Historical "facts" and popular representations of histrical figures that are wrong

SNCommand

New member
Aug 29, 2011
283
0
0
The Viet Nam war ended in 1973, the last few thousand US and other foreign troops withdrew March the same year. South Viet Nam would fall in 1975 during a relaunched war campaign by communist forces in Southeast Asia, non-Communist aligned countries would be left to fend for themselves because the US congress passed the Case-Church Amendment forbidding US involvement in Southeast Asia, and Nixon was currently being impeached prohibiting him from objecting

It's funny how hypocritical Europeans were when they called the US defending its allies for imperialism while themselves expected US aid if their communist neighbors would launch an attack

The foreign media called the war a unwinnable and amoral war, they were silent though when peace was signed, they were silent when millions in Southeast Asia died because of the oppression their conquerors deemed necessary for "the greater good", they were silent when some of the worst dictatorships were overthrown by the people, only later have they focused on the worst of the atrocities

The media painted such a biased picture of the post WWII conflicts in the area that the largest military offensive in the region since WWII, the Easter Offensive is almost lost history because not a single US ground soldier participated, anything that made it seem like a war between different nations in Southeast Asia and not the US involving themselves in some good old fashioned European imperialism was buried
 

kyuzo3567

New member
Jan 31, 2011
234
0
0
Boudica said:
beastro said:
Boudica said:
Mr_Spanky said:
Boudica said:
Mr_Spanky said:
Boudica said:
Mr_Spanky said:
Look im not sure EXACTLY about the definitions of communism and facism but isnt it pretty contradictory to say that Hitler, probably the most famous fasict who ever lived) could have been communist but for a few small differences?
He basically wanted communism without the men doing the work getting the credit. It was a warped nationalism.
Honestly I think trying to "pin it down" like that is a mistake. Hitler, like just about every dictator that has ever existed, wanted power and didnt want to share it with anyone. Trying to exact his political motives from history and rumour is essentially impossible.

In the end communism and facism and most other dictatorships fail for the exact same reason. They are dictatorships. Every dictatorship ends. And the more the dictator wants to continue their rule the bloodier and nastier the war that comes after. Thats why democracy was invented so that there could be a smooth transistion of power from one dictatorship to the other. And it also gives the great masses the misguided impression that they have a genuine choice.
I'm fervently communist and believe it to be the great form of government one could have. Sadly, people treat it as a dictatorship (often at least a borderline military dictatorship, to boot) and its message is muddied.

There's never been true communism because people keep fucking it up lol. A girl can dream, though.
I completely agree on that. Communism would be the good way to run a society but it requires those who govern to be utterly selfless and make judgements based on the greater good of the people rather than on ANY of their own personal beliefs. Bad people for the job are already corrupt and most good people dont get there. The good people who DO get to the top of the greasy pole end up not being good people anymore.

Perhaps im too cynical but I genuinely dont think that ANY political regime can be good because its always run by a man or woman. Apart from the fact that the people who want power the most are the least appropriate ones to handle it. Men and women are human. The only things that seperates you and me from the position of US preseident of Galatic overload is ambition and oppurtunity.

Ambitious people want power and will sacrifice most things (or everything) to get it. That makes them more likely to get it. And then when they get there? MAYBE 1 in a thousand is a good decent kind of person. The rest are in it because theyre greedy (for money or power or whatever) and so make choices based on what THEY want.

No human society can be governed well and no human society can be GREAT (in my eyes) when you always get those kinds of people making the biggest descions.
It's about progress though, right? We've come a long way as a species over the last two thousand years--a long way. I believe we will achieve something like perfection eventually, and maybe not as far into the future as you'd think. Assuming we survive that long lol.
No, we haven't come a long way.

We are still the same creatures we were then and tens of thousands of years ago. The only thing that divides us from them is our collection and recorded knowledge and that is an extremely fragile thing. You lose that and it won't take many generations for state of civilization to irreparably degrade.
Um, "tens of thousands of years ago" we were barely human. Hell, not much longer than ten thousands years ago we only just began farming. You want to go back "tens" of thousands? Yeah, okay, you go Google what humans were like a good thirty thousand years ago and see if there's much of a difference between them and your average American lol.

