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by MichaelDickens
1 min read18th Oct 20213 comments
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18th Oct 2021
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[-]MichaelDickens2y90

What's going on with /r/AskHistorians?

AFAIK, /r/AskHistorians is the best place to hear from actual historians about historical topics. But I've noticed some trends that make it seem like the historians there generally share some bias or agenda, but I can't exactly tell what that agenda is.

The most obvious thing I noticed is from their FAQ on historians' views on other [popular] historians. I looked through these and in every single case, the /r/AskHistorians commenters dislike the pop historian. Surely at least one pop historian got it right?

I don't know about the actual object level, but a lot of /r/AskHistorians' criticisms strike me as weak:

  • They criticize Dan Carlin for (1) allegedly downplaying the Rape of Belgium even though by my listening he emphasized pretty strongly how bad it was and (2) doing a bad job answering "could Caesar have won the Battle of Hastings?" even though this is a thought experiment, not a historical question. (Some commenters criticize him for being inaccurate and others criticize him for being unoriginal, which are contradictory criticisms.)
  • They criticize Guns, Germs, and Steel for...honestly I'm a little confused about how this person disagrees with GGS.
  • Lots of criticisms of popular works for being "oversimplified", which strikes me as a dumb criticism—everything is simplified, the map is always less detailed than the territory.
  • They criticize The Better Angels of Our Nature for taking implausible figures from ancient historians at face value (fair) and for using per capita deaths instead of total deaths (per capita seems obviously correct to me?).

Seems like they are bending over backwards to talk about how bad popular historical media are, while not providing substantive criticisms. I've also noticed they like to criticize media for not citing any sources (or for citing sources that aren't sufficiently academic), but then they usually don't cite any sources themselves.

I don't know enough about history to know whether /r/AskHistorians is reliable, but I see some meta-level issues that make me skeptical. I want to get other people's takes. Am I being unfair to /r/AskHistorians?

(I don't expect to find a lot of historians on LessWrong, but I do expect to find people who are good at assessing credibility.)

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[-]MichaelDickens3y10

When people sneeze, do they expel more fluid from their mouth than from their nose?

I saw this video (warning: slow-mo video of a sneeze. kind of gross) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeYfUTA11s&t=79s and it looks like almost all the fluid is coming out of the person's mouth, not their nose. Is that typical?

(Meta: Wasn't sure where to ask this question, but I figured someone on LessWrong would know the answer.)

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[-]Pattern3y20

This could be tested by a) inducing sneezing (although induction methods might produce an unusual sneeze, which works differently). and b) using an intervention of some kind.

Inducing sneezing isn't hard, but can be extremely unpleasant, depending on the method. However, if you're going to sneeze anyway...

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