Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "How Hitler’s “Table Talks” broke history" video.

" you end up with [...] comfortable half-truths " If she admits she cheated, because he was so bla-bla, and she was so bla-bla as a result of that, you still know she most likely cheated. If he admits he hit her, because she was so bla-bla, and he had to bla-bla, you still know he most likely hit her. So despite of all the coloring, you did manage to establish those events as quite probable, at the very least, if not simply as facts. Coloring is just a seasoning which makes the harsh truths more palatable. They still remain under there, though.
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@bramvanderwoerdt7186 Nilsson argues that in order to do "proper" history you need to get rid of unreliable sources. Since all sources are unreliable, that argument is indeed self defeating.
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@TheImperatorKnight Rowan: " Nilsson's argument is [...] self-defeating " TIK [my paraphrase]: " Historical truths are inherently subjective, so no objective historical truths can be established " I find this argument to be self-defeating also. Because if no objective truths can ever be established, history appears to be largely a fruitless endeavor... You and Nilsson both reach the same conclusion. I think you arrived at this stance by overusing the analogy of free market. Free market follows profit. History would work like that, if the "profit" of history was truth, but it isn't. The "profit" of history is mindshare. The goal of history should be truth. Only then it even makes sense to do it. But since you reject objective truth, then your goal is obviously mindshare. If so, then it's very easy to skew it by promoting some ideas, suppressing other (like this video, for a very handy example) and achieve this goal... We don't even need the ebil gobments to skew our perception. We do it all the time, without outside help. Therefore the "free market of ideas" model falls apart.
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TLDR: Why invent the Hitler? I deeply oppose the idea, that historical truth can only be subjective. What happened really happened, and sometimes we really know what it was. Not always, obviously. So it's the crucial difference between objective truth and absolute truth. The last one is out of our grasp, the former one quite often is not. Also, just because you can't convince some people, it does not mean that "their truth" is just as valid as carefully considered interpretations of sources, backed by reasoning and serious multidisciplinary cross-checking. I've heard Dr Ewa Kurek stating once, that history is hard science. That's how she treats it, and I do agree with this approach. Hard sciences are capable of establishing objective truths. Not! absolute truth. That's the difference between knowing something for sure, and knowing everything. In summary, I do think that without the belief in objective truth in history, we simply can't do it. Because if that was the case, we could pose then a very valid question of "Why invent the Hitler?"
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@brainletmong6302 " all datum " That's data. The plural of datum. " they are not espousing an objective truth " What are they doing, then? Having a blast? Cool. Why should I care? " * if they wish to get closer to objective truth* " You just said they don't go for it, didn't you? Re: "free market model is darwinistic" I agree, and I wrote that. The "fittest" ideas survive in the mindshare. Not the truest ideas, though. Not necessarily. So TIK is naive if he thinks that truth always prevails on the "free market of ideas".
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