Jeff Nyquist’s comment on his blog today, well put:
“John has written one of his insightful pieces again, full of a common sense. He writes with a clarity that brushes away the prevailing cobwebs of the mind. You have to read a lot of history before it begins to come into focus.”
Historians could use some of that “trust the science” now to decrypt hundred of thousands more VENONA intercepts as J Michael Waller is pushing for. We can then address first world narrative problems as historic facts reveal themselves and help us see what’s going on now more clearly. Win-win. Then similarly, maybe science can help quickly recover millions of still-shredded Stasi files for the German people.
Actually, Jeff Nyquist had better understand that history is actually bullshit.
Few ideas are repeated more confidently than the claim that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." It sounds profound. It is also nonsense.
The problem is not that history is uninteresting. History is fascinating. The problem is that people mistake storytelling for explanation. They believe that by studying the sequence of past events they gain insight into why things happen. In reality, history provides little more than a catalogue of contingencies, accidents, personalities, and circumstances that can never be reproduced.
If we want to understand a hurricane, we do not study the history of previous hurricanes. We study atmospheric physics. If we want to understand disease, we do not study the history of previous epidemics. We study biology and medicine. In every successful science, explanation comes from discovering the underlying mechanisms that generate phenomena, not from collecting narratives about previous instances.
History, by contrast, is entirely narrative. It tells us what happened but not why it had to happen. The fall of Rome, the French Revolution, or the rise of industrial capitalism are treated as sources of timeless wisdom. Yet every event occurred within a unique web of circumstances that can never be recreated. History does not repeat itself; therefore historical lessons are vague enough to accommodate any conclusion one wishes to draw.
This is why political leaders constantly invoke history while reaching opposite conclusions. One person sees Munich and argues for intervention. Another sees Vietnam and argues against it. The same historical record generates contradictory lessons because the lessons are not contained in the facts themselves. They are projected onto them by the observer.
The belief that history is the best way to understand something is equally misguided. To understand iron production, one studies metallurgy, not the history of blacksmithing. To understand language, one studies linguistics, not the history of dictionaries. To understand the universe, one studies physics, not the history of astronomy. Historical knowledge may tell us how ideas developed, but it does not tell us whether those ideas are true.
History is valuable as memory, literature, and cultural self-understanding. But it is a poor substitute for explanation. The real engines of understanding are not chronicles of the past but the sciences that uncover the mechanisms underlying reality. History tells us where we have been. Science tells us what is actually going on.
'First, based on these examples, eliminating or reducing the military power of your opponent doesn’t necessarily end a war, nor does a physical occupation of his country.'
Nope, there was never a war where someone eliminated his enemy's military power without that ipso facto ending the war. Wars end when one side loses the will or ability to to fight on and quits. Sometimes it's possible to simply scare an enemy into submission such as in the 1940 Franco-German war. But when the leadership is serious the only way to win is to defeat the forces he has on the field.
Your idea that the Germans 'essentially' won WWI simply because they generally gave a lot more than they took is based on myopic reasoning. WWI was a global conflict fought between two vast enemy coalitions. The victorious coalition was the Entente. And although the American contribution was decisive it could not have produced this outcome by itself. So claiming that both world wars were 'essentially' won by the US is nonsense. The word 'essentially' is valid here only if you can prove that the American troops not only inflicted by themselves the vast majority of the enemy's personnel losses but that they did so without any substantial material support or co-operation by others. This is far from the case although the US contribution was indeed decisive.
Jeff Nyquist’s comment on his blog today, well put:
“John has written one of his insightful pieces again, full of a common sense. He writes with a clarity that brushes away the prevailing cobwebs of the mind. You have to read a lot of history before it begins to come into focus.”
https://jrnyquist.blog/2026/06/13/china-report-for-june-2026-an-interview-with-lude/
Historians could use some of that “trust the science” now to decrypt hundred of thousands more VENONA intercepts as J Michael Waller is pushing for. We can then address first world narrative problems as historic facts reveal themselves and help us see what’s going on now more clearly. Win-win. Then similarly, maybe science can help quickly recover millions of still-shredded Stasi files for the German people.
Actually, Jeff Nyquist had better understand that history is actually bullshit.
Few ideas are repeated more confidently than the claim that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." It sounds profound. It is also nonsense.
The problem is not that history is uninteresting. History is fascinating. The problem is that people mistake storytelling for explanation. They believe that by studying the sequence of past events they gain insight into why things happen. In reality, history provides little more than a catalogue of contingencies, accidents, personalities, and circumstances that can never be reproduced.
If we want to understand a hurricane, we do not study the history of previous hurricanes. We study atmospheric physics. If we want to understand disease, we do not study the history of previous epidemics. We study biology and medicine. In every successful science, explanation comes from discovering the underlying mechanisms that generate phenomena, not from collecting narratives about previous instances.
History, by contrast, is entirely narrative. It tells us what happened but not why it had to happen. The fall of Rome, the French Revolution, or the rise of industrial capitalism are treated as sources of timeless wisdom. Yet every event occurred within a unique web of circumstances that can never be recreated. History does not repeat itself; therefore historical lessons are vague enough to accommodate any conclusion one wishes to draw.
This is why political leaders constantly invoke history while reaching opposite conclusions. One person sees Munich and argues for intervention. Another sees Vietnam and argues against it. The same historical record generates contradictory lessons because the lessons are not contained in the facts themselves. They are projected onto them by the observer.
The belief that history is the best way to understand something is equally misguided. To understand iron production, one studies metallurgy, not the history of blacksmithing. To understand language, one studies linguistics, not the history of dictionaries. To understand the universe, one studies physics, not the history of astronomy. Historical knowledge may tell us how ideas developed, but it does not tell us whether those ideas are true.
History is valuable as memory, literature, and cultural self-understanding. But it is a poor substitute for explanation. The real engines of understanding are not chronicles of the past but the sciences that uncover the mechanisms underlying reality. History tells us where we have been. Science tells us what is actually going on.
You write:
'First, based on these examples, eliminating or reducing the military power of your opponent doesn’t necessarily end a war, nor does a physical occupation of his country.'
Nope, there was never a war where someone eliminated his enemy's military power without that ipso facto ending the war. Wars end when one side loses the will or ability to to fight on and quits. Sometimes it's possible to simply scare an enemy into submission such as in the 1940 Franco-German war. But when the leadership is serious the only way to win is to defeat the forces he has on the field.
Your idea that the Germans 'essentially' won WWI simply because they generally gave a lot more than they took is based on myopic reasoning. WWI was a global conflict fought between two vast enemy coalitions. The victorious coalition was the Entente. And although the American contribution was decisive it could not have produced this outcome by itself. So claiming that both world wars were 'essentially' won by the US is nonsense. The word 'essentially' is valid here only if you can prove that the American troops not only inflicted by themselves the vast majority of the enemy's personnel losses but that they did so without any substantial material support or co-operation by others. This is far from the case although the US contribution was indeed decisive.