It’s funny cuz that’s how creatures brains already operate. Think of how many stimuli you’re exposed to but ignoring right now. Right this very second. Like that thing over there. Yeah, that! You totally had full view of it yet you had limited awareness or perception of it! Just like the excess facts. We’re built for filtering no matter what.
I think I’m broken because I have counted all the little popcorn studs of my ceiling multiple times and spend time focused on many other stupidly mundane piles of “chaos.”
“We would have to develop some rigorous process to sort real facts a well as cause effect relationships to a precise degree of statistical certainty. We could base this process around experimentation with highly limited variables and/or large sample sizes, with rules and regulations on how data is recorded and edited, which would then be vetted by other peers of the field and industry with high scrutiny to filter out all but the best theories.”
When I was a teenager, an older friend told me how he learned in college history how the first Emperor of China wrote the language, made all these scientific discoveries, etc, etc. And I, knowing fuck all about Chinese history, was like 'you mean he killed all the historians and advisors, then burned all the libraries, so he could take credit, right?' My friend is like 'uhhh.....'
Yeah, so turns out that's pretty much how more recent readings of it say it went down.
They’re both cultural stories that were probably based on several actual historical figures at some point that were combined and mythologized over centuries.
Take Arthur. You could maybe find the origin of the character in some Celtic leader fighting the Romans, then as people retell stories he gets merged with a different guy, and then when the Anglo-Saxons invade new stories get added and repurposed etc etc and now the French hear about it and decide it needs a love triangle where the English king gets cucked by a French Chad Knight, boom, now you’ve got a medieval courtly love story from someone once talking about the time Athor’lescs’op once stole some Roman sheep.
The Yellow Emperor is the same thing. There probably was a Chinese warlord who paid for some irrigation ditches and wasn’t too big of an asshole to the peasants, and another one later who built some libraries, so they’re “based on a historical figure” but mostly the stories are just cultural myths that make good entertainment and maybe work as a morality play.
The actual “first emperor of a unified China” being a different person than the mythological “First Emperor, tamer of rivers, maker of paper, big brained inventor of everything.”
That’s what basically all of history has been, honestly. Our problem (or salvation, depending on how you look at it) will be that everyone’s random opinion is archived and will be viewable by our descendants. Previous generations had the advantage that their most asinine, pigheaded, and ludicrous ideas were filtered by history, since the more serious minds didn’t record in documents how a sizable portion of us were the absolute worst.
Previous generations had the advantage that their most asinine, pigheaded, and ludicrous ideas were filtered by history, since the more serious minds didn’t record in documents how a sizable portion of us were the absolute worst.
You may be overestimating ancient writers and texts.
Perhaps. We have few examples of the daily ramblings of ancient peoples, though, and tend to view those times through the lens of the likes of Socrates, Homer, and Shakespeare rather than their insulting, bodily explicit graffiti or their tabloid fodder.
Okay but have you read Shakespeare? Or, for the Roman graffiti you referenced, Plautus? Or Suetonius if you want some good tabloid fodder? They're similarly crude, and while there is a much higher level of literacy and wordplay, it's... not that much different at its core. Even that graffiti, funny enough, has an example in the other direction - there are instances of graffiti in Pompeii which demonstrate a knowledge of classical literature amongst the urban masses.
My point in the end is simply that history is written by writers, and writers are not necessarily less insane, less gullible, or less prejudiced than the general population.
Yes, but not necessarily maliciously. No one person, no matter how good they are at being objective, can possibly see and hear and experience everything. Most of what historians wrote down would have been second or third hand information at best.
I usually assume that there’s a lot of telephone-game style information passing built into any written record.
Of course it made it better! Actually it is not the volume, but ability to share and the bad incentives for the companies to increase “screen time” of the users of social networks.
Cypher would have had no way of knowing either way, so they’d probably just give him the “whatever is the most economical use of his battery life” option.
Add comment