Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Catching up on the last couple of pages, and I'm confused as feth. One moment people are comparing current events to the 1920's and 30's and the rise of Nazi Germany*. And then the next minute,the same people are saying the principles of the past are no longer relevant.

*I actually agree with the comparison to the 20's and 30's.

As pretty much the only one who argued against historical determinism, all I was saying was that something happening in the past isn't a guarantee for it happening again. The original statement I was responding to was this:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
History has repeatedly shown that eventually all big centralised concentrations of power always collapse under their own weight in the end.

It's an absolute statement that leaves no room for exceptions, and it's blatantly wrong no matter how you define the nebulous concepts of "big", "centralised", and "collapse". The past can still be looked at to help understand the present, but the past is not a 100% guarantee that the same things will happen again.

Time is like a cicular river. You can change the details but you cant stop the river.

Skullhammer wrote:
Time is like a cicular river. You can change the details but you cant stop the river.

And a smell of petroleum prevails throughout




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 r_squared wrote:

 notprop wrote:
...In other news Nicola Sturgeon has called for a re-run of this evenings football game on account of Scotland not getting the result they wanted in the face of unfair English opposition. Jeremy Corbyn wasn't avaiable for comment.

I'm not worried, let them have another go if they like.

It's weird how confidence in your position means you don't mind letting your opponents have another try. Only those holding onto a tenuous position have anything to worry about.

And It's exactly what a healthy society should encourage... were it not for the existence of professional disruptive factors from external sources. Complacency kills nations :(

 Ketara wrote:
Of course. That goes without saying, but I'm discussing my view of my society as I understand it through my continual interactions with it. Hence the 'we'. You are, as I keep saying, free to disagree, but as the lone voice in my sensory input with that opinion (out of many, many Remain voters and articles read), you'll forgive me if I allocate that opinion the appropriate weight.

That's fine, as long as you'll have to accept that I don't as it based on a ropey scientific basis (or that there are massive error bars on the data)

I hate to say this, but I understood every word I just read there, and it sounds like the biggest load of pseudo-scientific backtracking I've heard this month. You're trying to cover up with about eighty five different metaphors/vague allusions to science the simple fact that you quite literally have written a determinist account.

You are entitled to believe that I suppose (I'm guessing that lack of understanding is what causes comments like these and similar "We've had enough of experts" because people can't see that people might train to become emotionally detached from what they are saying), what you accept what you accept; it seems to me that you are just saying "I don't believe you and ma not going to listen"?. I take your comments with sincerity so it wouldn't be unappreciated if you did the same. You are just going to have to accept the fact that our training is different, yours more in historical context (from what I can gather) and mine from using scientific (and statistical) theory. If you can't accept that then that's not something I'm going to be able to change (other than put proviso's on every comment which will make the text conversation a lot more difficult to read!)

Says who? Who determines that? International relations and politics/circumstance are not DOS; they have completely different and varying input/output in any given real life occurrence of it, be it in the same year or a hundred apart. The only way to claim that the vaguely formulated principles/philosophies of the past will not be as useful tomorrow, is if you know precisely what will occur tomorrow and the chain of results which could occur from any given infinite outcome of applied actions.

It's a 'simple' analogy but it is apt for the point I am trying to make. The point I made before and will re-iterate is as you've noted above there are probably millions of possibilities and millions of ways to approach things. It is *statistically* unlikely (but not completely impossible, but then so is falling through the world) that the way we approached the world yesterday is not going to be as suitable for tomorrow (it's just a statistical interpretation) because there are orders of magnitude more ways of thinking than those from yesterday.

Why does the 'modernity' of the global world factor into the equation as opposed to the 'modernity' of the 1980's, the 1960's, or the 1890's? Or even the 'modernity' of 2050? What, when you get down to it, even is the 'modern' or 'current' world, ? The world of right now? The world of five years ago? The world of five years hence? Not only that, who determines the criteria as to what is 'fit' and what the desirable outcomes are? That's a pretty subjective view of things to begin with. I daresay Putin's ideal view of the world and the most 'efficient' outcome is a damn sight different to yours.

Everything you have written is tainted with determinism and a whiggish perspective. You see the world evolving down a specific route, you judge everything by a 'modern' perspective, and believe as many, many did before you, that your position atop culture, superior morals, and technology allows you to see further than those before you. You'll deny it, but it's implicit in absolutely everything you write.

Modern as in "a characteristic of the present time". There is no determination as to what that modernity is. That's just something you are reading in that isn't there, you are the one that is inferring what it means. I'm not sure I have ever commented that I have superior culture, morals or technology making me see further than anyone else. All I'm trying to highlight that statistically that the past is written and hence there was both one outcome and 'fixed' (as in they were what they were) ways of thinking at those times (unless we invent a time machine). However because there are multitudes of ways of thinking (of which some are the same as the past) and multiple possible outcomes leading from today then the probability of how tomorrows way of thinking being the same to make things effective and efficient is unlikely (but not impossible). There's no implications on what is correct or incorrect because we simply don't know what the future is *actually* going to be. As extreme examples two possibilities are that aliens turn up tomorrow and allows us to transcend to a form of energy or that we have a nuclear holocaust (and transcend to another form of energy ) but it is unlikely that the mentality we have today will be suitable for these two options (but could be, just probabilistically unlikely). Which of these two 'progressions' is better would be open to debate depending on individuals point of view!

