"When Daryl presents Churchill as 'a chief villain' in WWII, he’s projecting his current political frustrations onto historical events."
Exactly, you can see the same kind of political frustations even going back in time, like for example with french monarchists blaming the Republic to be the main cause of every social illness, or when in early 10's you had hordes of leftists complaining how the collapse of Soviet Union caused the Great Recession (LOL)
Interesting point that I agree with that being too well read has diminishing returns, if not limiting in some cases. I also agree that martyrmade is using deeply researched knowledge for motivated reasoning.
Simultaneously with the above points, the post argues that heterodox WWII viewpoints are out-of-sight due to the compression of the historical events of WWII. This argument is incorrect and relies on inaccurate educational and cultural information. The post also inaccurately suggests that the mainstream WWII narrative is anti-war.
There is more education on the Holocaust than other historical events and it is frequently referenced in political discourse. Furthermore, the mainstream *uncompressed version* of WWII history does not dispel any notion that the axis were not holistically evil. Evidence that the axis was not holistically evil is novel information to the average college-educated American. Learning more history for the modal student is taking AP European history or taking lower level college history course, where they will not receive a two-sided view of WWII. In comparison, the Civil War gets a nuanced treatment. I was assigned Killer Angels in high school, which humanizes the confederacy. Is there a book that humanizes the axis distributed in public schools?
The post suggests it is necessary to teach nerfed 10-hour WWII history to help prevent war. However, the causality between teaching nerfed 10-hour WWII history and the prevention of modern war is not made clear. WWII historical dogmas slightly favor war. For example, Hitler is often invoked in to engender U.S. support for the modern Russo-Ukranian War.
> Since most people know so little, it’s trivial to pick a few atrocities that killed a few hundred thousand people and use them to try and make some sort of point.
What's the death count cutoff needed to make a point? We certainly know single digit millions is A-okay.
> There isn’t some hidden stash of books the government banned.
Yes, only functionally.
I appreciate the rich discussion on the failure modes of developing arguments based on obtaining esoteric knowledge such as its use in obfuscating motivated reasoning. However, the post incorrectly argues that mainstream WWII is ubiquitous due to knowledge distillation and that heterodox information is accessible. The latter argument suffers from its own motivated reasoning by ignoring the degree to which the American consciousness has been incessantly bludgeoned by the Holocaust narrative.
I am empathetic to humanizing all people. I am entirely confident there were a lot of 18 year old German boys who died in the eastern front meat-grinder who deserved better. I haven't read much on that, but I have read "Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths" that humanizes the Japanese. At the same time, I think pedagogically it's difficult to try and offer that perspective in WW2 without weakening the primary lesson. Maybe I'm too cynical or think too lowly of most people... but I'm not sure.
I am more optimistic about educating average people than you are, but probably not by much. However, my argument is more about top quartile or top decile people — say a person who scores 5 on the ap euro exam and is successful at a good school for undergrad. This person should have access to a range of perspectives on WWII, and I don’t think they do. A humanized view of 18 year old German boys who died on the eastern front would be a great improvement!
This negatively impacts us today because healthy, productive parts of society are defenseless against polemics that invoke fascism or nazism. Why are high-functioning, high-trust suburbs fascist? Why is having children nazism? I think American education on WWII underwrites the cultural capital that makes these claims land.
No, I’m someone who took the trouble to learn a lot about the war and came to the correct conclusion about the axis. And you’re a coward mincing around Nazi apologetics.
"My side good other side bad"? Excellent insight, I can see you have mastered the materials. Such a pathetic and trite view of the war.
I have American ancestors who died fighting on the Western front and I commemorate them by trying to understanding the conflict and its devastating impact. Playing the trivial game of retroactively assigning moral winners and losers is pathetic and dishonorable.
Learning history permits a greater understanding of the world, while imposing ideological dogmas on history obfuscates our understanding. IDEOLOGICAL DOGMA MAKES HISTORY WORSE NOT BETTER.
Tbh I think this might just be due to imprecision in language. I think both that the axis was evil (if the word evil can’t be used to describe Nazi germany idk what is evil). But I also am sure there were kind souls within Nazi germany who died senselessly. I think we can both understand the evil of Nazi Germans as an entity while also looking for the lines of good and evil that run through every man’s heart, without contradiction
Although causality can be cherry-picked to favour a desired perspective like you noted, function-approximating control systems need to credit assign at some point, no?
How do you personally deal with causality? Our perspectives intersect a lot and for me, it has been causing some trouble (personally and socially).
Thanks, really enjoyed this post (and all the ones I’ve read thus far).
I'd say it's somewhat important to try and compartmentalize causality/philosophy of science stuff to an intellectual interest, but be careful about applying it to your life. If your girlfriend is angry at you cause you didn't clean up the dishes, bringing up how it's hard to know the true cause of why they are dirty isn't really going to help you have a better life.
Most humans when dealing with tribal matters (friends, family, work) default to our biological intuition for causality. Generally speaking, you should just adopt the same thing everyone else does (within reason), otherwise you're going to find it difficult.
"When Daryl presents Churchill as 'a chief villain' in WWII, he’s projecting his current political frustrations onto historical events."
