Politics and history—lets you see what answers you would give to difficult real-life problems, and you have to keep in mind that the people who dealt with them at the time were really extremely smart and politically able. They might not have been experts on rationality, but they were certainly experts at it. Learn from their failures.
I like history because it supplies lots of counter-examples. You sometimes see people say silly things in discussions that they wouldn’t say if they knew their history.
(For example, on lukeprog’s blog, I saw a commenter say that he didn’t know of anyone shedding blood in the name of the Buddha, as compared to Mohammed or Jesus. Sure, as far as he knew...)
Politics and history—lets you see what answers you would give to difficult real-life problems, and you have to keep in mind that the people who dealt with them at the time were really extremely smart and politically able. They might not have been experts on rationality, but they were certainly experts at it. Learn from their failures.
I like history because it supplies lots of counter-examples. You sometimes see people say silly things in discussions that they wouldn’t say if they knew their history.
(For example, on lukeprog’s blog, I saw a commenter say that he didn’t know of anyone shedding blood in the name of the Buddha, as compared to Mohammed or Jesus. Sure, as far as he knew...)