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Comment by abdel_nasser | Hacker News Reader

i am really interested in history and i have spent a lot of time looking for a good book on a certain topic or time period and sometimes not finding anything. it turns out that its really hard to find books that are completely objective, well researched and also written well. there is a scarcity of these kinds of books especially for modern history. and so the idea struck me that maybe i ought to write a short history book. but then i thought that that sounds like a pipe dream. anyway, for anyone who likes that kind of thing i would recommend the binladen book that was published recently. havent read it yet but i cant wait to. it turns out the invasion wasnt so misguided after all.

https://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300260632

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> completely objective.

The really sad thing is that people have discovered that "completely objective" doesn't sell very well.

Taking an extreme view sells much better, but provides much less useful information.

> The really sad thing is that people have discovered that "completely objective" doesn't sell very well.

"Discovered"? It's always been this way. Controversy sells. If it bleeds, it leads. Etc...

I remember, when first doing academic publications, my supervisor told me controversy sells. It was true then, it's true now, it was probably true when newsletters were printed in cuneiform on stone tables.

Is it even possible to write a completely objective book about history?

No, but one can try to avoid overt irritating biases.

Not a good one. Objective history book would be a timeline. To add another thing interesting (eg cause and effect) is to make decisions and introduce bias.

Even a timeline would be subjective as the author would have to chose what to include.

youve completely lost sight of the forest. there are little granules of subjectivity like the ones you nitpick about and there are huge boulders of subjective nonsense that leave you with a giant bump on your head -- the kind that are caused by dogma like race/gender politics, religion, war etc. the absence of these is what is desperately needed. to wave away the boulders because of the granules is idiotic. ive read books that looked at war objectively, excised moral dogma from religion and omitted race/gender crusading entirely and its very good.

> Objective history book would be ... decisions and... bias

No, not necessarily. From the events you go to the chains of events, the clusters, the trends, the teachings etc.

Similarly to experimental science, where you go from the protocols ("this happened there then") to the "laws".

The role of «decisions and bias» could be limited, with some similar quantitative, and maybe collaborative (aggregation of multi-agent contribution) approach that ranked the outputs through a computed importance.

It may be theoretically possible to write history books tending towards objectivity through impersonal, collaborative, quantitative, semi-automated methods. See my other post nearby.

But also note what the goals can be: a "computed" summary vs clever, intelligent, wise insights. Note that some texts are built so as to include both: a flow of core analysis with quality commentaries as asides.

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