# Problems with predictive history classes

Here I collect and (partly) address problems noted by commenters on ["Predictive history classes"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6injyEhNT6fWKFZuz/predictive-history-classes), in no particular order. I do not expect to refute all of them. Some of them may actually cripple the proposal/show it to be impractical.

I figure this is more honest than leaving just the one-sided original proposal for those who don't read comments.

Thank you, commenters (Raemon, Dweomite, cousin_it, Inari, stonefly), for noticing these problems.

[This already exists (Pastcasting)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6injyEhNT6fWKFZuz/predictive-history-classes?commentId=eEW6mHfPsGp9xvBaB)
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Great! But that doesn't try to teach methods, nor is it in actual schools.

[No one knows how to do this (model history well)](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6injyEhNT6fWKFZuz/predictive-history-classes?commentId=nsMGWCevDvxsPMiNn)
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So we figure it out. Maybe have the students figure it out as they study, but that might be expecting too much of them.

Or hold the students to the standards of the professionals, rather than the standards of perfection. Give partial credit; curve the tests. If all that humanity knows how to do is 30% accuracy,[^zpqdjx354qq] a student's 25% is regarded as good.

Also, [don't be so sure of the limits of knowledge.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vNBxmcHpnozjrJnJP/no-one-knows-what-science-doesn-t-know)

But maybe even the professionals would be so bad that the students' noise-in-guessing easily crosses from 0% to professional%, thus making the subject unassessable.

[Situation seen now isn't situation seen then](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6injyEhNT6fWKFZuz/predictive-history-classes?commentId=sHThQbzaaxF8Ayp8b)
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That is, the summary of a historical situation, as used for teaching, may show the information very differently from what one would get as it happened (which is what you're supposed to practise for).

This can probably be mitigated by careful choice of content, e.g. using only news-from-that-time. Most news is horribly biased, but that might not matter, sith it closely reflects what you could readily access when studying the present and future.

[Inari's objections](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6injyEhNT6fWKFZuz/predictive-history-classes?commentId=Ak8772HKKAtMApqBL)
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tl;dr (I think): history classes are for establishing a cultural basis, not thinking (at least before university); current studies have a method (not prediction-based) that needs to still be taught; there are other things you need to teach and can't make this a whole class.

I don't want to dismiss this — some of these may completely cripple the proposal — but I don't understand them yet.

[They can be a source of more indoctrination](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6injyEhNT6fWKFZuz/predictive-history-classes?commentId=LokqjZHCJN9gGndm6)
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A predictive history teacher could pick a contrived subset of history to show particular patterns that support a message to indoctrinate.

Maybe we mitigate this be requiring that the examples be sufficiently spread out (at least X from all these places Y and time periods Z) — but who designs and enforces that?

Maybe we mix current-style and predictive classes, so we keep the advantage of the current ones that they teach one "to conduct research about known, factual questions."

[^zpqdjx354qq]: The questions aren't binary, so the 50% minimum doesn't apply.