To Learn or Not from History
There’s that
famous saying about those who don’t learn from history being doomed to repeat
it. But isn’t what Nassim Taleb wrote in The
Black Swan equally true about the dangers of trying to learn from history?
“History is useful for the thrill of
knowing the past, and for the narrative (indeed), provided it remains a
harmless narrative. One should learn under severe caution. History is certainly
not a place to theorize or derive general knowledge, nor is it meant to help in
the future, without some caution. We can get negative confirmation from
history, which is invaluable, but we get plenty of illusions of knowledge along
with it.”
Taleb does have a
point. Take the infamous Treaty of Versailles that was imposed by the victors
of World War I on Germany. Everybody talks of that treaty as if it was an
obvious blunder (the reasoning is that it imposed such impossible and brutal
terms that it just sowed the seeds for World War II). But guess what? The
French, who pushed the most for those terms, were just following historical
precedent! Germany had imposed similar harsh terms on the defeated French not
in some ancient past but in 1871. But that didn’t trigger a global war a
generation later, did it?
Then there’s the
problem of history being written by the winners. So if the facts are distorted,
have half-truths and even outright lies, how does anyone learn anything from
that mix? And how about when new information comes to light about historical
events?
As a friend of blogger
Shane Parrish told him:
“When people are looking into the rear view
mirror of the past, they can take facts and like a string of pearls draw lines
of causal relationships that facilitate their argument while ignoring
disconfirming facts that detract from their central argument or point of view.”
All of which may
well be why Taleb advocates the Menodotus approach to history: “know history
without theorizing from it”.
All that said,
sometimes people do learn things from history and the actions they then take
seem to work out. Like the actions of the victorious Allies after World War II.
They did not impose brutal peace
treaties on the losers; the US did not
demand instant repayment of war debts from Europe (even the winners owed the US
big time); and in fact the US invested heavily to rebuild Europe (both winners and losers) and even Japan.
Doesn’t that sound like learning from Versailles?
I guess the
learning from history piece does have value at times; but it should be taken
with some salt (not just a pinch).
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