You know the type. MIT-trained, Substack-fluent, AI-curious. They can quote Hume, dabble in Bayesianism, and confidently wield phrases like “regression discontinuity” and “effective optimization…

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The post critiques the tendency of highly intelligent individuals, especially within rationalist and technocratic circles, to oversimplify history by treating it as a series of abstract models rather than complex narratives. It warns against the dangers of this flattened historical consciousness, emphasizing the importance of understanding history in a nuanced and detailed way to avoid misinterpretations and poor decision-making for the future.

Why Are All the Smart People So Bad at History?

Just because you are smart doesn’t mean you are right. There is a big trap in being smart/intelligent, that it becomes too much of an ego issue where you can’t be wrong because that would damage your ego (feeling identity).
The biggest lie people tell, is that this time I will be different, because they are smarter than everyone before (they aren’t, and even then they wouldn’t be right just because you still need to accept you are not infallible).
No title, no degree, or anything means anything if you can’t humble yourself to be proven wrong.
(I had to learn this the hard way).

Perhaps that’s abit of weird take, but I believe truely intelligent people are able to look over their ego, at least to the extend allowing for self reflection at some point (sometimes its hard for me but worth the effort). I also think the enironment heavily influences “smart” (throwing around fancy sounding terms ain’t make you smart) peoples attitude. Personally, the people around me I believe to be smarter than me also know their fair share of history. I fail to see the authors point in my work environment and personal life, where regular discussions about history take place (decent ones in my opinion). People in the operating more in public like CEOs fall more in this category for me although I know next to nothing about most of their intelligence or historical education but lots of them love to throw those fancy terms around!
BTW. How do we measure human intelligence?

Oftentimes, History is seen as a “bunch of facts” to tell in a particular order. And a “smart person” might not be interested in that. But I think it comes down to how History is taught. A good teacher doesn not “tell you a story”, he or she brings down facts and teaches the noble art of seeing the causes and the consequences of everything - the idea is to have many detail in a large image in which what comes after is related to something that was already there before - but it takes a fine teacher to do it! Up until my 15, I wasn’t so interested in History, but then I changed teacher (that was also the philosophy teacher) and things changed completely (I’m 40 and I still buy History books!)