OK so I'm not gonna derail the Metafilter thread about this, which means I'll complain about it here:
Someone quoted Stewart Brand's story about old oak beams in New College, Oxford having replacements planted specifically for them 400 years ago.
I said it's not true, as per the college's archivist.
Another person says I'm wrong. Interesting! Has some new evidence been revealed, like records dating to the time in question? https://www.metafilter.com/203640/How-Kings-College-Added-438-Solar-Panels-to-a-500-Year-Old-Chapel
No, the evidence is that the story comes from the Bateson family, "an extraordinarily distinguished line ... spanning centuries along the lines of the Darwins and the Huxleys".
"The veracity and distinction of the Bateson family" cannot be questioned!
Documentary records: I sleep
Some family passing down oral history: Real shit
It might be true! And if it isn't, I'm not implying any lying happened. Just the inevitable entropy of faulty memory over centuries.
Why should we care about this? Because the story is used as evidence that Oxford does things better than other institutions, ergo Oxford should be supported and respected.
As someone who's been to Oxford and Cambridge: fucking lol. No-one should try to emulate how they run things.
@adrianhon An adequately sourced alternative example would be the Visingsö oak forest, but that anecdote has several drawbacks:
- less time elapsed, so it's less impressive
- about silly Swedes, not wise and posh Britons
- the timber wasn't harvested because of transformational technological change, proving the long-term thinking to be fallible rather than sagacious
@cosmiccitizen I just read about it! A far more useful lesson