Exactly, you can see the same kind of political frustations even going back in time, like for example with french monarchists blaming the Republic to be the main cause of every social illness, or when in early 10's you had hordes of leftists complaining how the collapse of Soviet Union caused the Great Recession (LOL)
Interesting point that I agree with that being too well read has diminishing returns, if not limiting in some cases. I also agree that martyrmade is using deeply researched knowledge for motivated reasoning.
Simultaneously with the above points, the post argues that heterodox WWII viewpoints are out-of-sight due to the compression of the historical events of WWII. This argument is incorrect and relies on inaccurate educational and cultural information. The post also inaccurately suggests that the mainstream WWII narrative is anti-war.
There is more education on the Holocaust than other historical events and it is frequently referenced in political discourse. Furthermore, the mainstream *uncompressed version* of WWII history does not dispel any notion that the axis were not holistically evil. Evidence that the axis was not holistically evil is novel information to the average college-educated American. Learning more history for the modal student is taking AP European history or taking lower level college history course, where they will not receive a two-sided view of WWII. In comparison, the Civil War gets a nuanced treatment. I was assigned Killer Angels in high school, which humanizes the confederacy. Is there a book that humanizes the axis distributed in public schools?
The post suggests it is necessary to teach nerfed 10-hour WWII history to help prevent war. However, the causality between teaching nerfed 10-hour WWII history and the prevention of modern war is not made clear. WWII historical dogmas slightly favor war. For example, Hitler is often invoked in to engender U.S. support for the modern Russo-Ukranian War.
> Since most people know so little, it’s trivial to pick a few atrocities that killed a few hundred thousand people and use them to try and make some sort of point.
What's the death count cutoff needed to make a point? We certainly know single digit millions is A-okay.
> There isn’t some hidden stash of books the government banned.
Yes, only functionally.
I appreciate the rich discussion on the failure modes of developing arguments based on obtaining esoteric knowledge such as its use in obfuscating motivated reasoning. However, the post incorrectly argues that mainstream WWII is ubiquitous due to knowledge distillation and that heterodox information is accessible. The latter argument suffers from its own motivated reasoning by ignoring the degree to which the American consciousness has been incessantly bludgeoned by the Holocaust narrative.
I am empathetic to humanizing all people. I am entirely confident there were a lot of 18 year old German boys who died in the eastern front meat-grinder who deserved better. I haven't read much on that, but I have read "Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths" that humanizes the Japanese. At the same time, I think pedagogically it's difficult to try and offer that perspective in WW2 without weakening the primary lesson. Maybe I'm too cynical or think too lowly of most people... but I'm not sure.
I am more optimistic about educating average people than you are, but probably not by much. However, my argument is more about top quartile or top decile people — say a person who scores 5 on the ap euro exam and is successful at a good school for undergrad. This person should have access to a range of perspectives on WWII, and I don’t think they do. A humanized view of 18 year old German boys who died on the eastern front would be a great improvement!
This negatively impacts us today because healthy, productive parts of society are defenseless against polemics that invoke fascism or nazism. Why are high-functioning, high-trust suburbs fascist? Why is having children nazism? I think American education on WWII underwrites the cultural capital that makes these claims land.
The axis were holistically evil.
To quote Shako, you might be "incapable of having even a nuanced perspective, on WWII." You are doing great though, keep it up👍
No, I’m someone who took the trouble to learn a lot about the war and came to the correct conclusion about the axis. And you’re a coward mincing around Nazi apologetics.
"My side good other side bad"? Excellent insight, I can see you have mastered the materials. Such a pathetic and trite view of the war.
I have American ancestors who died fighting on the Western front and I commemorate them by trying to understanding the conflict and its devastating impact. Playing the trivial game of retroactively assigning moral winners and losers is pathetic and dishonorable.
Learning history permits a greater understanding of the world, while imposing ideological dogmas on history obfuscates our understanding. IDEOLOGICAL DOGMA MAKES HISTORY WORSE NOT BETTER.
No, other side bad, my side better. It’s actually not difficult to figure out that Nazi Germany was bad.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with you!
Tbh I think this might just be due to imprecision in language. I think both that the axis was evil (if the word evil can’t be used to describe Nazi germany idk what is evil). But I also am sure there were kind souls within Nazi germany who died senselessly. I think we can both understand the evil of Nazi Germans as an entity while also looking for the lines of good and evil that run through every man’s heart, without contradiction
Although causality can be cherry-picked to favour a desired perspective like you noted, function-approximating control systems need to credit assign at some point, no?
How do you personally deal with causality? Our perspectives intersect a lot and for me, it has been causing some trouble (personally and socially).
Thanks, really enjoyed this post (and all the ones I’ve read thus far).
Thanks!
I'd say it's somewhat important to try and compartmentalize causality/philosophy of science stuff to an intellectual interest, but be careful about applying it to your life. If your girlfriend is angry at you cause you didn't clean up the dishes, bringing up how it's hard to know the true cause of why they are dirty isn't really going to help you have a better life.
Most humans when dealing with tribal matters (friends, family, work) default to our biological intuition for causality. Generally speaking, you should just adopt the same thing everyone else does (within reason), otherwise you're going to find it difficult.