The one thing we can say is that things change because it is a fundamental physical law, it is how that is uncertain.

I'll leave this one regardless of your response, because if you can't or won't see what's in your own words, and the motivations behind them, no essay of mine will convince you otherwise.

It's probably more likely that you don't want to see the points I'm trying to make or as I suspect from previous conversations you don't really understand the principles of statistics so you are trying to infer from your own historical perspective what is being said and hence completely misrepresenting it (hopefully not deliberately!)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


Welcome to the world of being pro-EU in Wrexit land!

I don't think that's a fair argument. There's been plenty of feth-ups on the remain side as well, generalisations won't bring anything useful to the thread.

Bozza is now telling the Democrats to stop whining because they lost.

This is not how things work in democracies.

He's also labelled European responses to the US election as a 'whinge-o-rama'. Interesting turn of phrase, if nothing else.

Stupid thing is, despite the nasty things Bozza said about Trump, I reckon the two will get along well. Birds of a feather and all that.

Well, not to go off on too much of a tangent, but Trump is perhaps the most unpopular new president elect of all time, except in places like North Korea and Russia, and with right-wing extremists like Marie Le Pen, that bloke in Holland and that bloke in Austria.

It makes you think.

I now return the channel to coverage of UK issues.

Trump will be a considerable UK issue. His arrival and the possibility of an isolationist, inward looking, protectionist US couldn't have come at a worse time for the UK.
He plays very hardball, and will say and do anyhting to "win", we've seen that, he's also a business man, but not above fething over the little guy, which we very much are in comparison to the States. I think our "special relationship" is likely remain a buzzword used by the terminally naive, and unlikely to have any actual tangible basis in reality.
We will be vulnerable, and weakened by our exit from the EU, and he will know that we will be desperate for a "good" deal. It doesn't bode well tbh. It would have been tricky getting a good deal with the Democrats calling the shots, but we genuinely have no idea what it'll be like going up against him.

Plus, the concillitary noises he made towards Putin are likely to embolden the Russians further, considering what they were doing when Obama and the West we United against them there's no telling where they will go in the near future.
Trump also intends to take the Chinese down a peg or two, how that will affect the world markets is yet to be seen, but I can't imagine it's going to be great news for us, especially as we try and negotiate new trade deals with them

Basically leaving the EU just got a whole lot trickier, more uncertain and far, far riskier.
We might have to expect a bit more than "short term" financial penury.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ketara wrote:
He's also labelled European responses to the US election as a 'whinge-o-rama'. Interesting turn of phrase, if nothing else.

Stupid thing is, despite the nasty things Bozza said about Trump, I reckon the two will get along well. Birds of a feather and all that.

I imagine that they will, after all they've both come from privileged backgrounds, say ridiculous things, are considered buffoons by many people and are likely to send their respective countries and global economics into a crashing reversal of gears in their thirst for power.

What's interesting to me is the speed that Boris and his ilk demand that people "get over it". It's just not reasonable for people to have been wound up for so long, and to be so emotionally invested in a process to suddenly just go, oh well, that's that then. As far as I'm concerned its like kicking someone when they're down, and trying to "score" political points by being deliberate inflammatory and dismissive. But I don't expect anything better from Bozza, the man's a turd.

 r_squared wrote:
Trump will be a considerable UK issue. His arrival and the possibility of an isolationist, inward looking, protectionist US couldn't have come at a worse time for the UK.
He plays very hardball, and will say and do anyhting to "win", we've seen that, he's also a business man, but not above fething over the little guy, which we very much are in comparison to the States. I think our "special relationship" is likely remain a buzzword used by the terminally naive, and unlikely to have any actual tangible basis in reality.
We will be vulnerable, and weakened by our exit from the EU, and he will know that we will be desperate for a "good" deal. It doesn't bode well tbh. It would have been tricky getting a good deal with the Democrats calling the shots, but we genuinely have no idea what it'll be like going up against him.

Plus, the concillitary noises he made towards Putin are likely to embolden the Russians further, considering what they were doing when Obama and the West we United against them there's no telling where they will go in the near future.
Trump also intends to take the Chinese down a peg or two, how that will affect the world markets is yet to be seen, but I can't imagine it's going to be great news for us, especially as we try and negotiate new trade deals with them

Basically leaving the EU just got a whole lot trickier, more uncertain and far, far riskier.
We might have to expect a bit more than "short term" financial penury.

