Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26967293

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Imagine you were born deaf and couldn't hear music. But that someone showed you a music visualiser.

Do you think if you were watching the output of that visualiser you would now know the music in some meaningful way?

Seriously though, how do we know that is DNA? It just looks like wiggly worms.

And the DNA pic is black and white, but the picture of graphite is in colour. How is it in colour? Is it 'enhanced' with photoshop or something?

But really, how could they possibly narrow it down to that? How can they ignore all the metals that we are injected and sprayed with as possible alternative causes?

But its not showing things directly, is it? Its interpreting a frequency and converting that to an image. Is it really that different to a music visualiser?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244014542585

which seems a fair synopsis for me, of Hayden White's position in Metahistory. I thought this quote was interesting:

"In this climate, White (1966) believes that the duty of the researchers in present time is to transform the historical studies so as to liberate the present from the burden of history and to make the historical studies fit in the aims of the community. Seen in this light, history is not seen as a fixed ultimate entity that cannot be touched and that the historians have to accept it as it is. However, the historians should refuse to study the past as an end or ultimate being but contribute to offer some solutions for the problems of the present, which the professional historiography is unable to achieve."

I liked the general analysis that it seems White provides, but I don't like the moral relativism that is implied in the quote above. Why is it a historian's job to provide solutions for the present? What special values do they have? I don't like post-modern, moral relativism - where 'my truth' is the same as 'the truth'.

My position is that our knowledge of history is imperfect, that we cannot know the past. But a single past really did occur. Rather than express the evidence and express their reasoning for what that means, when historians apply narratives over the evidence they are covering an mystifying the past. This is to say I am receiving negative knowledge - I am receiving an informed but biased view that I will find it hard to unpick. And that is all history afaik! So little primary evidence, so many books and articles!

This is why I said that history is an interpretative act. I don't have an issue with the making the best of a past that is hard (impossible?) to discern. And that while our subject matter might be the past, we ourselves are in the present and express our understanding from our own biases and understandings - we talk ourselves into the past, in a way.

What I object to is the indisputable tone - this happened, these are the reasons, etc. It gives the reader the impression of knowledge, but this is an illusion, possibly a dangerous one. It conveys none of the reasoning, jumps and ambiguity that, I think, are the main part of these sorts of investigation.

Personally I would rather have the ambiguity, referring to source material, and try to develop a theory given the evidence - evidence-driven theories. I don't mind if there is no overarching narrative to explain it all. But it seems to me that professional historians feel empowered to present exactly that sort of a narrative, sometimes whether or not it is really supported by the evidence.

You also say "January 6, 1614". Very specific again! Where did you get that from? There are no dates that I can see, nevermind the 6th of January.

Did you read the cover page? Not where it confirms that the book is a reproduction of another book held at Chatworth House. Ie not an original.

I mean the bit where it says: "By the Gentlemen of Graies-Inne, at the Court of White-hall, in the Banquercing House, vpon Twelfe night, 1613."

Here's a link: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Maske_of_Flowers/qC...

This says to me that the book although published (perhaps) in 1614 relates to a time in 1613.

Whenever I look into this stuff, I get more uncomfortable.

So specific!! And that's just the first line!

Is it just me, or are they just telling stories about the 16th century? Historians themselves will say history is an interpretative act. 'History' is for us in the present - it only lightly relates to what may or may not have occurred in the past, even if it presented as a fait accompli. I don't think it is possible to get this detail about what went on back then.

I see this sort of article as 'myth making'. Its not to do with reality - no sources are provided for us to check. Its just presented as a ready narrative, and we are meant to accept it.

So, what if that is the myth what are meant to take from it? I think we are meant 'edu-tained'. We can laugh at the fools back then who were literally blowing smoke up each others arses, in reclined splendour. We can enjoy a cannabis narrative - this talks to how we legalise it nowadays. These sorts of myths support the idea of how we are progressed, superior, etc.

"true education is the opposite of what many think it is. For many, becoming educated means knowing things and feeling assured that there are no important questions left in the fields you have studied and that you have now become more capable and powerful than those without an education."

I would even push a little bit further... Where the author says:

"Aside from math/formal systems, the only way we truly know anything is by honest conversations between people of drastically different experiences and worldviews."

Well, what is maths? 1 + 1 = 2, right? While that is fine conceptually, what is the real world application? What things are 'ones' that can be counted as if they were the same? Is there anything that is the same as another thing? I don't think so. Which is to say, that maths is a model too - a useful one - but it does not describe an underlying reality, only the fabricated one we create for ourselves!

PS I loved the liberation image!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26367581

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

* We are separated from our data. It should be ours, and we should be able to allow for corporates to access it if we choose to and we are able to understand the usage.

* The options we are given here are to be able to move our data from one corporate entity to another. Hardly the solution individual ownership of one's data and privacy.

* We are looking to government legislation to make this right for us, but governments like having access to all the data that the corporations share with them. Governments are in the business of managing populations at scale - the more information they have, the better modelling, nudging, manipulations of the population they can do. Basically corporate and governmental interests align.

* Not to forget that corporations lobby governmental entities for the legislation they want. Even if the legislation states one thing, there are ALWAYS backdoors that are understood.

I'm sorry to say that the attack on privacy is a coordinated one with governments AND corporations. If you hope that this time the government will write better legislation or that corporates will do the right thing, you are mistaken. They only care about being perceived to do the right thing - so public relations.

If you are aware of all that, and have a solution, I would be interested to hear. I think any solution would involve individuals acting very defensively about their data. Any solution that begs government or corporations for better action this time is doomed.

So, of course it makes sense that they would like the people whose privacy they are eroding to be in the dark about how much they know about them! Cos then they won't even know to protest! People are already forgetful, if the information is hidden too, in the dark Google et al will have free reign to do what they like.

Social media requires time from those users - they want to know you, crack you open psychologically, so they can then be better at selling you stuff (and, incidentally, pass all that info on to 3 letter agencies for their population modelling etc). That is a different model. They want you to be deeply engaged for a long time. The longer the better.

But, the reality we need to accept and work from is that with vested corporate interests aligning so well with intrusive governmental and military interests, nothing is going to change.

Don't hold your breath for privacy protection legislation.

Its a fight for attention! I often do long comments, but sometimes I'm try to get things down to a concise yet witty nugget ;)