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Comment by rhetocj23

11 days ago

Personally I think people should stop trying to reason from the past.

As tempting as it is, it leads to false outcomes because you are not thinking about how this particular situation is going to impact society and the economy.

Its much harder to reason this way, but isnt that the point? personally I dont want to hear or read analogies based on the past - I want to see and read stuff that comes from original thinking.

4 comments

rhetocj23

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munk-a  11 days ago

Doesn't that line of reasoning leave you in danger of being largely ignorant? There's a wonderful quote from Twain "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes" there are two critical things I'd highlight in that quote - first off the contrast between repetition and rhyming is drawing attention to the fact that things are never exactly the same - there's just a gist of similarities - the second is that it often but doesn't always rhyme - this sure looks like a bubble but it might not be and it might be something entirely new. _That all said_ it's important to learn from history because there are clear echoes of history in events because we, people in general, don't change that fundamentally.

rootusrootus  11 days ago

IME the number of times where people have said "this time it's different" and been wrong is a lot higher than the number of times they've said "this time is the same as the last" and been wrong. In fact, it is the increasing prevalence of the idea that "this time it's different" that makes me batten down the hatches and invest somewhere with more stability.