If You Could Change History

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Land your time machine directly and forcefully on Henry Cabot Lodge.

Touche.  Reminds me of the Futurama forwards time machine ep.

[maarsen]

It seems that WWI is a focal point or cusp and affects all that came after. The world did have zero long respite from major wars since the defeat over Napoleon.  Warfare did not advance much as shown by the US Civil War. Give the British government plans for a battle tank around 1910 as an answer to the machine gun and end the stalemate that took so many lives. To be on the safe side,  have people infected with the Spanish flu visit the Schickelgruber household. Tell them not to wash their hands when doing so. Snot helps protect young Adolph. 

[mankytoes]

On 28/08/2017 at 10:44 AM, Jo498 said:

Socrates was supposedly a stonemason and his mother had been a midwife. As the slaves correspond to a working class, he was something like lowest middle class in our terms and frequently jokes about how poor he is.

Your idea is flawed in many respects. Who would do the testing? Where do you get the resources in a world that basically barely gets along with feeding, clothing and defending its citizens? According to which contemporary criteria would they test? How many real world cases were there when "moron princes" squandered something (usually smarter advisors governed in practice). (How many real world cases are there where "meritocratic elites" squander huge amounts of resources through a war or a financial bubble and crisis roughly every decade or two?) In antiquity a master would want to get most out of his slaves, so smart slaves would get some education (or more frequently would already have some education before they were enslaved) and often work as scribes, in administrative functions etc. and could later become freedmen etc.

I don't believe in strict historical determinism or in some ideal optimization, but I think that past societies were overall adapted fairly well to their environment and what we perceive as gross unjustice, inefficiency, flaws or stupidity were often efficient strategies that allowed them to function well. A lot of "improvements" we suggest would not have worked or would have involved risks they could not know would be worth taking (i.e. that would have been irrational to take, except with our 20/20 hindsight). A lot of things need to be in place for (even early) modern science to work its wonders. As with the more specific example of "skipping" the horrible wars and upheavals of the first half of the 20th century it is very doubtful that one can simply "skip ahead"  in historical developments.

(And extrapolating exponential "gains" from a certain period, like the last 2 centuries of industrialization is also doubtful; nothing ever keeps growing exponentially forever in a finite world. You pick the low hanging fruit and soon you are on an S-curve heading for stagnation (or logarithmic, not exponential growth).

I think any Athenian citizen would be in the global 1%.

Who would do the testing? The state.

Where would you get the resources? Taxation, these were not poor states, just very unequal ones. Even the most basic testing of young children would provide a far more meritocratic society than one based purely on position at birth, and thus would increase efficiency.

What would be tested? I don't know, logic, mathematics, language. I don't see why that's a flaw? Surely you can think of what a test could be?

There are countless cases of moronic princes squandering things. The most common must be squandering resources on stupid military actions. British monarchs did this constantly in the early years, there were all these wars with France which never were going to achieve anything in the long term.

It's meant to be a fun question. You time travel to Ancient Greece in reality, no one will be able to communicate with you, you'll be seen as insane. And if you do change things, you'll probably cause some really fucked up butterfly effects. Again, don't change history. No one has the right to gamble with all of humanity like that.

Taking the question in the spirit it's intended, my answer would give the greatest progress to humanity.

[Hereward]

On 29/08/2017 at 0:42 PM, mankytoes said:

There are countless cases of moronic princes squandering things. The most common must be squandering resources on stupid military actions. British monarchs did this constantly in the early years, there were all these wars with France which never were going to achieve anything in the long term.

That's not true. They prevented France from dominating the continent, established Britain as the pre-eminent trading nation, and launched its industrialistion process.

[mankytoes]

3 minutes ago, Hereward said:

That's not true. They prevented France from dominating the continent, established Britain as the pre-eminent trading nation, and launched its industrialistion process.

I'm talking earlier than that, Middle Ages, pre-empire. There's one that Henry the Eighth did when he was young, and it wasn't him being a bad king, it was something he was expected to do. Spent a fortune invading France, captured a city, held it for a few years at great expense, eventually let the French have it back for a financial settlement that was far less than the expense.

Our kings were officially crowned "king of France" for years (a throwback to when Edward the Third (I think it was) actually had a pretty good claim), so were expected to pursue their claim, despite the fact we were never going to actually conquer France, and it was pretty much impossible for it not to be a huge waste of our rather limited resources (the treasury almost always seemed to be broke until we got the Empire up and running).

And that's not even getting into the bloody crusades...

[Sullen]

I'd balkanize Germany at Versailles, there was never going to be peace on the continent as long as Germany stayed as it did.