I disagree with this

There is an opportunity here for Britain. The EU is not happy with Trump, and is likely to make Trump want to turn his back on Europe, if Juncker's statement is anything to go by. That leaves Britain and France as the cornerstone of European security, as they are the continent's only two nuclear armed states.

That will help Britain a lot during the Article 50 negotiations, and I hope the UK drops the strongest of hints on this....

 r_squared wrote:
Trump will be a considerable UK issue. His arrival and the possibility of an isolationist, inward looking, protectionist US couldn't have come at a worse time for the UK.
He plays very hardball, and will say and do anyhting to "win", we've seen that, he's also a business man, but not above fething over the little guy, which we very much are in comparison to the States. I think our "special relationship" is likely remain a buzzword used by the terminally naive, and unlikely to have any actual tangible basis in reality.
We will be vulnerable, and weakened by our exit from the EU, and he will know that we will be desperate for a "good" deal. It doesn't bode well tbh. It would have been tricky getting a good deal with the Democrats calling the shots, but we genuinely have no idea what it'll be like going up against him.

Plus, the concillitary noises he made towards Putin are likely to embolden the Russians further, considering what they were doing when Obama and the West we United against them there's no telling where they will go in the near future.
Trump also intends to take the Chinese down a peg or two, how that will affect the world markets is yet to be seen, but I can't imagine it's going to be great news for us, especially as we try and negotiate new trade deals with them

Basically leaving the EU just got a whole lot trickier, more uncertain and far, far riskier.
We might have to expect a bit more than "short term" financial penury.

You may well be correct. Equally, it could not turn out that way at all. There are plenty of reasons someone like Trump might give us a favourable deal, from his UK roots to a simple childish desire to stick two fingers up at the Europeans who are daring to lecture him, to a need to negotiate at least one poster trade deal with a first world country his voters will approve of that won't give him a headache down the line. Then again, he might well do something along the lines of what you've described, or something else altogether.

The one thing that everyone is worrying over right now is that none of us have a clue what he'll do. He quite often seems to do the opposite of what he says he'll do once his actual objective is achieved, and virtually no-one has any idea of how much of his rhetoric was campaign schpiel, and how much is his personal beliefs.

As I said a few months back, if Trump is in power, we live in interesting times.

Hypothetically... If May were to take the opportunity to 'takes Trump under her wing" and, at least, appear to play a friend, it could be helpful. More flies with honey and all that.

Better us than, say Putin, though it would be a bitter pill...

There is an opportunity here for Britain. The EU is not happy with Trump, and is likely to make Trump want to turn his back on Europe, if Juncker's statement is anything to go by. That leaves Britain and France as the cornerstone of European security, as they are the continent's only two nuclear armed states.

That will help Britain a lot during the Article 50 negotiations, and I hope the UK drops the strongest of hints on this...

I doubt it, given our uncompromising inability to go about Brexit in an organized and polite manner (see Daily Mail, The Sun and the Telegraph for more information).

I think May avoided jumping on the anti trump band wagon (at least publicly) so opening talks could go ok.

Well the trashy populist newspapers are not the whole of the story.

The reason why we are finding it hard to go about Brexit in a well organised manner is two-fold:

Firstly, because actually organising Brexit is a very, very difficult task, starting with the fact we don't know what we want to achieve. I mean that we as a country have no clear, settled, agreed idea idea of the most acceptable situation to try and achieve.

Secondiy, IMO, May has made a tactical mistake by insisting on her right by Royal Prerogative to deny Parliament a debate on the topic. She did this, again IMO, to try and head off the chance that due to point 1 above, there might be a hiccup in the process of kick-starting Brexit.

Magister wrote:

There is an opportunity here for Britain. The EU is not happy with Trump, and is likely to make Trump want to turn his back on Europe, if Juncker's statement is anything to go by. That leaves Britain and France as the cornerstone of European security, as they are the continent's only two nuclear armed states.

That will help Britain a lot during the Article 50 negotiations, and I hope the UK drops the strongest of hints on this...

I doubt it, given our uncompromising inability to go about Brexit in an organized and polite manner (see Daily Mail, The Sun and the Telegraph for more information).

Not at all. Until Article 50 is invoked, anything that Westminster and the Daily Mail says should be treated as pub talk, and pub talk is never brought up in the cold light of day.

Trust me, when it starts getting serious, then we'll see the game face...I hope....

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
As pretty much the only one who argued against historical determinism...

Actually I was thinking of Whirlwind.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
As pretty much the only one who argued against historical determinism...

Actually I was thinking of Whirlwind.

In which case never mind me. Guess solipsism got the better of me.

Well, somewhat related Lego are ceasing their promotional activity with the Daily Mail.

Dont know if its related to this www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153904314891811&set=o.6665038402&type=3&theater or other pressure.

Just found a BBC article on this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37962425

I normally ignore the Fail and its articles, You can usually imagine their articles without needing to read them, but damn....they are really going for broke at the minute over Brexit and 'democracy'.

Are they getting worse with the rhetoric?

Worse than "Enemies of the people?"