Yeah... no, we really haven't come a long way at all in how we think or act. I'd recommend "Caveman Logic" by Hank Davis. It basically spends the entire book discussing how underdeveloped our minds are compared to the time period we live in now. Basically our brains are advanced and perfectly developed for the Pleistocene age when we were still a hunter-gatherer society instead of the society we live in today
 

Lordpils

New member
Aug 3, 2009
411
0
0
In Search of Username said:
As for my historical 'fact', General Custer was a fucking idiot, not a heroic martyr.
Speaking as someone who didn't know his tactics during Little Bighorn/Greasy Grass I can't speak for the idiot part, but I will say as someone who knows more about the actions preceding that battle that calling him a heroic martyr is incredibly dumb.

Also I was not aware that Custer was still seen as a heroic martyr by some.
 

chadachada123

New member
Jan 17, 2011
2,310
0
0
Azuaron said:
chadachada123 said:
Christopher Columbus did not discover North America. He rediscovered it several hundred years after the Vikings.
My historical incorrectness pet peeve: the Vikings didn't "discover" a thing. The Native Americans (who were originally East Asians) had already populated the whole hemisphere.
*Sigh* Fine, since everyone is being so incredibly pedantic over what I thought was common knowledge, let me rephrase: The Vikings were the first people from Europe, or the first people with written history/recorded history, to go to North America.

Of freaking course the Native Americans got there first. But the rest of the world had absolutely no idea until rumors from the Vikings came back, which were mostly dismissed until Columbus's time. In that sense, the Vikings 'discovered' North America.
 

Nikolaz72

This place still alive?
Apr 23, 2009
2,125
0
0
LetalisK said:
That modern psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud or that his theories are still relevant to this day. He didn't and they're not. Freud's lasting contribution to modern psychology is popularizing it and some of his counseling methods.
Thats an opinionpiece LetalisK, not a historical fact. Or if anything, its only half a fact. Freud's theory's are still relevant to this day and are used by Psycologists worldwide. Anyone with half a foot in Psychology knows that.

I applied his theory's personally and while not always accurate, using it alongside other methods you can achieve accurate (Or what counts for accurate) results.

I know a psycologist teacher, myself, teachers educated in psycology and a proffesor who would all disagree with you. But I'd be happy to hear 'why' Freud and his theories are irrelevant today.
 

LetalisK

New member
May 5, 2010
2,769
0
0
Nikolaz72 said:
LetalisK said:
That modern psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud or that his theories are still relevant to this day. He didn't and they're not. Freud's lasting contribution to modern psychology is popularizing it and some of his counseling methods.
Thats an opinionpiece LetalisK, not a historical fact. Or if anything, its only half a fact. Freud's theory's are still relevant to this day and are used by Psycologists worldwide. Anyone with half a foot in Psychology knows that.

I applied his theory's personally and while not always accurate, using it alongside other methods you can achieve accurate (Or what counts for accurate) results.

I know a psycologist teacher, myself, teachers educated in psycology and a proffesor who would all disagree with you. But I'd be happy to hear 'why' Freud and his theories are irrelevant today.
You might want to read the other replies I made in this thread concerning this topic. Edit: Or to cut to the chase, I pointed out that Freud's theories have been getting re-examined recently using modern methodology, but it's still has a ways to go before becoming mainstream. Hell, if anything, that would be the legitimate criticism of what I said: Anyone who is involved in psychology knows how splintered it is and how often the splinters disagree with each other[footnote]ie try to get a clinical and research psychologist to agree on whether a treatment should be personalized or uniform[/footnote], so what I said was kind of a "No, duh" cheap shot.
 

Azuaron

New member
Mar 17, 2010
621
0
0
chadachada123 said:
Azuaron said:
chadachada123 said:
Christopher Columbus did not discover North America. He rediscovered it several hundred years after the Vikings.
My historical incorrectness pet peeve: the Vikings didn't "discover" a thing. The Native Americans (who were originally East Asians) had already populated the whole hemisphere.
*Sigh* Fine, since everyone is being so incredibly pedantic over what I thought was common knowledge, let me rephrase: The Vikings were the first people from Europe, or the first people with written history/recorded history, to go to North America.

