It seems that a reason for the OP’s post and its specific view of history is to encourage discussion of relevant perspectives, ideas, and insights.
It seems like comments could help improve their activity and could also give the community some voice in this giving activity.
So it’s surprising there have been very few comments. It seems like there’s many well read people here with a lot of historical interest.
To try to help (?) I wanted to write this comment. It’s of moderate quality and somewhat off topic, but maybe it will encourage more comments, or something?
In the section “History is a story”, the OP says:
I sometimes get a vibe from “history people” that we should avoid imposing “narratives” on human history: there are so many previous societies, each with its own richness and complexity, that it’s hard to make generalizations or talk about trends and patterns across the whole thing.
I think history as it’s traditionally taught (or at least, as I learned it back in the 20th century) tends to focus on the key events and details of each time, while only inconsistently situating them against the broader trends
I think the main point the OP is making is that there is a shortage of high quality “big picture” works that give us information on the development of human well-being on major timescales (he says “A lot of history through this lens seems unnecessarily hard to learn about”).
When saying this, the OP points out that it’s reasonable that technology has made (vast) improvements in well being and maybe that trends/ideologies have unfairly reduced the supply of these works.
The OP also says that a lot of history they encountered is the aimless listing of facts/dates, which is boring, and also lacks all important content that can help us actually understand development.
While not really the OP’s main point, I wanted to say that the point about history being aimless dates, doesn’t seem to be normal. Good/most history books don’t have this issue.
People love big overarching stories and academics like to supply them. Guns Germs Steel and Why Nations Fail are two very popular books that many people in EA read. They both give broad overarching views that are far from a list of dates. (The books are basically from “opposing camps” and there is a lot of contention on both, e.g. see Bill Gates disliking Why Nations Fail.)
These two books above are more extreme examples of big stories.
More mellow and maybe more productively, many history books offer valuable context for empowerment and well being:
To be give a specific example, The Witches by Stacy Schiff is a detailed, chronological, account of the Salem Witch trials.
In describing the trials, Schiff gives us a strong sense of the rigid life of women (and a few slaves), as well insight into the agency of men and women at different levels of social hierarchy in colonial Massachusetts. It’s interesting how the trials act as a stress test of New England institutions. This seems relevant to OP’s point of wellbeing and empowerment (but is limited to a snapshot of one time and place, so is not what they want).
So again, it’s not the OP’s point, but in case someone was reading the particular passage, I really think many or all good history books have a strong narrative and are very readable.
P.S
I’m like, a doofus. Also I’m not very virtuous. But since no one else has said it, I want to write that the OP’s goals seem great and wise to me:
To be specific, it seems useful to support the works they want to see that describe the development of empowerment and wellbeing, maybe through the various tools (hiring/contractors/academic relationships) they have employed in other cause areas.
I also wanted to say it seems mainstream and normal that technological development relevant to wellbeing and empowerment seems to belong in recent centuries and also belong to very limited parts of the world, e.g. the Enlightenment, even just the Scots, played an outsize, even overwhelming role.
Thanks for the kind words! I agree there are a number of works out there that do a good job presenting history as a “story.” My comments were more about an impression I sometimes get from “history people” that this should be avoided.
I think the OP has personally created an organization and also directed hundreds of millions of dollars toward developing technology and science to improve wellbeing in a direct, tangible way.
It seems that a reason for the OP’s post and its specific view of history is to encourage discussion of relevant perspectives, ideas, and insights.
It seems like comments could help improve their activity and could also give the community some voice in this giving activity.
So it’s surprising there have been very few comments. It seems like there’s many well read people here with a lot of historical interest.
To try to help (?) I wanted to write this comment. It’s of moderate quality and somewhat off topic, but maybe it will encourage more comments, or something?
In the section “History is a story”, the OP says:
I think the main point the OP is making is that there is a shortage of high quality “big picture” works that give us information on the development of human well-being on major timescales (he says “A lot of history through this lens seems unnecessarily hard to learn about”).
When saying this, the OP points out that it’s reasonable that technology has made (vast) improvements in well being and maybe that trends/ideologies have unfairly reduced the supply of these works.
The OP also says that a lot of history they encountered is the aimless listing of facts/dates, which is boring, and also lacks all important content that can help us actually understand development.
While not really the OP’s main point, I wanted to say that the point about history being aimless dates, doesn’t seem to be normal. Good/most history books don’t have this issue.
People love big overarching stories and academics like to supply them. Guns Germs Steel and Why Nations Fail are two very popular books that many people in EA read. They both give broad overarching views that are far from a list of dates. (The books are basically from “opposing camps” and there is a lot of contention on both, e.g. see Bill Gates disliking Why Nations Fail.)
These two books above are more extreme examples of big stories.
More mellow and maybe more productively, many history books offer valuable context for empowerment and well being:
To be give a specific example, The Witches by Stacy Schiff is a detailed, chronological, account of the Salem Witch trials.
In describing the trials, Schiff gives us a strong sense of the rigid life of women (and a few slaves), as well insight into the agency of men and women at different levels of social hierarchy in colonial Massachusetts. It’s interesting how the trials act as a stress test of New England institutions. This seems relevant to OP’s point of wellbeing and empowerment (but is limited to a snapshot of one time and place, so is not what they want).
So again, it’s not the OP’s point, but in case someone was reading the particular passage, I really think many or all good history books have a strong narrative and are very readable.
P.S
I’m like, a doofus. Also I’m not very virtuous. But since no one else has said it, I want to write that the OP’s goals seem great and wise to me:
To be specific, it seems useful to support the works they want to see that describe the development of empowerment and wellbeing, maybe through the various tools (hiring/contractors/academic relationships) they have employed in other cause areas.
I also wanted to say it seems mainstream and normal that technological development relevant to wellbeing and empowerment seems to belong in recent centuries and also belong to very limited parts of the world, e.g. the Enlightenment, even just the Scots, played an outsize, even overwhelming role.
Thanks for the kind words! I agree there are a number of works out there that do a good job presenting history as a “story.” My comments were more about an impression I sometimes get from “history people” that this should be avoided.