That was perhaps the most disgraceful, Totalitarian headline I've ever seen in a British newspaper.

I thought this country lived by the rule of law, not populist mob incitement.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Worse than "Enemies of the people?"

That was perhaps the most disgraceful, Totalitarian headline I've ever seen in a British newspaper.

I thought this country lived by the rule of law, not populist mob incitement.

In all fairness, nobody is making anyone buy it, or even take it seriously. This is the paper that backed the Nazis, after all, what did you expect? Class?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Catching up on the last couple of pages, and I'm confused as feth. One moment people are comparing current events to the 1920's and 30's and the rise of Nazi Germany*. And then the next minute,the same people are saying the principles of the past are no longer relevant.

You are really comparing two separate conversations. The comparison with the 20's, 30's Germany is comparing sets of past data points (so the Daily Mail wrote an article calling three judges were the "enemy of the state" is comparable by a similar article written in 1933 Germany). But that doesn't mean I can predict a *specific* outcome because it is a factor or millions (and billions and billions if you consider every chemical/atomic interaction in each human).

The point about the principles of the past are no longer relevant arose more about a debate over how to effectively analyse current results.

Ketara, in summary, effectively argues from a historical theory perspective. That it is incorrect to assume that history will always progress and improve and to avoid judging the past on what we now know. Hence this avoids making a deterministic view of the world and where it will go. Therefore the outcome of the future is decided on what we make of it so we shouldn't be determining outcomes from past events. (I'm sure Ketara could give a better explanation than I can here).

The counter argument from myself is based on scientific method. This makes a future prediction based on a hypothesis that in itself is based of data which would have been taken at some point in 'history' (metaphorically speaking). Though the data isn't perfect because it has associated errors. Therefore it is being debated (and we effectively come back to the same point) that to some extent you can make probability assessments based on previous data to formulate a theory as to what may occur in the future. When new data arrives you test the theory and if it doesn't fit then it is evolved so it does fit (or is replaced) and you then make another prediction and test again and rinse and repeat. Hence there is possibility of the accusation of being both whiggish (using data from the past with current methods) and deterministic (it makes a testable prediction); however the point that is missed is that it is a continuously verified theory - you keep using new data to test and improve and test again. Effectively if you have enough data points, and everything is determined by physical laws then you should be able to make an accurate prediction (but not infallible because of uncertainty laws).

A comparison would be (broadly) the weather and it's prediction. From a historical perspective looking at 30 year ago weather pattern and effects cannot be used to make a direct statement about tomorrows weather as that would assume an inevitable progression from one type of weather to another. However what we can do is take the data points from that weather system, use that data with our current way of thinking (model) and use that to make a probabilistic prediction as to what the weather tomorrow may do within some probability limits. This is how your weather forecast works (and also why it is sometimes wrong). An awful lot of data plugs into the current theory and predicts an outcome. If it is wrong then the theory is amended and so on. From a historical theory perspective however you would not be able to get a prediction because it would espouse that historical data using current thinking should be avoided and that weather doesn't follow inevitable progression. The theory is based on using as many data points from the past and using a current theory to analyse and predict an outcome.

So going back to the original point "principles of the past are no longer relevant" comes from the following theory. That there are both millions of potential outcomes from today and that there are millions of ways of approaching or the mentality approach of the populace of these outcomes. That results in billions of potential combinations of where the world will be and how to approach it. There was however only one continuous actual mentality and one continuous history (lets exclude multiverse theories for the moment). However everyday the world changes; new people are born, old die, different types of pollution affect how we think and so on. As an individual we may have freedom of thought (though that could be questioned) but as a whole we act more like an 'ideal gas' in a box (i.e. you can't predict what an individual atom might do, but the overall pressure on the inside of the box is well determined and changes if you adjust one of the external factors such as temperature). Therefore the populace as a whole is affected by external pressures and evolves based on those pressures. As the world has changed (natural physical laws) and continues to do so, the probability that the same combined conditions will arise to result in the same 'box' conditions (so we now have nukes, planes, cars, more office working, whatever) is very low. I.e. there are many, probably millions, of other combinations of world and mentality than the one known set so simply the probability of getting a scenario where our principles align with future conditions is low. Hence the original point. It makes no prediction on what the world or the principles will be, just that they will change.

------------------------------

Automatically Appended Next Post:
In other news. Bad news for tea drinkers that we are still buying the stuff from companies exploiting the poorest. Maybe fair trade tea only from now on?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-37936349

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Worse than "Enemies of the people?"

That was perhaps the most disgraceful, Totalitarian headline I've ever seen in a British newspaper.

I thought this country lived by the rule of law, not populist mob incitement.

Like I said, I usually ignore the Mail, It was reliable enough that you could imagine what a position would be at any given time.

'Enemies of the people' is a brand new level. I guess I should start taking notice of the rag properly now, since I know a fair few readers.

As for populist mob incitement the mail website enjoys scantily clad 'celebrity' articles.