Of freaking course the Native Americans got there first. But the rest of the world had absolutely no idea until rumors from the Vikings came back, which were mostly dismissed until Columbus's time. In that sense, the Vikings 'discovered' North America.
In that case, I can make similar arguments for Columbus "discovering" N. America, as he was the first to get Europeans in general to actually believe that there were continental land masses in the Atlantic, especially since the Norse didn't get much further than Greenland or Labrador/Newfoundland and nobody thought it worth bothering sailing across the Atlantic for an island except for the Norse.

Further, generally speaking, people don't say, "Columbus discovered North America," they say, "Columbus discovered America," and, given that the Vikings never went as far south as South America, then, technically, if we're discounting the people who were living there, Columbus did, in fact, discover an America.

Pop quiz: who "discovered" Africa?
 

Para199x

New member
Nov 18, 2010
81
0
0
thebobmaster said:
America is responsible for winning World War II/America had nothing to do with winning World War II.

That's right, those are both false. Britain was holding out against Germany and Italy, this is true. Russia dedicated a lot of manpower, and the failed invasion of Russia weakened Germany, also true.

However, Britain didn't have the resources to fight against Japan. Meanwhile, Russia lost a lot of manpower in that failed invasion, so they would have had problems with an attack on Japan as well.

On top of that, without the atomic bombs that the U.S. developed, the back-up invasion plan would have resulted in many more deaths on both sides.

So it's not true that America is the only reason the Allies won World War II, but they were a large help.
Japan were only really at war with America so that's not really relevant imho
 

RoBi3.0

New member
Mar 29, 2009
709
0
0
Azuaron said:
chadachada123 said:
Azuaron said:
chadachada123 said:
Christopher Columbus did not discover North America. He rediscovered it several hundred years after the Vikings.
My historical incorrectness pet peeve: the Vikings didn't "discover" a thing. The Native Americans (who were originally East Asians) had already populated the whole hemisphere.
*Sigh* Fine, since everyone is being so incredibly pedantic over what I thought was common knowledge, let me rephrase: The Vikings were the first people from Europe, or the first people with written history/recorded history, to go to North America.

Of freaking course the Native Americans got there first. But the rest of the world had absolutely no idea until rumors from the Vikings came back, which were mostly dismissed until Columbus's time. In that sense, the Vikings 'discovered' North America.
In that case, I can make similar arguments for Columbus "discovering" N. America, as he was the first to get Europeans in general to actually believe that there were continental land masses in the Atlantic, especially since the Norse didn't get much further than Greenland or Labrador/Newfoundland and nobody thought it worth bothering sailing across the Atlantic for an island except for the Norse.

Further, generally speaking, people don't say, "Columbus discovered North America," they say, "Columbus discovered America," and, given that the Vikings never went as far south as South America, then, technically, if we're discounting the people who were living there, Columbus did, in fact, discover an America.

Pop quiz: who "discovered" Africa?
Columbus died believing he had found the [way too] Asia so I am not quite sure what you are trying to say, when you say he was the first to get Europeans to agree that there was land masses in the Atlantic. He thought he had sailed completely round the world and had "found" Asia.

[edit] The man The Americas are named after was the European to figure out that what Columbus had found was in fact a completely different Continent.

Also to answer your pop quiz no one "really" discovered Africa as Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa and slow migrated out to eventually populating the rest of the world. It is by far the oldest human inhabited continent. Honestly who "discover" Africa, is an extremely poor written question.
 

chadachada123

New member
Jan 17, 2011
2,310
0
0
Azuaron said:
In that case, I can make similar arguments for Columbus "discovering" N. America, as he was the first to get Europeans in general to actually believe that there were continental land masses in the Atlantic, especially since the Norse didn't get much further than Greenland or Labrador/Newfoundland and nobody thought it worth bothering sailing across the Atlantic for an island except for the Norse.

Further, generally speaking, people don't say, "Columbus discovered North America," they say, "Columbus discovered America," and, given that the Vikings never went as far south as South America, then, technically, if we're discounting the people who were living there, Columbus did, in fact, discover an America.

Pop quiz: who "discovered" Africa?
I was going to ask about discovering Australia, because I'd still consider the first Westerners to arrive on Australia to be those that 'discovered' it for the rest of the world, *even if no one else believed them,* despite the obvious fact that the Aborigines were there first.