Smash it apart, undo Bismarck's legacy, and let Europe be free of the tyrannous presence of Germany once and for all.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

On 2017-08-28 at 11:44 AM, Jo498 said:

Socrates was supposedly a stonemason and his mother had been a midwife. As the slaves correspond to a working class, he was something like lowest middle class in our terms and frequently jokes about how poor he is.

Your idea is flawed in many respects. Who would do the testing? Where do you get the resources in a world that basically barely gets along with feeding, clothing and defending its citizens? According to which contemporary criteria would they test? How many real world cases were there when "moron princes" squandered something (usually smarter advisors governed in practice). (How many real world cases are there where "meritocratic elites" squander huge amounts of resources through a war or a financial bubble and crisis roughly every decade or two?) In antiquity a master would want to get most out of his slaves, so smart slaves would get some education (or more frequently would already have some education before they were enslaved) and often work as scribes, in administrative functions etc. and could later become freedmen etc.

I don't believe in strict historical determinism or in some ideal optimization, but I think that past societies were overall adapted fairly well to their environment and what we perceive as gross unjustice, inefficiency, flaws or stupidity were often efficient strategies that allowed them to function well. A lot of "improvements" we suggest would not have worked or would have involved risks they could not know would be worth taking (i.e. that would have been irrational to take, except with our 20/20 hindsight). A lot of things need to be in place for (even early) modern science to work its wonders. As with the more specific example of "skipping" the horrible wars and upheavals of the first half of the 20th century it is very doubtful that one can simply "skip ahead"  in historical developments.

(And extrapolating exponential "gains" from a certain period, like the last 2 centuries of industrialization is also doubtful; nothing ever keeps growing exponentially forever in a finite world. You pick the low hanging fruit and soon you are on an S-curve heading for stagnation (or logarithmic, not exponential growth).

 

I also think the risk of being ruled by a "moron" king was pretty small, even though it is a common stereotype in fiction. 

Aside from being descended from individuals at the very top of society with everything that entails, princes were also often put into very comprehensive and demanding education pretty much from the moment they were able to talk. Often having little time to actually spend with their parents due to how much time they had to spend learning languages, politics, economy, military strategy, etc. Reading about Swedish kings during the 1600-1700's really doesn't make you envy their lives particularly much. They basically didn't have any childhoods.

 I think the risk of being ruled by a mentally ill king was more serious, but that's not really something a simple intelligence test would correct for anyway. 

[GAROVORKIN]

1 hour ago, Sullen said:

I'd balkanize Germany at Versailles, there was never going to be peace on the continent as long as Germany stayed as it did.

Smash it apart, undo Bismarck's legacy, and let Europe be free of the tyrannous presence of Germany once and for all.

Bad strategy , that would have  further destabilized Europe. 

[Sullen]

18 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Bad strategy , that would have  further destabilized Europe. 

Not any more than a pissed off but still completely intact Germany could have (and did do). Germany pretty much feels like a cornered beast at all times, putting it down was the responsible thing to do.

Divide and conquer, easier to keep the ex-German states in check then.

[GAROVORKIN]

46 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Not any more than a pissed off but still completely intact Germany could have (and did do). Germany pretty much feels like a cornered beast at all times, putting it down was the responsible thing to do.

Divide and conquer, easier to keep the ex-German states in check then.

 

All they really  had to do at Versailles was give Germany a fair peace with  no war guilt clause  and no ruinous reparations payments . That would prevented alot of acrimony and resentment. Leaving the Kaiser on the Throne  as a constitutional monarch might  have also been helpful too.   The problem was that the so called big four decided to be small minded and short sighted 

[KingintheNorth4]

I'd rather change my own personal history than alter any major world events.

[Hereward]

15 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I'm talking earlier than that, Middle Ages, pre-empire. There's one that Henry the Eighth did when he was young, and it wasn't him being a bad king, it was something he was expected to do. Spent a fortune invading France, captured a city, held it for a few years at great expense, eventually let the French have it back for a financial settlement that was far less than the expense.

Our kings were officially crowned "king of France" for years (a throwback to when Edward the Third (I think it was) actually had a pretty good claim), so were expected to pursue their claim, despite the fact we were never going to actually conquer France, and it was pretty much impossible for it not to be a huge waste of our rather limited resources (the treasury almost always seemed to be broke until we got the Empire up and running).

And that's not even getting into the bloody crusades...

Apologies, for some reason I assumed you were talking about the series of wars in the 18th century.

[SeanF]

20 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I'm talking earlier than that, Middle Ages, pre-empire. There's one that Henry the Eighth did when he was young, and it wasn't him being a bad king, it was something he was expected to do. Spent a fortune invading France, captured a city, held it for a few years at great expense, eventually let the French have it back for a financial settlement that was far less than the expense.