 Whirlwind wrote:


Ketara, in summary, effectively argues from a historical theory perspective. That it is incorrect to assume that history will always progress and improve and to avoid judging the past on what we now know. Hence this avoids making a deterministic view of the world and where it will go. Therefore the outcome of the future is decided on what we make of it so we shouldn't be determining outcomes from past events. (I'm sure Ketara could give a better explanation than I can here).

Despite myself, I'm going to take one last crack at this, but I'll take it from the top, as opposed to going link by link, in the hope that this will help communicate as to why trying to apply statistical models to this sort of thing is intrinisically flawed. I'll make it more of a explanatory post as opposed to an adversarial/debating one though, so as to not bore everyone else, and perhaps, make it somewhat interesting. It's also slightly OT, so I hope everyone here will forgive me this minor transgression.



The first thing any student of 'history' has to ask is 'What is history?' 'What is the past?' A famous philosopher by the name of Leopold Von Ranke from the nineteenth century said it was simply 'saying what happened' (or a variation thereof, translation is a wonderful thing). That's a simple layman's view of talking about the past, you simply describe the events that occurred, to the best of your knowledge, and in turn communicate that knowledge to another person (be it a reader, listener, etc). And if you read history books from say, a century ago, they're absolutely wonderful reads, and adhere firmly to that principle of composition. But they're heavily, heavily flawed for a large number of reasons that we acknowledge today.

The first of these is an awareness that has developed regarding the mutability of human morality and attitudes in and of themselves. People change. Whilst a tub-thumpingly patriotic Royal Navy historian of over a century past might well include items of historical interest in his book, they're inevitably framed in the attitudes of the time, and wound up in the opinions of the author. Enemies are dastardly, the actions of a stateman can be angelic or villainous, and so on. What the author thinks of things and the world around him is almost indistinguishable from his 'history' of events.

In modern historiography, the goal is to cultivate an air of complete detachment. Your opinions and morals are irrelevant. You are trying to set down the facts of what occurred, and establish a causative chain of chronology for the most part, with the minimum amount of personal judgement. To relate that back to my earlier discussion with Whirlwind, you are aware that trying to claim that there is a most 'efficient' or optimal outcome from any given historical event is impossible. This is because what you think would be that most 'efficient' outcome may not be what someone of the era thought was the most 'efficient' outcome of a scenario, or indeed, what someone in a hundred years will. There is no most 'efficient' outcome, because the very nature of what comprises that efficiency is in and of itself, a value judgement. Life is not a mathematical equation, and morality is not an objective item, with 'desirable outcome' marked at one end and 'undesirable' at the other.

In the grand scheme of things, the historian tries to remove value judgements from their assessment of history, and to qualify what judgements are made. We're all doomed to failure, but we try.
Instead of stating that the actions of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies were bad (simple), or even bad for miners in North England (slightly better), one would state instead that from a perspective of a specific mining community and their way of life, a specific aspect of an economic policy would be viewed by them as negative, because it impacted upon their lives in X number of ways (with appropriate footnotes sourced to evidence that).



Another thing to be aware of is how humans intrinsically pick and choose historical fact to suit their purpose, no matter how rigorous they are. When you go angling in the past, you are inherently biased because of what you're looking at. Because ultimately, you select the specific point in the vast ocean of time and past events to angle in, and fish up your facts.

For example, say that I write a history of the third Reich. You'll note that despite the Third Reich encompassing many many events and land and matter, there's no mention of a pig called Klaus from Stettin in there. Despite the fact he lived his whole life in the Third Reich. There might be documentary evidence of his existence (sales bills, piglets, etc), he will have had an impact (he interacted with many other pigs, vegetables, his owners, etc), yet somehow, Klaus is absent from my grandiosely named 'History of the Third Reich'. Ultimately, my history is just a history of what I thought was important to write about. It's certainly nowhere near to being an actual history of everything that happened in that geographical location over that period of time. What's more, even if I were to attempt such a history, it would also have encompass all the intangible things and their causative effect on each other. I would need to describe how Klaus being killed helped to sustain a soldier of the Third Reich, Klaus' feelings on being slaughtered, his environmental impact, the effect on the mental wellbeing of his owner, and so on.

To write the complete history of even this one little pig is impossible. He interacted with too many things, in too many ways. With something even greater? It only reinforces the impossibility of stating definitively or mathematically how one thing can impact on everything else. To return to Whirlwind's more recent example of the weather, we can plug into a computer what we have observed of a weather pattern from 30 years ago, and try and use it to predict what will occur tomorrow. But there's a problem with that, and it isn't the statement made about tomorrow. It's a fundamental flaw; the fact is, you cannot gather the full dataset required for that weather pattern to input into your calculations. It's impossible. As with Klaus the pig, there is absolutely no way of evaluating the impact of every moving air molecule and its impact upon another. You will never be able to collate and input sufficient data to know, 100%, what will occur.

