Hacker News Reader

Comment by onetimeuse92304 | Hacker News Reader

It is hard to me to understand how much this revisionist tendency is just a recent invention and to what extent it has been present throughout the history.

For the most part, I can see old books on bookshelves are still unedited. But maybe some other books have been completely destroyed due to not being acceptable to future readers/powers?

But I really hate it. I dislike when people do not understand that moral and social norms change over time and you can't blindly apply your current views to historical people who were brought up and lived in a different world.

I am pretty sure people in some distant future will think about us as heathens for eating meat, driving cars and wearing plastic. I hope they will be wise enough not to cancel us complete for this and hear out other wisdom we might want to pass.

View on HN

> It is hard to me to understand how much this revisionist tendency is just a recent invention and to what extent it has been present throughout the history

How could this be a recent invention when the bible literally exists? That we know that greek and roman gods have a complex and related history, itself derived from even older gods? We literally know that we know almost nothing about the vikings because they didn't write much stuff down so all accounts we know are almost entirely by people who hate them!

> I am pretty sure people in some distant future will think about us as heathens for eating meat, driving cars and wearing plastic. I hope they will be wise enough not to cancel us complete for this and hear out other wisdom we might want to pass.

I think we're pretty poor at predicting what future generations will think about us. To that point I heartily recommend "But What If We're Wrong" by Chuck Klosterman.

It's hard to know how predominate views will change, but it is certain that they will change. If views change, the future generations must, by necessity, see us as wrong on some dimension(s) or else their views would have remained the same.

So I think the need to be able to look at past generations and "hear them out" (i.e. not cancel them, take the good, leave the bad, etc.) is important regardless of how well we project out the future.

I'm sure children can distinguish fiction from reality better than adults give them credit for. Sure, it's possible for a kid to mimic a violent kid's show from time to time. But such incidents are rare, and seem to coincide with poor parenting for the most part.

That said, I find it reasonable to think that children may have an underdeveloped capacity to understand sophisticated phenomena such as social norms. I remember that I didn't truly understand the dynamic nature of social norms till middle school. Children can be quite trusting when it comes to moral instruction. In that sense, perhaps one can justify "sanitizing" stories for an audience with impaired discernment.

It's not new. Books have been getting revised for decades now for newer sensibilities. (e.g. even the Hardy Boys was revised more than 60 years ago to sanitise it - https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/01/re...)

There was recent controversy about Roald Dahl's books getting revised (and he said himself 'change one word [in my books] and deal with my crocodile'), yet he also made revisions in his own lifetime for the same reason (https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2023/02/21/woke-w...)

There's a world of difference between an author revising their own work voluntarily, and their work being censored and amended without their consent. Any writer may review their work and find it wanting for any variety of reasons - but it remains the record of their creative vision. The most perfect expression of their ideas and deepest self. Even children's stories. The Forbes article you link to lists a variety of nonsensical changes that seem to have been made 'just because'. As a writer myself, I find the concept of 'sensitivity readers' condescending, troubling and downright dangerous.

To cite the article you've linked - Author Salman Rushdie wrote, “Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship. Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”

> s a writer myself, I find the concept of 'sensitivity readers' condescending, troubling and downright dangerous.

Also a writer myself, I find 'sensitivity readers' just another tool in the toolbox. I wouldn't find it appropriate to have a generic one, but if I'm, say, depicting an addict I might want to consult someone who either has lived experiences with addiction or someone who is an expert on addicts, so that I'm not unintentionally spreading bullshit tropes. A basic "am I the asshole" sort of check.

What you're describing already existed. It's the role of a researcher or fact checker. A sensitivity reader explicitly serves a different function. Not checking for accuracy but perceived offensiveness. This is an ever expanding rubric and one that (for the 'sensitivity reader' like the bureaucrat), can only fail catastrophically in one direction. The incentive is not to ensure accuracy, it's to avoid controversy.

The phrase 'bullshit tropes', so reminiscent of 'piece of shit people' is telling here.

I mean I can factually portray a spiral into addiction pretty accurately but I would rather not do so in an asshole manner :)

So what if it's not new? That doesn't really make it better. An author rewriting another edition of his own work is not the same as deceptively presenting an unoriginal work as being genuine.

I'm answering the musing from the person I replied to:

> It is hard to me to understand how much this revisionist tendency is just a recent invention and to what extent it has been present throughout the history.

Fair enough.

It's fun to think about how much meducal and scientific stuff they were wrong about. But today people still persist with dogmatic belief in what they believe to be proven. It was more often quakaey than not... so the trend is continuing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com