I suppose you'd call it semantics, and I'd probably agree, but I see a distinction between "always being there" and "being the first new people there" and "being the first new people that others believed there." I'd argue that "discover" fits best with the middle definition.
 

Azuaron

New member
Mar 17, 2010
621
0
0
LetalisK said:
Nikolaz72 said:
LetalisK said:
That modern psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud or that his theories are still relevant to this day. He didn't and they're not. Freud's lasting contribution to modern psychology is popularizing it and some of his counseling methods.
Thats an opinionpiece LetalisK, not a historical fact. Or if anything, its only half a fact. Freud's theory's are still relevant to this day and are used by Psycologists worldwide. Anyone with half a foot in Psychology knows that.

I applied his theory's personally and while not always accurate, using it alongside other methods you can achieve accurate (Or what counts for accurate) results.

I know a psycologist teacher, myself, teachers educated in psycology and a proffesor who would all disagree with you. But I'd be happy to hear 'why' Freud and his theories are irrelevant today.
You might want to read the other replies I made in this thread concerning this topic. Edit: Or to cut to the chase, I pointed out that Freud's theories have been getting re-examined recently using modern methodology, but it's still has a ways to go before becoming mainstream.
Nikolaz72:


The only truly useful thing that Freud did was popularize the field and associate it with medicine; even psychoanalysis has been taking a beating in the scientific literature for at least the past 4+ decades (i.e., talking with a trained psychoanalyst is about as helpful to your mental state as talking with an untrained good friend).

Now, is everything Freud ever said a worthless pile of garbage? Of course not. He was a decent observer, even if he followed up his observations with wild, cocaine induced ideas filtered through his own broken psyche that he then claimed to be universal. That any of his hypotheses bear a resemblance to any sort of truth is mostly chance; like Nostradamus, if you say enough things, some of them will be correct.

Some quotes from prominent psychologists/psychiatrists:

Gilbert Ryle described Freud's ideas as, "damagingly popular".

Lydiard H. Horton said, regarding dream theory: "Freud's theory appears dangerously inaccurate." (Horton was Freud's contemporary.)

Hans Eysenck, probably one of Freud's harshest critics, said Freud "set psychiatry back one hundred years" and "what is true in his theories is not new and what is new in his theories is not true."

The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Society (psychoanalysts own journal) published a report in 2008 saying that psychoanalysis, while still popular in the humanities, was "desiccated and dead" in psychology departments and textbooks due to "emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically."

(I have a BS in Psychology and an MS in Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology. The only professor I know who didn't immediately start laughing at someone [always a freshman] taking Freud seriously was actually a business professor who taught an Industrial/Organizational psychology class, except she just taught human resources and nothing about actual I/O psychology. She didn't have a psych degree.)
 

Azuaron

New member
Mar 17, 2010
621
0
0
RoBi3.0 said:
Also to answer your pop quiz no one "really" discovered Africa as Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa and slow migrated out to eventually populating the rest of the world. It is by far the oldest human inhabited continent. Honestly who "discover" Africa, is an extremely poor written question.
Yep. The point. You've found discovered it.
 

LetalisK

New member
May 5, 2010
2,769
0
0
Azuaron said:
(I have a BS in Psychology and an MS in Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology. The only professor I know who didn't immediately start laughing at someone [always a freshman] taking Freud seriously was actually a business professor who taught an Industrial/Organizational psychology class, except she just taught human resources and nothing about actual I/O psychology. She didn't have a psych degree.)
To throw my relatively minor accolades in with yours, I also have a BS in psychology and most of my senior year was spent working with the head of the department who was focusing on misconceptions of psychology. Never met a professor in the psychology department, most of which were PhDs, who considered Freud more than an important historical figure(and this is even including the practicing clinical psychiatrists).

Sometimes I wish hadn't gone dual BS and had instead stuck with psychology and taken the plunge into the dual Ph.D/PharmD program another local university has. Seven more years of school though(two years of pre-reqs)...not sure I could do it. I'm already past half-way through my twenties and just now working on my career(not psychology related with only a BS, obviously). The thought of going back to school for that long and not really getting to work until my early 30s scares the shit out of me.
 