It's the same in history. I might say that the reason Gordon Brown hated Blair was because of a time he slapped him down at a conference, but the real reason might be because Brown was in the toilet cubicle next to Blair and Blair made a sarky comment about his defecation at some point. I might speculate that a boss fired an employee because of his performance, when really? He had a stomach ache and a fight with his wife that day. I will never have the full dataset to make my prediction on why one event led to another in the past. Saying that one mentality from the past will be of no use today or in the future is impossible before you even begin to consider the unknowable quantity of the future, because my 'dataset' of both what that mentality actually encompasses, and how it previously impacted on things in the past, is fundamentally incomplete.

And that in turn means that ultimately, the past is not necessarily a good prediction of future events. You will never have an exactly identical set of circumstance occur. There is no mathematical certainty, no equation. You cannot trace 'if I input X, Y will occur', because you never thought of or considered or took into account 3,000 other unknown letters involved in the equation. And you never can.



End lecture. I could have gone into more points, but that felt long enough! Hope I didn't put too many people to sleep.

That was quite inspired Ketara, thank you.

An appreciation of history should never hinder experimentation! Inform paths of inquiry by all means, identify likely risks certainly, but never as the arbiter of truth.
<sarcasm>
At least until we have enough autonomous drones to video record every action that occurs on the planet, from every possible perspective.
</sarcasm>


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 r_squared wrote:
Trump will be a considerable UK issue. His arrival and the possibility of an isolationist, inward looking, protectionist US couldn't have come at a worse time for the UK.
He plays very hardball, and will say and do anyhting to "win", we've seen that, he's also a business man, but not above fething over the little guy, which we very much are in comparison to the States. I think our "special relationship" is likely remain a buzzword used by the terminally naive, and unlikely to have any actual tangible basis in reality.
We will be vulnerable, and weakened by our exit from the EU, and he will know that we will be desperate for a "good" deal. It doesn't bode well tbh. It would have been tricky getting a good deal with the Democrats calling the shots, but we genuinely have no idea what it'll be like going up against him.

Plus, the concillitary noises he made towards Putin are likely to embolden the Russians further, considering what they were doing when Obama and the West we United against them there's no telling where they will go in the near future.
Trump also intends to take the Chinese down a peg or two, how that will affect the world markets is yet to be seen, but I can't imagine it's going to be great news for us, especially as we try and negotiate new trade deals with them

Basically leaving the EU just got a whole lot trickier, more uncertain and far, far riskier.
We might have to expect a bit more than "short term" financial penury.

I disagree with this

There is an opportunity here for Britain. The EU is not happy with Trump, and is likely to make Trump want to turn his back on Europe, if Juncker's statement is anything to go by. That leaves Britain and France as the cornerstone of European security, as they are the continent's only two nuclear armed states.

That will help Britain a lot during the Article 50 negotiations, and I hope the UK drops the strongest of hints on this....

an Isolationist and/or protectionist US could be the best thing to happen to the UK if we had anything resembling competence in international affairs in the halls of power.

@ Ketara

Thank you again for your thoughtful insight.

I was taught the exact same thing, but sometimes I still find it hard to detach my own opinions and morals. It's highly unprofessional.

 Ketara wrote:

Spoiler:

 Whirlwind wrote:


Ketara, in summary, effectively argues from a historical theory perspective. That it is incorrect to assume that history will always progress and improve and to avoid judging the past on what we now know. Hence this avoids making a deterministic view of the world and where it will go. Therefore the outcome of the future is decided on what we make of it so we shouldn't be determining outcomes from past events. (I'm sure Ketara could give a better explanation than I can here).

Despite myself, I'm going to take one last crack at this, but I'll take it from the top, as opposed to going link by link, in the hope that this will help communicate as to why trying to apply statistical models to this sort of thing is intrinisically flawed. I'll make it more of a explanatory post as opposed to an adversarial/debating one though, so as to not bore everyone else, and perhaps, make it somewhat interesting. It's also slightly OT, so I hope everyone here will forgive me this minor transgression.



The first thing any student of 'history' has to ask is 'What is history?' 'What is the past?' A famous philosopher by the name of Leopold Von Ranke from the nineteenth century said it was simply 'saying what happened' (or a variation thereof, translation is a wonderful thing). That's a simple layman's view of talking about the past, you simply describe the events that occurred, to the best of your knowledge, and in turn communicate that knowledge to another person (be it a reader, listener, etc). And if you read history books from say, a century ago, they're absolutely wonderful reads, and adhere firmly to that principle of composition. But they're heavily, heavily flawed for a large number of reasons that we acknowledge today.

The first of these is an awareness that has developed regarding the mutability of human morality and attitudes in and of themselves. People change. Whilst a tub-thumpingly patriotic Royal Navy historian of over a century past might well include items of historical interest in his book, they're inevitably framed in the attitudes of the time, and wound up in the opinions of the author. Enemies are dastardly, the actions of a stateman can be angelic or villainous, and so on. What the author thinks of things and the world around him is almost indistinguishable from his 'history' of events.

