Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, how much history can you recall from memory to re-teach to the next generation?
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
wrote last edited by [email protected]So... US History, I've got you:
Okay, in 1607 we started a colony in a place that would later be famous for having a lot of racists. For about a hundred years we were happy fucking over Native Americans, then people wanted to stop paying taxes, so we had a war with England. We won, with a lot of help from the French, but we don't give them much credit.
We spent another 3/4 of a century fucking over Native Americans, building shit, and importing slaves, mostly from Africa. Then we had a Civil War about the slaves, killed each other a bunch, and in a huge surprise that no one saw coming, the part of the country that had all the industry won. We set the slaves free, so we could continue to treat them like crap. Then we went back to fucking over Native Americans, built a bunch of stuff (some of it was pretty cool), and started fucking around with the rest of the world. We started bringing in immigrants when things got shitty in other parts of the world, because we needed people to expand and someone else to be prejudiced against. We had some economic issues because some people wanted to be really rich, I'm sure taxes factored in there somewhere, but we pulled ourselves out of that with a couple of big wars and then we sorta took over half the world. We went to the moon, and appointed ourselves as "all around cool guys", although there were still a lot of issues with minorities and a big fracas about civil rights that some folks still haven't gotten over. But we thought we had to be tough guys to keep the USSR from making communism a thing, so we kinda ignored all that and started spending money on nukes and proxy wars instead of going to the moon. Rich people decided they didn't want to pay taxes again, and Reganomics mindfucked a generation of people into thinking you can run a country anywhere other than right into the fucking ground that way. After the Soviets made a mess of their half of the world and fucked off, we decided that things were too quiet and really started fucking stuff up in earnest. We pissed off a fresh batch of people in the middle east, because oil, and just kinda stirred the shit pot everywhere else because we were the biggest kid on the block. We also started the habit of surveilling everyone after some terrorists attacked us. Some of what we did might have been helpful, but there's so much chaos and so many pissed off people now it's hard to tell. Fast forward and some of us have figured out that we're causing problems, but we're neck deep in the sunk cost fallacy and busy letting people continue to promise us they can run the country better if rich folks pay less taxes.TL;DR: It's taxes all the way down.
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
I literally have multiple copies of Wikipedia offline. Including one on a USB stick.
I don't think it would ever be possible to delete all records of history short of blowing up the entire planet at which point its quite moot.
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It’s not necessarily a real historical event, but an incredibly important story about liberation of the oppressed that influenced countless real historical movements.
Herodotus’ histories is mostly fictional but you wouldn’t want to forget it. Same with the Iliad/Odyssey, Epic of Gilgamesh, etc
Fair, but the context that they are not real historical events is critical.
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
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This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
How do I print the 100GB English Wikipedia?
How do I even transport something that big without the authoritarian governmwnt noticing?
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I have a stack of Encyclopedia Britannica in my parents storage.
I have a stack of the Animorphs in my attic. Yours is just speculative fiction.
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This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
the catch is that the Fahrenheit 451 scenario nowadays just require a storage device to fail... very ecological, Greta must approve it
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I have a stack of the Animorphs in my attic. Yours is just speculative fiction.
.......huh?
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All records of history have been deleted.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Like others, I question the ability to delete a book. And while a regime would be able to change digital literature easily, and educational literature like school books being a close second; changing a book in someone's storage unit is a lot harder.
It also handwaves away the other ways we keep history as well. Would people's family photo albums be deleted? What about a great grandma's diary? In some rural areas the family bible has some insanely well kept family records.
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While I understand it doesn't quite fit the scenario, it does strike me as a good way to preserve "lost information" in a similar situation. Pair that with a solar charger (or even improvise something like a pedal charger), and you're pretty set for a lot of basic information people would struggle to reconstruct.
Some ebook readers have a microsd card slot, so you could fit an offline copy of Wikipedia on a device with half a year of battery life (in airplane mode)
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How do I print the 100GB English Wikipedia?
How do I even transport something that big without the authoritarian governmwnt noticing?
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
There were Romans (basically Greek cosplayers), some dude with elephants who may or may not have been a cannibal. Then some dude got nailed to some lumber for trying to tell people to chill and love eachother. A few thousand years of fighting about that. Columbo sailed to India but found Aztecs instead. The cubs finally won... And that about brings us up to date.
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"Look kid, all you need to know is that up until 2016 the world was simpler, but then they killed a gorilla which lead to the rise of fascism in 2025"
RIP Hambe. He was the best of us.
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There were troll dolls too.
And garbage pail kids
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RIP Hambe. He was the best of us.
Dance off for hambe
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
I could probably recite Bill Wurtz's "History of the entire world i guess". And go into some more detail if someone asked.
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.......huh?
How would you prove that your books reflect the true history?
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How do I print the 100GB English Wikipedia?
How do I even transport something that big without the authoritarian governmwnt noticing?
wrote last edited by [email protected]"Print"?
I mean, you're in a fascist global dystopia and you're gonna get picky about formats? I can carry a copy of Wikipedia in a SD card the size of my pinky nail, and I know because I have one. Who are these hipster kids that look at my Wonder Phone of Truth and go "well, this would be a lot easier on my eyeballs if you got me a paperback edition".
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This is why books are so important. Real, physical, paper books. The scenario you are proposing is precisely what Fahrenheit 451 is about.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Funnily enough RB, the author of F451, insists that everyone else is wrong, and that book is actually about falling literacy rates due to television viewership.
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Hypothetically, if governments wordwide just suddenly became authoritarian and deleted all records of history, you and some survivors escape to a remote area outside of government control, they all can't remember much from history (either didn't pay attwntion in class, or suffers memory loss from the governemtn attacks) and so you are designated as this community's official historian. How much can you remember? What's gonna be the official narrative of your little rebel community?
War, no rights for most, war, war, more war, fight for rights (for everyone who wasn't an old, rich man) worldwide, more war, we got rights granted for a lot of groups, and now in the big 2025 they're being threatened because of said old rich men
