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To: CougarGA7
"There’s so much revisionist garbage out there it can be difficult to delineate the best reliable facts (you really cannot achieve absolute truth)."

Well worth repeating.

One reason "absolute truth" is so elusive in human terms is the same reason we don't read computer machine language, or understand biological processes on a molecular basis. They are simply too far beyond normal human experience for all but the best experts to figure out.

What we depend on instead are simplified "translations," which reduce the often incomprehensible to terms normal people can deal with. And as such, we are at the mercy of the translators' expertise, perspectives and honesty.

Otherwise we'd all be lost in the tall weeds...

21 posted on 07/19/2009 10:41:14 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
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To: BroJoeK

You would think that would be intuitive. Anyone who has ever been in a car accident knows that the witnesses all tell a different story. Some are motivated by certain biases, and other are just the way they perceived and processed what they saw.

As an aspiring historian (boy that sounds better than aspiring rapper), one of the hardest concepts and tasks it to capture the context in which the history took place. It needs to attempt to capture the reasoning of the time period and yet still remain relevant to the current reader. I made an argument in a class this semester that it would be better to write the history of 15th century England in old English since you are losing context by unmatchable translation. The only problem with doing that is no one can read it and an unread history is as useless as one never written. It’s a tough proposition.


23 posted on 07/19/2009 11:22:56 AM PDT by CougarGA7 (If I disagree with you, it is because you are wrong.)
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