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History Vs. Future

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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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History Vs. Future

Robin Hanson
Oct 14, 2014
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History Vs. Future

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I’ve long puzzled over differing interest in history and the future, in both fiction and non-fiction. And I’ve finally collected some numbers.

Amazon.com says it has 37 million books on offer. Here are the fraction of those books it says are in these named categories:

AmazonCategories

Note that Amazon has no “future studies” category, so I listed the two future-themed categories I found. Here are the fraction of books associated with related keyword phrases:

AmazonKeyword

Why the far larger interest in real history, relative to all the other combinations of future/history and real/fictional? It can’t just be a simple history vs. future effect, nor a real vs fiction effect – it is some sort of combination effect.

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History Vs. Future

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History Vs. Future

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Stephen Diamond
May 15

Yet elsewhere you call for political organizing. Who with? Who for?

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Jake Witmer
May 15

Tragic. I wonder if they will ever learn enough to regret doing so in the future. http://www.brainpreservatio... might have been able to prevent such a casual dismissal of his morality and his life's purpose. Then again, maybe not. Most people are really no smart enough to avoid voting for Hitler. He never loses his popularity, he just takes new forms, even though he's one of the easiest kinds of people to create.

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