RoBi3.0

New member
Mar 29, 2009
709
0
0
Azuaron said:
RoBi3.0 said:
Also to answer your pop quiz no one "really" discovered Africa as Homo Sapiens evolved in Africa and slow migrated out to eventually populating the rest of the world. It is by far the oldest human inhabited continent. Honestly who "discover" Africa, is an extremely poor written question.
Yep. The point. You've found discovered it.
Well, if that was the information you were looking for. Then I stand corrected. Your question was written just fine.
 

Carrots_macduff

New member
Jul 13, 2011
232
0
0
Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, was elected despite being a notorious drunkard, he even vomited on his podium during one of his campaign speeches, and when his opponent called him on it, he basically said, (presumably with much slurring and bile still dripping from his face) im not sick because im drunk, im sick because i have to sit here and listen to you!

how politics got so fricken borin, ill never understand.
 

Nikolaz72

This place still alive?
Apr 23, 2009
2,125
0
0
LetalisK said:
Azuaron said:
(I have a BS in Psychology and an MS in Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology. The only professor I know who didn't immediately start laughing at someone [always a freshman] taking Freud seriously was actually a business professor who taught an Industrial/Organizational psychology class, except she just taught human resources and nothing about actual I/O psychology. She didn't have a psych degree.)
To throw my relatively minor accolades in with yours, I also have a BS in psychology and most of my senior year was spent working with the head of the department who was focusing on misconceptions of psychology. Never met a professor in the psychology department, most of which were PhDs, who considered Freud more than an important historical figure(and this is even including the practicing clinical psychiatrists).
Must be the culture, again. This place is full of people taking him seriously, when using his methods mixed with other psycological methods you can achieve pretty accurate results. Also, phsycoanalysis is still a used method in reviewing authors.

So yea, must be that your teachers subscribed to a different method, cause mine sure as hell arent. And having tried it out in practise I can say that it still holds up. Probably not in all cases, but enough to make it relevant and usable today.

PS: Using 'any' phsycological method on its own is gonna net highly flawed results.

Edit: Didnt see 'your' edit. Anyway, might be that people were split on the definition on his methods. But in the way I understood it I largely agree with it (Although in the Psychosexual theory, you have to cut out the last two because they are too vague, doesnt mean the whole thing is crap, the first three are pretty accurate)

Obviously we all have some experience in the field, but just as 60yearold philosophers can disagree on what colour the sky is. And mathematicians can disagree on the most logical answer to a very simple formular. Obviosuly psycology grads/students/teachers can disagree on whenever a persons theories are still relevant or not.

Azuaron said:
LetalisK said:
Nikolaz72 said:
LetalisK said:
That modern psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud or that his theories are still relevant to this day. He didn't and they're not. Freud's lasting contribution to modern psychology is popularizing it and some of his counseling methods.
Thats an opinionpiece LetalisK, not a historical fact. Or if anything, its only half a fact. Freud's theory's are still relevant to this day and are used by Psycologists worldwide. Anyone with half a foot in Psychology knows that.

I applied his theory's personally and while not always accurate, using it alongside other methods you can achieve accurate (Or what counts for accurate) results.

I know a psycologist teacher, myself, teachers educated in psycology and a proffesor who would all disagree with you. But I'd be happy to hear 'why' Freud and his theories are irrelevant today.
You might want to read the other replies I made in this thread concerning this topic. Edit: Or to cut to the chase, I pointed out that Freud's theories have been getting re-examined recently using modern methodology, but it's still has a ways to go before becoming mainstream.
Nikolaz72:


The only truly useful thing that Freud did was popularize the field and associate it with medicine; even psychoanalysis has been taking a beating in the scientific literature for at least the past 4+ decades (i.e., talking with a trained psychoanalyst is about as helpful to your mental state as talking with an untrained good friend).

Now, is everything Freud ever said a worthless pile of garbage? Of course not. He was a decent observer, even if he followed up his observations with wild, cocaine induced ideas filtered through his own broken psyche that he then claimed to be universal. That any of his hypotheses bear a resemblance to any sort of truth is mostly chance; like Nostradamus, if you say enough things, some of them will be correct.