Our kings were officially crowned "king of France" for years (a throwback to when Edward the Third (I think it was) actually had a pretty good claim), so were expected to pursue their claim, despite the fact we were never going to actually conquer France, and it was pretty much impossible for it not to be a huge waste of our rather limited resources (the treasury almost always seemed to be broke until we got the Empire up and running).

And that's not even getting into the bloody crusades...

Edward III and Henry V very nearly made good their claims to be Kings of France.  Up till about 1370, Edward's wars in France were largely self-financing (things went badly wrong from then on). 

[SeanF]

I think that the history of Western Europe, for several hundred years after 400 AD, would have been much better if Honorius had died before coming to the Throne.

[SeanF]

On ‎8‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 1:54 PM, Red Tiger said:

I would urge America and other victorious countries to help Germany rebuild after WW1

I think that on the whole, Germany was treated quite leniently at Versailles.

[Jo498]

On 29.8.2017 at 1:42 PM, mankytoes said:

I think any Athenian citizen would be in the global 1%.

Who would do the testing? The state.

Where would you get the resources? Taxation, these were not poor states, just very unequal ones. Even the most basic testing of young children would provide a far more meritocratic society than one based purely on position at birth, and thus would increase efficiency.

What would be tested? I don't know, logic, mathematics, language. I don't see why that's a flaw? Surely you can think of what a test could be?

There are countless cases of moronic princes squandering things. The most common must be squandering resources on stupid military actions. British monarchs did this constantly in the early years, there were all these wars with France which never were going to achieve anything in the long term.

It's meant to be a fun question. You time travel to Ancient Greece in reality, no one will be able to communicate with you, you'll be seen as insane. And if you do change things, you'll probably cause some really fucked up butterfly effects. Again, don't change history. No one has the right to gamble with all of humanity like that.

Taking the question in the spirit it's intended, my answer would give the greatest progress to humanity.

I don't know how to meaningfully compare an Athenian citizen 400 BC to a Roman, Carthaginian, Alexandrian, Chinese citizen or some hunter in Australia. So "global 1%" is not helpful in this context. Socrates certainly was not among the Athenian 1%.

No, you simply *claim* that you get the "greatest progess to humanity". You have given absolutely zero data to back it up. You have neither shown (nor even given a little argument) that overall all or most societies from, say 500 BC to 1850 (or whatever point you believe at least some meritocratic structures came to dominate for the benefit of mankind) were more wasteful, inefficient and generally more prone to stupid taxes, stupid administration, stupid wars etc. than the (meritocratic) societies of the last 150 years. Nor have you shown that more meritocratic imperial China was "better" (in the relevant aspects) than e.g. Europe or the Califates or India. One could expect India being the worst because the caste system might be as anti-meritocratic as it gets; I saw some historic economical data a few weeks ago, I don't think that this was clearly the case during the middle ages. It would very hard to show because there are so many confounding factors that were also different among these historical (or our) societies. 

Look at the wars that did not really achieve anything that were fought by our rational, enlightened meritocrats since the end of WW II. Again, I don't make bold claims. I admit that I do not know if they were really more wasteful and inefficient back then. I highly doubt it, though. Because we are incredibly wasteful, inefficient and stupid today and they usually had far less resources (in a very broad sense) to spare. So they probably could have done better, sure, but so do we, and looking at history, I really and truly doubt that we do much better than them. (All things considered, of course, many things are better now, but most of it is due to technology and access to resources they did not have.)

In a nutshell: I don't see any clear correlation of meritocracy and development that would allow the conclusion that only injecting 21st idea of meritocracy into ancient Greece or medieval Europe would give them an incredible boost. In western Europe almost all the supposedly great achievements of the enlightenment took place when it was still a fairly stratified society.

[Sullen]

19 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

All they really  had to do at Versailles was give Germany a fair peace with  no war guilt clause  and no ruinous reparations payments . That would prevented alot of acrimony and resentment. Leaving the Kaiser on the Throne  as a constitutional monarch might  have also been helpful too.   The problem was that the so called big four decided to be small minded and short sighted 

You do realize that Versailles was far too lenient on Germany, right? The whole "Versailles was unfair to Germany" shtick was Nazi propaganda first, and became a narrative to ease Germany out of Russia's sphere of influence second.

No war guilt clause my ass, the Germans were responsible for the whole goddamn mess. If they hadn't given carte blanche to Austria, the invasion of Serbia wouldn't have happened, or at least wouldn't have included the whole damned world. Not to mention the repeated treaty violations and crimes against humanity that would plague German military history during the whole goddamn Great War. They're the ones who caused the War, and most of the damage caused by the War was on French and Belgian soil. Germany was treated far too kindly, it should have gone the way of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire... complete dissolution was the solution.

