Podcast: Counterfactual History with Niall Ferguson
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 เม.ย. 2022
- On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Associate Director Dr. Samuel DeCanio interviews historian Niall Ferguson from the Hoover Institution. This episode is titled “Counterfactual History with Niall Ferguson”. Some of the questions they will explore are:
How did historian Niall Ferguson become interested in the discipline of history?
How can policymakers learn from history?
How does our past inform our present?
What is counterfactual history?
Is counterfactual history useful for historical analysis and policymaking?
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Thanks for all your comments!
You can find out more about counterfactuals and public policy here: bit.ly/3vVF1ob
And more information on counterfactual history can be found here: amzn.to/3kQAmxJ
This is deeply fascinating. I've got to read this guy!
Thanks for Uploading.
Excellent
Excellent starting point for students who see this difference between "what they should have done" and the uncontrollable weather of Actuality. It is the same conundrum of daily life and the situation being confronted by Hybrid Quantum-Digital Computation proof-disproof circumstances, ie normal behaviour in QM-TIMESPACE continuous complexity.
So the 30 years war story explains the apparent (rational) bias of the Professor's analysis of Economic History and the Political implications of what should have been resolved by Diplomacy, just exactly the same circumstances every Government confronts. ("Nobody wins a War", except for Arms Manufacturers, so why is this world still operating this way?)
If we remember correctly, the 30 Years War was the fateful situation in which Mercenary Soldiers developed their talents as Lawyers in Court. There's a serious relationship with the past requiring revision and careful analysis. (Which every Court Hearing is expected to be)
Also the Professor suggests that a weak-willed dominance of Fire Power is a liability against a true Defence by strategic commitment. The USA has proved this several times, and the inevitable result is more likely driving a collapse in confidence at home than winning an Invasion O/S.
"I am you and you are me and we are all together".., "To be or not to be, that is the Question", War is never going to be the Answer, in Actuality.
hail, Ronnie Woods
Hail, Ronnie
Crank it up!!!!
'Sped read War and Peace. It is about some Russians'
Woody Allen
You left out the best part. They had a war and some peace, too.
goin' egghead on us. others call it The Butterfly Effect
I also read and liked Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and found Samuelson's textbook poor. I especially disliked the claim that supply demand graphs explain or create prices. Graphs without scales which no one uses to decide prices. They seemed an immeasurable abstraction with no real purpose. Reading history of economic thought and what actually happened in various economies is, I believe, more instructive than learning abstract economic theory.
Microeconomic gives a good idea how economic processes work in a stable economic environment and when competitive forces are allowed to operate freely. It unfortunately though gives a false sence of confidence in our understanding of economic processes as it does not deal with uncertainty. It does not include human fallibility and their tendency to make poor and irrational decisions which leads to economic instability. This is why Macroeconims is a black art. How do you model human nature?
the butterfly effect
Gibbon time
So absent counterfactual history (the Richard Evans view), no historian can consider the causes of any historical event. Remarkable that some schools of history strayed, conceptually, so far away from the 'but for' test for factual causation taught in every law school.
The British Empire was a good thing --
Discuss
Hingmy
Wee Frank
It wasn't
The response should always be "compared to what?"
Can anyone produce a rational scenario is which the alternative is a huge number of bloody and oppressive regimes - which were objectively worse than the British Empire, spontaneously adopt parliamentary democracy, the rule of law and a commitment to human rights?
Gonzalo Lira defined Niall.
P.B.U.H.
I got bored after the first 15 minutes or so of rambling introductions and the litany of academic titles. Sorry I couldn't listen to this.