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Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

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Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#41

Post by zen_of_prog »

George83728 wrote: post #12

I never bought into the claims that Jared Diamond is some sort of racist; he book is plainly anti-racist and anybody who says otherwise probably never read it. Honestly. That said, some of Jared Diamond's arguments are really lame.. just poorly thought out. For instance, is claim that the use of wheels for transportation is in some way gated by the availability of pack animals. This guy has never used a wheel barrow…

His arguments definitely don't have the same academic rigor as someone in their own field, but I felt like everything was pretty defensible.

Ox-drawn plows are at least 4000 years old, and I feel like seeing an animal pulling a plow all day begs for wheels so you can pull anything anywhere. At least more than the combination of a wheel and a stick, to apply mechanical advantage to lift and then move things.

The oldest wheelbarrow that we know of is from ~200 BCE, and the oldest chariots from ~2000 BCE. This tracks with animals pulling your stuff either being more obvious or to there being a higher ratio between payoff and cost of development.

You're right that it often comes down to dumb luck, but I think those lucky moments are usually facilitated by other factors. That's why there are often simultaneous and independent inventions (multiple discovery), and why tech startups aren't geographically uniformly distributed.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#43

Post by FrustratedMonky »

civilized wrote: post #13
angst_ridden wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Diamond's greatest fault as a researcher is his reliance on reductivism. Anyone can cherry-pick history to support "5 simple rules that explain X" if the rules are even reasonably sane. It may be satisfying and entertaining to read, but human history is much more complex than just a few rules.

I bet I can take anyone's favorite history books and paint them as reductivist. The charge of reductivism can be made against anyone who attempts to explain big patterns in comprehensible ways. In fact, isn't it reductionist to claim that a historian's entire view on a topic can be reduced to theories they developed in a single book?

Exactly. Have you seen how many WWII or Civil War books there are. Do I need to read them all before I am allowed a valid opinion? All history gets condensed and interpreted. This thread isn't really do a very good job arguing that Jared is wrong, it seems much more like they disagree with some particular point politically, thus he must be wrong.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#44

Post by civilized »

contingencies wrote: post #30
civilized wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in the quoted passage suggests that China does not have different dialects. But it doesn't take a history professor to recognize that China has been under centralized governments of much more comprehensive reach in space and time than Europe ever has, and it is with these periods of unity and stability that Chinese culture most identifies itself.

This is true now . But before, most people would have been loyal firstly to their area, speak a (quite possibly non-Chinese or even Sino-Tibetan) language or dialect only understood in their area, and at would at most have heard the names of some far-off places. It was not that different to Europe. And that's the relatively Chinese areas. Don't forget also that up until the 20th century large areas of present-day Chi…

I get where you're coming from. I think what the article should have said was, Europe has geography that favors multiple independent stable nation states, whereas Chinese geography, while it has certainly hosted many competing dynasties over the centuries, does not favor multiple stable nation states. Basically, it's too easy to conquer the whole, so it's been done many times.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#45

Post by FrustratedMonky »

George83728 wrote: post #12

I never bought into the claims that Jared Diamond is some sort of racist; he book is plainly anti-racist and anybody who says otherwise probably never read it. Honestly. That said, some of Jared Diamond's arguments are really lame.. just poorly thought out. For instance, is claim that the use of wheels for transportation is in some way gated by the availability of pack animals. This guy has never used a wheel barrow…

Probably more of a multiplier. Wheels on pack animals are going to multiply the work that can be done many times over just a human pushing the thing. Sure, it helps the human do more, but combined with a pack animal its orders of magnitude more than the human. And building a cart to fit to the pack animal is probably not the easiest thing to come up with, but looks obvious after seeing it, hence why the flow of technology isn't instantaneous.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#46

Post by AlbertCory »

vanderZwan wrote: post #25
jrh3 wrote: post #5

Wow. I read that book in college. No idea a backlash like that developed... That is crazy if that is how skewed university's have become. Guns, Germs, and Steel is an incredible academic work. Dang.

Are you active in any of tho relevant fields? If not, then why do you think you are better qualified to judge the academic quality of his work than actual academics with the proper background?

> better qualified to judge the academic quality of his work than actual academics with the proper background

that argument only holds up if the group with the "proper background" is NOT a giant echo chamber where non-conformity is ruthlessly punished.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#47

Post by WalterBright »

ren_engineer wrote: post #22
jrh3 wrote: post #5

Wow. I read that book in college. No idea a backlash like that developed... That is crazy if that is how skewed university's have become. Guns, Germs, and Steel is an incredible academic work. Dang.

the irony is that I've seen Guns, Germs, and Steel get trashed by people on the right for downplaying the idea that Western culture was/is special and the key to success/wealth/innovation and attacking Diamond for saying it was only due to geography and other random factors rather than Western culture itself Universities and academics have shifted so far left that they are increasingly eating their own, the entire po…

Free markets are a big deal. They are indeed the key to success/wealth/innovation.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#48

Post by WalterBright »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #40
WalterBright wrote: post #8

> Diamond also attempts to explain why European, rather than Chinese, conquerors were the ones who did all the colonizing. This is a simple balkanization theory—Europe divided into many areas conducive to states, China formed a great homogenous core—that does not need lengthy restatement. Europe has a highly indented coastline with multiple large peninsulas, all of which developed independent languages, ethnic groups…

> He says the difference comes from a different cultural perspective. It's been a long time since I read it, but I'll try to summarize it with the Chinese perspective was that phenomena could not be modeled. Everything was a unique creation. I.e. the behavior of a model could not be extrapolated to explain other behaviors, while the European perspective was always trying to explain things with models. This makes me b…

> Specialization of labor, agriculture optimization, the printing press, industrialization, engines, washing machines, electricity - all created conditions that allowed people having more rights, liberty and happiness than they could've before.

Sorry, but this is exactly backwards :-) In the US, the rights came first. Note that the states that still practiced slavery failed at industrialization, specialization, etc.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#49

Post by karaterobot »

When I first read GG&S in a university anthropology course in 2000 or 2001, I immediately disliked it. The reason was not because I thought it was racist or imperialist— I don't think it is. Instead, I disliked it because it tried to explain the shape of history with an overly simplistic model that tossed out every nuance which didn't fit the thesis.

Now that I'm older, I understand that this is what pretty much every popular treatment of anything must do, and Diamond was just more successful at it than almost anyone else. Is that to his credit? As a writer, maybe. It's ultimately a complaint about the danger of arguments which are so simple, elegant, and easily understandable that they suck all the air out of the debate, not against him or his book per se.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#50

Post by worik »

soperj wrote: post #9
WalterBright wrote: post #8

> Diamond also attempts to explain why European, rather than Chinese, conquerors were the ones who did all the colonizing. This is a simple balkanization theory—Europe divided into many areas conducive to states, China formed a great homogenous core—that does not need lengthy restatement. Europe has a highly indented coastline with multiple large peninsulas, all of which developed independent languages, ethnic groups…

> > Diamond also attempts to explain why European, rather than Chinese, conquerors were the ones who did all the colonizing. This is a simple balkanization theory—Europe divided into many areas conducive to states, China formed a great homogenous core—that does not need lengthy restatement. Europe has a highly indented coastline with multiple large peninsulas, all of which developed independent languages, ethnic grou…

> It's like he knows nothing about China

Oh yes.

And East Asia is much more than, much bigger than, China.

It is a ludicrous infantile argument from a Western POV Jarrad never notices.

He is a fish, swim g in a racist sea that does not know what water is

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