The Life-Changing Sarah Paine Framework
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
valstech.blogOtherstory
calmmixed
Debate
40/100
Critical ThinkingHistorical AnalysisSarah Paine
Key topics
Critical Thinking
Historical Analysis
Sarah Paine
The article discusses the 'Sarah Paine framework', a meta-framework for critical thinking and historical analysis, sparking discussion on its merits and comparisons to other philosophical methods.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Active discussionFirst comment
3d
Peak period
11
60-66h
Avg / period
5
Comment distribution15 data points
Loading chart...
Based on 15 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Sep 4, 2025 at 1:39 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Sep 6, 2025 at 2:54 PM EDT
3d after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
11 comments in 60-66h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Sep 7, 2025 at 5:13 AM EDT
4 months ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
ID: 45123933Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 4:47:35 PM
Want the full context?
Jump to the original sources
Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.
1. Ancient Genetics - david reich 2. history - one about stalin, sarah paine 3. AI ofc
I feel like some writers don't accept that readers have changed, are more distracted and naturally tend to a more "Economist-ish" style of writing nowadays.
Says it all, really. I gave up.
Paine is likely well versed in the philosophy and knows exactly what she's doing. Pointing this out in case anyone wants to go deeper on this kind of approach. Much ink has been spilled over the years on different approaches, criticisms, etc.
She's the right kind of historian, the bookworm who's gonna read and investigate all of the possible documentation she can find before forming an opinion.
One of the criticism I have towards her, though, is her apparent lack of empathy towards history and its protagonists. She may very well read in history how Mao's genius of involving and empowering women in the communist struggle against the Japanese and Nationalists gave him a crucial advantage. This and other small acts that compound in significant events, that she can find, recognize, trace and expose.
She can clearly recognize how Chinese century of humiliation shapes modern Chinese foreign policy.
Yet, somehow sometimes she cannot see other obvious things.
E.g. Russians and Ukrainians "hate" each other, because they see the other as the bad guy in their biggest trauma. For Ukrainians, whose biggest collective trauma is the Soviet famine of the 20s/30s the Russian is the aggressor. For Russians whose biggest collective trauma is ww2, Ukrainians are those who sided with the Nazi invader.
Both of the previous sentences are equally true and equally...a bit more nuanced and complicated. But they still shape Ukrainians and Russians born 4/5/6 generations after those events.
Yet, professor Paine sometimes cannot see or expose this obviousness.