can be made about them. Whatever feelings you are having, it is true that you are having that feeling. But the feeling itself is not something that is capable of being true or false. Whenever you say "I feel that...", it is more accurate to say "I believe that..." Only when you do that can you ask, "Is this belief true?" Only when you shy away from that question will you need to say "it feels true."
Incorrect. You missed the point.
It's a way to communicate with less analytical people without acting like a clueless sledgehammer that alienates people.
We might both disagree with "Serbia is the greatest country in the world" but that's not a very good argument to communicate to a Serbian who holds that view as deeply true.
Alternatively, do the Spock thing and try to instruct the average Balkan-country citizen on their "language accuracy" and see how far it gets you.
If you can get someone who asserts their opinion is "true" to grant it's true to them but not empirically true you've already won half the battle in helping them think and communicate better.