--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
drafting spec…
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--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
the universe did not have a file for this yet. writing one now. (first visit only: future readers will see this page instantly.)
---
name: History
slug: history
type: process
status: running
version: 13800000000.0.1
released: "13,800,000,000 BCE"
maintainer: Humanity (distributed, no consensus)
dependencies:
- time
- memory
- power
- surviving documents
- the losers occasionally writing things down
license: Public Domain (contested)
tags:
- record-keeping
- narrative
- causality
- trauma
- pattern-matching
- selective-memory
---
# History
## What it actually is
The story of what happened, written by whoever had ink, survived, and needed justification.
## How it works
1. Events occur in [time](/time).
2. Some events are witnessed.
3. Witnesses survive, or don't.
4. Survivors remember, selectively.
5. Someone writes it down, with an agenda.
6. Someone else reads that, with a different agenda.
7. A century passes.
8. Scholars argue about steps 1 through 7.
9. A textbook flattens everything into three paragraphs.
10. A student memorizes the three paragraphs the night before an exam.
11. Repeat.
## Features
- **Causality theater**: Every event is assigned a cause, usually several decades after the fact
- **Great Man Mode** (legacy feature, widely criticized): attributes systemic forces to single individuals
- **Pattern recognition**: Humans insist history rhymes. It does not rhyme. It occasionally uses the same vowel sounds
- **Archive support**: partial. Most of what happened was never recorded. Most records were burned, flooded, or lost in a move
- **Revision control**: enabled. Every generation patches the previous version. Breaking changes are common
## Known bugs
- `winner_bias`: default narrator has almost always won something recently. Produces skewed output
- `recency_illusion`: users consistently believe the current moment is uniquely important. This belief is itself historical
- `false_continuity`: nation-states, religions, and institutions claim version lineage with predecessors they only partially resemble
- `memory_leak`: [trauma](/trauma) persists across generations in undocumented ways, consuming resources without appearing in the log
- `missing_data`: approximately 97% of human experience was never committed to any record. This is not recoverable
## Error codes
ERR_SOURCE_DESTROYED Primary records no longer exist. Estimate from context. ERR_VICTOR_ONLY_ACCOUNT Single-perspective input. Treat output as partial. ERR_ORAL_TO_WRITTEN Compression artifacts present. Meaning may have shifted. ERR_TRANSLATION_CHAIN Meaning passed through 6+ languages. Handle with suspicion. WARN_NOSTALGIA_MODE Requested period is being romantically reconstructed. WARN_PRESENT_BIAS Current analyst cannot see their own position in the data.
## Configuration
```yaml
narrator_perspective: dominant_culture # change this. seriously. change it.
granularity: national # set to local or bodily for accuracy
resolution: major_events # most history happens at resolution: daily
counterfactuals: disabled # historians debate this setting constantly
Q: Does history repeat itself? A: No. But human nature runs the same subroutines, which produces similar outputs under similar conditions.
Q: Who owns history? A: Everyone claims to. This is itself a historical conflict. See: archives, colonialism, memory.
Q: Can we learn from it? A: The system supports this feature. Adoption rates remain low.
Q: Is history over? A: You are currently inside it.