As it would apply to a lot of things throughout history.
e.g.
“Remember that there is an alternate universe in which ancient Anatolian farmers defeated the Yamnaya steppe raiders in Europe, and they are telling the story of how they nearly didn't make it.”
Which would mean even the concept of “European” as known in this universe… is just a bundle of survivor bias, just-so stories, and so on.
On the contrary, this line of argument proves nothing. Rather, it is a caution that people telling you stories tells you a lot about what they want to portray, not so much about whether what they did was a generally good decision.
As to your second point: "European" is an arbitrary social concept. Cartographers could have decided that Eurasia is obviously a single landmass, or that nothing is more important than river systems, or that the most important directionality is the path of the sun. Thousands of years later, the decisions made have consequences, but there is nothing divinely ordained about what those decisions were.
I suppose if a hundred years from now the common, generic word for "hotel" is "airbean", that might be a significant effect. But it's a little more likely to be "marriott" or "hilton", I think.
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This line of argument proves too much.
As it would apply to a lot of things throughout history.
e.g. “Remember that there is an alternate universe in which ancient Anatolian farmers defeated the Yamnaya steppe raiders in Europe, and they are telling the story of how they nearly didn't make it.”
Which would mean even the concept of “European” as known in this universe… is just a bundle of survivor bias, just-so stories, and so on.
On the contrary, this line of argument proves nothing. Rather, it is a caution that people telling you stories tells you a lot about what they want to portray, not so much about whether what they did was a generally good decision.
As to your second point: "European" is an arbitrary social concept. Cartographers could have decided that Eurasia is obviously a single landmass, or that nothing is more important than river systems, or that the most important directionality is the path of the sun. Thousands of years later, the decisions made have consequences, but there is nothing divinely ordained about what those decisions were.
I suppose if a hundred years from now the common, generic word for "hotel" is "airbean", that might be a significant effect. But it's a little more likely to be "marriott" or "hilton", I think.