[evross]

This is a brilliant idea I feel. Students of history have a fairly unique position in having in-depth understanding of events. They are like cultural scientists, they work to understand facts and causality.

With applied history, they could be actively studying ways to prevent mistakes of the past. Then also, blending with the contexts of modern-day life, inform more useful ways of living in the present and future.

[sidstling]

Except nobody is going to listen, and you can’t really do reliable prediction, but mostly, nobody will listen. I studied history before I went into computer science, and it’s taught me some useful skills.

Mostly it’s taught me that things are always more complex than they seem. Like, if you zoom out and see history, events make sense. Augustus chose Christianity as the state religion of Rome because it was a great tool to unify the different cultures under emperorial rule. Then when you actually look at why that made sense, you’re at a loss, because it makes sense in the grand picture, but the actual decision makes no damn sense. They had a myriad of religions to chose from, so why exactly did they chose the one they did? Nobody knows, and if you put yourself in the same situation, ignoring everything that came after, you’d probably have a hard time justifying it. Yet it’s one of the most significant decisions in western civilization. That’s just one example, and I probably worded it a little poorly, English isn’t my first language, but knowing things are complex is a real relief, because you’ll rarely get the feeling that people or systems are intentionally out to get you.

Another thing it’s taught me is to be more positive, or at least less doomsaying. I’m liberal and nationalism being on the rise isn’t exactly great news to me, but because I know history, I know there is a pendulum at work, and it’ll eventually swing the other way again.

Sure things typically suck in regions of the world, but they’ve never sucked everywhere at once, and frankly, we’ve mostly seen progression since we started recoding history, and that’s really comforting, to me at least.

I think it would be nice if we could apply this, I just don’t know how we would do that.

[Naga]

> Augustus chose Christianity as the state religion of Rome because it was a great tool to unify the different cultures under emperorial rule

As a fellow history major, the worst thing in the world is when you make a simple error and everyone calls you on it saying "I thought you were a history major". ;)

[sidstling]

And the error completely takes focus away from the point, which was about causality.

My only defense is that classical history was a 5ECTS course during my first year and I never actually finished the full five years before I went into CS. I should’ve obviously looked it up before posting to HN though.

As a little ironic/funny side note, the reason I changed to CS was because I was really bored by the fact that I had spent two years mainly learning how to work with source material and scientific methods, which wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped “history” would be. Now that just bit me in the ass, again. ;p

[geargrinder]

Perhaps you are mixing up Augustus (Caesar Augustus 63 BC - 14 AD) with Constantine (272-337 AD). Tiberius Caesar Augustus, the adopted son of Augustus, was the Roman ruler when Jesus was born.

Constantine's mother, Helena, converted to Christianity, and that greatly influenced his thinking, whether or not you believe he actually was a Christian himself.