this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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The new thing is the scope in which fake content is being created. In a very near future most internet content will be fake, including history. That is not something that has happened before in history.
The current AI situation is completely unprecedented in history.
I would disagree. I think if we go back even a few centuries, we find that virtually nobody had a firm grasp on historical fact, due to the printing press not being invented yet, alongside archeological techniques not existing.
As someone with an academic background in history, historical record keeping both written and oral existed long before the printing press.
Certainly, but before widespread literacy, did a large portion of the populace have interest in and access to them? Particularly an accurate understanding of how their own culture fit into the broader scope of human history?
That depends on the culture and the method of distribution, many cultures that practice oral history did have widespread interest and access to it and an understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of the world to some degree, though the way they understood or related to it might differ from culture to culture (some cultures tie their history to places, or names, or events, or people or seasons, etc). As another example, the Romans are well known for their prolific historiography and many of their surviving texts are still referenced to this day. Look up Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, who were just as well known and respected as historians at the time as they are now. While written works such as the Encyclopedia Natural History (written by Pliny the Elder and believed to be the first encyclopedia) would often be released to the public to be copied and spread, they would also often recite written works orally so illiteracy wasn't as much of a barrier as you'd think. Oral history is a lot more important in providing a record of a culture's history as well as making that history accessible to others than a lot of people think. It was important in ancient Greece as well, and is a huge part of many other cultures around the world including many indigenous ones. It's also not as inaccurate or unreliable as some people might think, as there were many methods these cultures used and still use to preserve the accuracy of their oral history as it was passed down from generation to generation.
Now in terms of awareness, obviously there was propaganda and rewritten history going on back then just as there is now, but it's not as if none of the citizens would have been aware of that. One of the papers I wrote for a class about the importance of comparing primary sources featured 3 different accounts of what Athens was like and the views people there held at a certain point in history from 3 different people of varying social and financial status, and there was absolutely awareness of that sort of dissonance between what their government claimed and what the reality was even among the more common folk. So I would say they did certainly have a significant understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of human history.
Which is why they claimed their city was founded by a couple brothers of divine origin, right? And calling Plinys Naturalis Historia respected by modern historiography is laughable, I'm sorry. Naturally it wasn't his fault, he was mainly compiling other primary sources of his time, but it is in no way something that should be simply taken at face value.
Regardless, my broader point was never to try to say that history began with the printing press or something. Clearly, if it were not for older records in everything from the knotwork language of ancient Peru to newly readable scrolls recovered from the Vesuvius eruption, we wouldn't have any clue what happened previous to the 15th century, now would we? Which, clearly we do.
Instead, I was making a point about the nature of information accuracy, and the importance of skepticism in approaching information. In the same way I wouldn't want to read Pliny and assume it's contents were 100% accurate, I also wouldn't want to just believe everything I see online. It's not new to have reason to doubt our information space, and thus the effects of AI misinformation are overblown imo. Appropriate skepticism and critical thinking skills are still a viable solution.
Lastly, please explain how this:
follows from this:
I fail to see how three people disagreeing about Athenian history means they understood how Athenian history fit into global history.
I mean, maybe it has happened before in history, but someone changed it via AI and we just don't know...