In modern historiography, the goal is to cultivate an air of complete detachment. Your opinions and morals are irrelevant. You are trying to set down the facts of what occurred, and establish a causative chain of chronology for the most part, with the minimum amount of personal judgement. To relate that back to my earlier discussion with Whirlwind, you are aware that trying to claim that there is a most 'efficient' or optimal outcome from any given historical event is impossible. This is because what you think would be that most 'efficient' outcome may not be what someone of the era thought was the most 'efficient' outcome of a scenario, or indeed, what someone in a hundred years will. There is no most 'efficient' outcome, because the very nature of what comprises that efficiency is in and of itself, a value judgement. Life is not a mathematical equation, and morality is not an objective item, with 'desirable outcome' marked at one end and 'undesirable' at the other.

In the grand scheme of things, the historian tries to remove value judgements from their assessment of history, and to qualify what judgements are made. We're all doomed to failure, but we try.
Instead of stating that the actions of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies were bad (simple), or even bad for miners in North England (slightly better), one would state instead that from a perspective of a specific mining community and their way of life, a specific aspect of an economic policy would be viewed by them as negative, because it impacted upon their lives in X number of ways (with appropriate footnotes sourced to evidence that).



Another thing to be aware of is how humans intrinsically pick and choose historical fact to suit their purpose, no matter how rigorous they are. When you go angling in the past, you are inherently biased because of what you're looking at. Because ultimately, you select the specific point in the vast ocean of time and past events to angle in, and fish up your facts.

For example, say that I write a history of the third Reich. You'll note that despite the Third Reich encompassing many many events and land and matter, there's no mention of a pig called Klaus from Stettin in there. Despite the fact he lived his whole life in the Third Reich. There might be documentary evidence of his existence (sales bills, piglets, etc), he will have had an impact (he interacted with many other pigs, vegetables, his owners, etc), yet somehow, Klaus is absent from my grandiosely named 'History of the Third Reich'. Ultimately, my history is just a history of what I thought was important to write about. It's certainly nowhere near to being an actual history of everything that happened in that geographical location over that period of time. What's more, even if I were to attempt such a history, it would also have encompass all the intangible things and their causative effect on each other. I would need to describe how Klaus being killed helped to sustain a soldier of the Third Reich, Klaus' feelings on being slaughtered, his environmental impact, the effect on the mental wellbeing of his owner, and so on.

To write the complete history of even this one little pig is impossible. He interacted with too many things, in too many ways. With something even greater? It only reinforces the impossibility of stating definitively or mathematically how one thing can impact on everything else. To return to Whirlwind's more recent example of the weather, we can plug into a computer what we have observed of a weather pattern from 30 years ago, and try and use it to predict what will occur tomorrow. But there's a problem with that, and it isn't the statement made about tomorrow. It's a fundamental flaw; the fact is, you cannot gather the full dataset required for that weather pattern to input into your calculations. It's impossible. As with Klaus the pig, there is absolutely no way of evaluating the impact of every moving air molecule and its impact upon another. You will never be able to collate and input sufficient data to know, 100%, what will occur.

It's the same in history. I might say that the reason Gordon Brown hated Blair was because of a time he slapped him down at a conference, but the real reason might be because Brown was in the toilet cubicle next to Blair and Blair made a sarky comment about his defecation at some point. I might speculate that a boss fired an employee because of his performance, when really? He had a stomach ache and a fight with his wife that day. I will never have the full dataset to make my prediction on why one event led to another in the past. Saying that one mentality from the past will be of no use today or in the future is impossible before you even begin to consider the unknowable quantity of the future, because my 'dataset' of both what that mentality actually encompasses, and how it previously impacted on things in the past, is fundamentally incomplete.

And that in turn means that ultimately, the past is not necessarily a good prediction of future events. You will never have an exactly identical set of circumstance occur. There is no mathematical certainty, no equation. You cannot trace 'if I input X, Y will occur', because you never thought of or considered or took into account 3,000 other unknown letters involved in the equation. And you never can.



End lecture. I could have gone into more points, but that felt long enough! Hope I didn't put too many people to sleep.

Exalted... would watch it again.

You're forgiven... I can read this stuff all day long.

Thank you both, Ketara and Whirlwind, for your very interesting explanations.

My view is that from the 1980s, beginning with Reaganomics and Thatcherism, the political-economic landscape was shifted "rightwards". Globalisation and free trade, tax cuts for the rich to stimulate investment and benefit the poor by trickle-down economics, deficit reduction by expansion of the economy, less interference by government, and so on, became politically orthodox to the degree that the left-wing parties of the UK and US also embraced them (New Labour, Democrat support for NAFTA...)

The core problem is that these policies did not work. While globalisation helped grow the world economy as a whole, it led to hollowing out of areas of national economies. Increased investment went into China or real estate, not domestic job creation and national infrastructure. Trickle down didn't happen. Instead, a lot of people were left behind. Deficits grew because of low taxes, and social spending was reduced by austerity. Unemployment figures were improved only by the creation of insecure, low pay jobs in the "gig economy".

