This one really annoys me. It's one of the very few posts of Eliezer's that I've ever downvoted, because it strikes me as both naive and foolish. And I think that's because what Eliezer's proposing here is to pretend that your map is the territory. To take your third-hand model of history (no doubt deeply flawed and horrendously incomplete) and treat it as if it were your actual experience. Not to mention that you just don't have the knowledge he suggests envisioning (how do you know what it actually feels like to change your mind about slavery?) — or the sheer cognitive impossibility of actually making an imaginary runthrough of history.
It's one thing to recommend having historical perspective, and another to pretend that that perspective is actually your own.
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.