The final deal was sabotaged by differing interests from different actors. Wilson was an idealist that wanted his own American German population to be content, and wanted a strong trading partner in Germany, hence the lenience, and the British, Napoleon still fresh on their mind, were not willing to let France be the only continental superpower. Naivete at its finest, and an unwillingness to listen to the French voice of reason, led to an intact Germany which felt slighted by the outcome of the war. Versailles should have declawed and defanged the tiger that was the German Empire, instead they simply yanked its tail and angered it more. 

As Ferdinand Foch famously put it, the Treaty of Versailles was not a peace deal, it was an armistice of twenty years.

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think that on the whole, Germany was treated quite leniently at Versailles.

Thank you for injecting some sanity into this discussion.

[Red Tiger]

3 hours ago, Sullen said:

You do realize that Versailles was far too lenient on Germany, right? The whole "Versailles was unfair to Germany" shtick was Nazi propaganda first, and became a narrative to ease Germany out of Russia's sphere of influence second.

No war guilt clause my ass, the Germans were responsible for the whole goddamn mess. If they hadn't given carte blanche to Austria, the invasion of Serbia wouldn't have happened, or at least wouldn't have included the whole damned world. Not to mention the repeated treaty violations and crimes against humanity that would plague German military history during the whole goddamn Great War. They're the ones who caused the War, and most of the damage caused by the War was on French and Belgian soil. Germany was treated far too kindly, it should have gone the way of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire... complete dissolution was the solution.

The final deal was sabotaged by differing interests from different actors. Wilson was an idealist that wanted his own American German population to be content, and wanted a strong trading partner in Germany, hence the lenience, and the British, Napoleon still fresh on their mind, were not willing to let France be the only continental superpower. Naivete at its finest, and an unwillingness to listen to the French voice of reason, led to an intact Germany which felt slighted by the outcome of the war. Versailles should have declawed and defanged the tiger that was the German Empire, instead they simply yanked its tail and angered it more. 

As Ferdinand Foch famously put it, the Treaty of Versailles was not a peace deal, it was an armistice of twenty years.

Thank you for injecting some sanity into this discussion.

So basically the victors were too soft on Germany?

[mankytoes]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I don't know how to meaningfully compare an Athenian citizen 400 BC to a Roman, Carthaginian, Alexandrian, Chinese citizen or some hunter in Australia. So "global 1%" is not helpful in this context. Socrates certainly was not among the Athenian 1%.

No, you simply *claim* that you get the "greatest progess to humanity". You have given absolutely zero data to back it up. You have neither shown (nor even given a little argument) that overall all or most societies from, say 500 BC to 1850 (or whatever point you believe at least some meritocratic structures came to dominate for the benefit of mankind) were more wasteful, inefficient and generally more prone to stupid taxes, stupid administration, stupid wars etc. than the (meritocratic) societies of the last 150 years. Nor have you shown that more meritocratic imperial China was "better" (in the relevant aspects) than e.g. Europe or the Califates or India. One could expect India being the worst because the caste system might be as anti-meritocratic as it gets; I saw some historic economical data a few weeks ago, I don't think that this was clearly the case during the middle ages. It would very hard to show because there are so many confounding factors that were also different among these historical (or our) societies. 

Look at the wars that did not really achieve anything that were fought by our rational, enlightened meritocrats since the end of WW II. Again, I don't make bold claims. I admit that I do not know if they were really more wasteful and inefficient back then. I highly doubt it, though. Because we are incredibly wasteful, inefficient and stupid today and they usually had far less resources (in a very broad sense) to spare. So they probably could have done better, sure, but so do we, and looking at history, I really and truly doubt that we do much better than them. (All things considered, of course, many things are better now, but most of it is due to technology and access to resources they did not have.)

In a nutshell: I don't see any clear correlation of meritocracy and development that would allow the conclusion that only injecting 21st idea of meritocracy into ancient Greece or medieval Europe would give them an incredible boost. In western Europe almost all the supposedly great achievements of the enlightenment took place when it was still a fairly stratified society.

Sorry, I'm lacking the energy a bit for this one, I'm trying to be clear to you that this is a bit of fun, you really shouldn't mess with history, I'd guess most people had read enough sci fi to teach them that? I'm not going to find data that back up my time travel ideas.

In terms of meritocracy being better, I thought it was kind of self evident.

Class type systems help keep socities organised. For example I was recently reading about the Japanese warring states period (highly recommended to any history nerd), and it finished when the new shogun enforced a new strict class based system. It kept the peace for a long time. Meritocracy is far more efficient, but not if it causes civil war.

You say it's a 21st century idea, but Plato advocated it. It's not like no one ever thought of it.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

9 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Sorry, I'm lacking the energy a bit for this one, I'm trying to be clear to you that this is a bit of fun, you really shouldn't mess with history, I'd guess most people had read enough sci fi to teach them that? I'm not going to find data that back up my time travel ideas.

 Wikihistory FTW!

 https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/