Podcast: Counterfactual History with Niall Ferguson

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Associate Director Dr. Samuel DeCanio interviews historian Niall Ferguson from the Hoover Institution. This episode is titled “Counterfactual History with Niall Ferguson”. Some of the questions they will explore are:

How did historian Niall Ferguson become interested in the discipline of history?
How can policymakers learn from history?
How does our past inform our present?
What is counterfactual history?
Is counterfactual history useful for historical analysis and policymaking?

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The Centre for the Study of Governance and Society (CSGS) examines how both formal and informal rules of governance operate and evolve, and how these rules facilitate or imperil peaceful, prosperous, and ecologically secure societies.

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[gerardvila]

This is deeply fascinating. I've got to read this guy!

[davidwilkie]

Excellent starting point for students who see this difference between "what they should have done" and the uncontrollable weather of Actuality. It is the same conundrum of daily life and the situation being confronted by Hybrid Quantum-Digital Computation proof-disproof circumstances, ie normal behaviour in QM-TIMESPACE continuous complexity.

So the 30 years war story explains the apparent (rational) bias of the Professor's analysis of Economic History and the Political implications of what should have been resolved by Diplomacy, just exactly the same circumstances every Government confronts. ("Nobody wins a War", except for Arms Manufacturers, so why is this world still operating this way?)

If we remember correctly, the 30 Years War was the fateful situation in which Mercenary Soldiers developed their talents as Lawyers in Court. There's a serious relationship with the past requiring revision and careful analysis. (Which every Court Hearing is expected to be)

Also the Professor suggests that a weak-willed dominance of Fire Power is a liability against a true Defence by strategic commitment. The USA has proved this several times, and the inevitable result is more likely driving a collapse in confidence at home than winning an Invasion O/S.

"I am you and you are me and we are all together".., "To be or not to be, that is the Question", War is never going to be the Answer, in Actuality.

[eugenemurray]

'Sped read War and Peace. It is about some Russians'
Woody Allen

[beachdancer]

I also read and liked Smith's "Wealth of Nations" and found Samuelson's textbook poor. I especially disliked the claim that supply demand graphs explain or create prices. Graphs without scales which no one uses to decide prices. They seemed an immeasurable abstraction with no real purpose. Reading history of economic thought and what actually happened in various economies is, I believe, more instructive than learning abstract economic theory.

[galaxie]

goin' egghead on us. others call it The Butterfly Effect

[nickwright]

So absent counterfactual history (the Richard Evans view), no historian can consider the causes of any historical event. Remarkable that some schools of history strayed, conceptually, so far away from the 'but for' test for factual causation taught in every law school.

[johnvoyce]

I got bored after the first 15 minutes or so of rambling introductions and the litany of academic titles. Sorry I couldn't listen to this.

[grubbygruber]

The British Empire was a good thing --
Discuss

Hingmy
Wee Frank