Imagine you want to found the discipline of Rationalist History, and you’re working on a book about the Roman Empire. You’re writing a section on a battle between the Romans and the Thracians, but all the Roman sources say the Romans killed a bazillion Thracian soldiers but the Thracian sources say they killed a bazillion Romans. Being good high-decouplers, source criticism is not allowed because that’s a genetic fallacy. Should we equally steelman the Romans and the Thracians? Would it be uncharitable to say that one of the two might be lying? Is history, as Henry Ford said, bunk?
Nah, bro. Go hard “IDW.” The death count doesn’t matter. Rome won because they represent civilization and the Thracians lost because they were barbarians. Also the Roman Empire fell because of identity politics, leftism, and nihilism.
Use heap loads of bad evo-psych.
Then at least rationalists will think you’re “interesting” and worth defending.
Well the Thracians were SJWs and they buried the true number of deaths for ideological reasons because they don’t believe in the free exchange of ideas and hate science and logic
The Romans were clearly built to be a ruler caste, so I don’t see the problem in disbelieving the Thracians.
Well yes, but it’s rationally founded radical relativism, which makes it good, unlike what postmodernists do, which is ipso facto bad.
Because we’re rational, we make shit up using our priors. So I happen to like Romans, so it’s more likely Rome was right than not.
Disagreements subject to ban for not being charitable enough.
but even if the claims are suspicious, they’re still *weak evidence* of something!
I would recommend Hegelbot’s essay on how one should be Rational but not Rationalist in the study of history; but the essay doesn’t exist.