The other problem is that this situation has come to be associated with a generation of political elite. The other change in the past 25 years has been the rise of the career politician Many of Thatcher's "big beasts" had genuine careers outside politics. Most of the current generation didn't. (Bozza is a amusing exception.) Thus, conventional politics and governance came to be blamed for things.

From history there seem to be two ways out of this situation. One is a move to the left, more socialism, high taxes on the rich, more government control and direction of investment in crucial infrastructure.

The other is a lurch to the right, blaming immigrants and conventional politics. This is what we are seeing in the Brexit and Trump votes.

 Kilkrazy wrote:


The other problem is that this situation has come to be associated with a generation of political elite. The other change in the past 25 years has been the rise of the career politician Many of Thatcher's "big beasts" had genuine careers outside politics. Most of the current generation didn't. (Bozza is a amusing exception.) Thus, conventional politics and governance came to be blamed for things.

This is something I dont like. When I went to sacramento, In a previous governors office was a doctors bag. What I found out is that a govenor would see patients in his office.
Politics used to be a side job. but now, Politics is a career. With political families that are like dynasties. You have the Kennedies, the Clintons, the Bushes and likely soon the Obamas. Tons of families that exercise such clout as to shape politics. It disturbs me.
Edit:
Whops, thought this was the US. Thread. Still gonna keep my post up because it is how I feel lol. Maybe it pertains to UK politics a bit?

 malamis wrote:
....
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 r_squared wrote:
Trump will be a considerable UK issue. His arrival and the possibility of an isolationist, inward looking, protectionist US couldn't have come at a worse time for the UK.
He plays very hardball, and will say and do anyhting to "win", we've seen that, he's also a business man, but not above fething over the little guy, which we very much are in comparison to the States. I think our "special relationship" is likely remain a buzzword used by the terminally naive, and unlikely to have any actual tangible basis in reality.
We will be vulnerable, and weakened by our exit from the EU, and he will know that we will be desperate for a "good" deal. It doesn't bode well tbh. It would have been tricky getting a good deal with the Democrats calling the shots, but we genuinely have no idea what it'll be like going up against him.

Plus, the concillitary noises he made towards Putin are likely to embolden the Russians further, considering what they were doing when Obama and the West we United against them there's no telling where they will go in the near future.
Trump also intends to take the Chinese down a peg or two, how that will affect the world markets is yet to be seen, but I can't imagine it's going to be great news for us, especially as we try and negotiate new trade deals with them

Basically leaving the EU just got a whole lot trickier, more uncertain and far, far riskier.
We might have to expect a bit more than "short term" financial penury.

I disagree with this

There is an opportunity here for Britain. The EU is not happy with Trump, and is likely to make Trump want to turn his back on Europe, if Juncker's statement is anything to go by. That leaves Britain and France as the cornerstone of European security, as they are the continent's only two nuclear armed states.

That will help Britain a lot during the Article 50 negotiations, and I hope the UK drops the strongest of hints on this....

an Isolationist and/or protectionist US could be the best thing to happen to the UK if we had anything resembling competence in international affairs in the halls of power.

Why you think it could be the best thing to happen to the UK?

Is it enough?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37962800

More than one in four UK business leaders say employees have cut their hours because of the "high cost of childcare", a report from the British Chambers of Commerce says.
The survey of more than 1,600 business leaders also found nearly 10% said some staff had quit for the same reason.
Government policy "should evolve to help as many parents as possible stay in the workplace," the BCC urged.
The government said it was doing "more than ever before to support families".
Under current measures, every three- and four-year-old in Britain is entitled to up to 15 hours of free early education and childcare per week.
From 2017, this entitlement will be doubled to 30 hours a week. Those surveyed said they would welcome further support.
The BCC carried out the survey in conjunction with Middlesex University researchers.
One third of those questioned said the availability of childcare was a "key issue in recruiting and retaining staff".
Some 12% said their employees' productivity had fallen because of the cost of childcare, and a further 8% said staff changed roles within their business as a result of the same issue.
'Removing barriers'
Although almost 40% of the businesses surveyed said the government plans to double free childcare in 2017 would help, the BCC said it was calling on ministers to do more, including considering offering universal childcare until a child started school.
Adam Marshall, director general of the BCC, said the government should consider the childcare system as part of Britain's core business infrastructure - "in the same way that it thinks of energy, transport, or broadband".
A Department for Education spokesman said that in England, from September, parents would have up to 30 hours of childcare a week for three- and four-year-olds, "helping to remove the barriers that can stop them from working".
"It is backed up by a record £6bn per year investment in childcare by the end of the Parliament, as well as introducing tax-free childcare worth up to £2,000 per child per year."

Childcare as part of business infrastructure is an interesting concept. IMO childcare should be free for parents in work.