Some quotes from prominent psychologists/psychiatrists:

Gilbert Ryle described Freud's ideas as, "damagingly popular".

Lydiard H. Horton said, regarding dream theory: "Freud's theory appears dangerously inaccurate." (Horton was Freud's contemporary.)

Hans Eysenck, probably one of Freud's harshest critics, said Freud "set psychiatry back one hundred years" and "what is true in his theories is not new and what is new in his theories is not true."

The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Society (psychoanalysts own journal) published a report in 2008 saying that psychoanalysis, while still popular in the humanities, was "desiccated and dead" in psychology departments and textbooks due to "emphasis on testing the validity of their approaches scientifically."

(I have a BS in Psychology and an MS in Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology. The only professor I know who didn't immediately start laughing at someone [always a freshman] taking Freud seriously was actually a business professor who taught an Industrial/Organizational psychology class, except she just taught human resources and nothing about actual I/O psychology. She didn't have a psych degree.)
First of all, there is no reason to break out the cruel memes, 'and' be a douchebag. 'AND' not quote me in the progress. Also, psychoanalysis is mostly the best method for looking into the emotions and thoughts of say, an author. Not neccesarily the best method of finding out whats wrong with the next of kin. Its often used in English/other languages to make a more avanced review of say, a book or a film.

Phsychosexual theory of Freud is the one that I am mostly concerned with, and till now I have (except for the last two steps) found it largely accurate when comparing it to other examples, and the one time I used it in practice.

Anyway, read what I wrote to Letalisk above ^^

Point is, stop acting like an abselute douchebag over the internet. It has the habbit of stopping intelligent discussions and starting flamewars. Its also a good way to land on an ignorelist.
 

Erttheking

Member
Legacy
Oct 5, 2011
10,845
1
3
Country
United States
Boudica said:
I think Hitler was a great leader. He did a few things during the 30's that he shouldn't have (like dissolving the SA with a knife and locking up the socialists) but underneath the mess there was a fantastic leader. He gets misrepresented and demonized much more than he might deserve.

If he hadn't come into power during the depression, if the upper class had been slightly more varied in ethnic makeup, if the socialists didn't cave to public pressure and open the door for him... Under different circumstances, Hitler may have been the greatest leader Germany had ever known.
I don't know. When it came to leading the army he was kind of an idiot, my Dad always talks about if he had gone after Russian oil fields instead of Stalingrad, he would've had a good chance of defeating the Soviet Union. But instead he wanted to humiliate Stalin and it could have very well cost him the war. Also, picking a fight with the Soviet Union when he hadn't defeated Britain yet was a pretty stupid move too. So yeah, maybe culturally he was a good leader, but when it came to the military he was a freaking dumbass, to the point where many people agree that Hitler had gotten assassinated and one of his generals had taken command, WW II would've gone a lot differently, and not for the better.
 

Erttheking

Member
Legacy
Oct 5, 2011
10,845
1
3
Country
United States
Para199x said:
thebobmaster said:
America is responsible for winning World War II/America had nothing to do with winning World War II.

That's right, those are both false. Britain was holding out against Germany and Italy, this is true. Russia dedicated a lot of manpower, and the failed invasion of Russia weakened Germany, also true.

However, Britain didn't have the resources to fight against Japan. Meanwhile, Russia lost a lot of manpower in that failed invasion, so they would have had problems with an attack on Japan as well.

On top of that, without the atomic bombs that the U.S. developed, the back-up invasion plan would have resulted in many more deaths on both sides.

So it's not true that America is the only reason the Allies won World War II, but they were a large help.
Japan were only really at war with America so that's not really relevant imho
Uh, I think China would beg to differ, along with several smaller pacific countries.
 

John the Gamer

New member
May 2, 2010
1,021
0
0
Lethos said:
(snip...)anyone who says the war would have been won without the States is vastly overestimating the capabilities of the other allied nations.
Well the war would still have been won, just probably by the Axis powers instead :) But yeah, without the Victory-program(prefab ships/planes/tanks) and the lend-lease act, the USSR and GB would have been done for. And the second and third front opened in Western Europe by the USA helped ease the pressure on the Soviets, allowing them to push the Germans back.