[SEQ RERUN] Making History Available

Today’s post, Making History Available was originally published on 31 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

It’s easy not to take the lessons of history seriously; our brains aren’t well-equipped to translate dry facts into experiences. But imagine living through the whole of human history—imagine watching mysteries be explained, watching civilizations rise and fall, being surprised over and over again—and you’ll be less shocked by the strangeness of the next era.


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Failing to Learn from History, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.