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Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

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Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#71

Post by chongli »

czzr wrote: post #35
yyyk wrote: post #15

The author needs to look at this in a wider context. GG&S may be defensible, but Collapse is pretty horrible, trying to force environmental explanations at the cost of downplaying European slave raids (Easter Islands) or utter absurdity (Diamond's suggestion that Viking Greenlanders preferred to starve than to eat fish). Diamond had a thesis and forced the facts to fit in the expense of integrity. After Collapse , it…

I agree his later books were not as good, but this argument is ridiculous - evaluate GGS on its own terms, those don’t change if the author later writes poorer books.

Yeah. If we evaluated every author’s work based on their worst book or theory, we’d have to throw out everything Newton did because he wrote a lot of bunk about alchemy and the occult.

Good thing we don’t do that, because calculus, gravity, and optics are extremely valuable.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#72

Post by worik »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #68
worik wrote: post #61

I no longer have a copy, so from memory.... The book opens with a sequence of Jarrad discussing with a New Guineaian, why it was Europeans that went to New Guinea, and not the other way around He goes on to discuss this, as if Europeans were the first outsiders there (we are not talking about the Highlands, that is more complex) Where he was having the conversation there had been at least four thousand years of inter…

You are quoting his thesis in the wrong order. He is not saying Europeans are 'dominant for ever'. He is saying that because of geography, etc... that Europeans developed technology faster, which gave them a head start, and that head start has perpetuated, exactly because that is what a head start does. Not that it can't even out in time, like a ripple. I think his thesis is totally compatible with saying "if New Gui…

> . And Europeans just lucked into it.

That is your interpretation, and mine

Not his

His was that the geography of Europe is special

But it is not. Even in his speciality, geography, he gets it wrong

Because he cannot bear that "...Europeans just lucked into it. "

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#73

Post by prepend »

worik wrote: post #56
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…

> book is plainly anti-racist and anybody who says otherwise probably never read it. I read it. It is deeply racist as none of the argument makes sense unless you look from a European POV from the end of the twentieth-century It so happens that the industrial revolution happened in England and not India, and a bunch of European gangsters went on a three hundred year world wide rampage that is coming to an ignoble end…

It was explicitly written with a European POC at the end of the 20th century. What else would you expect?

That doesn’t make something racist if you’re European writing during that period. Should all books by euros from 1950-2000 be discarded? I’m not sure I understand your argument.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#74

Post by worik »

prepend wrote: post #67
worik wrote: post #61

I no longer have a copy, so from memory.... The book opens with a sequence of Jarrad discussing with a New Guineaian, why it was Europeans that went to New Guinea, and not the other way around He goes on to discuss this, as if Europeans were the first outsiders there (we are not talking about the Highlands, that is more complex) Where he was having the conversation there had been at least four thousand years of inter…

> He makes up a story about why Europeans are dominant, not dominant now, in this time, but forever. He never claims the dominance will last forever. He just presents theories as to why Europeans are dominant now (or were 40 years ago when the book as published at least). It’s not racist to try to explain why Europe conquered New Guinea and not the other way around. It’s racist to say that’s a good thing or destined…

> It’s not racist to try to explain why Europe conquered New Guinea and not the other way around.

What is racist is to say it happened for a reason, not blind luck

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#75

Post by Barrin92 »

karaterobot wrote: post #49

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 ever…

>it tried to explain the shape of history with an overly simplistic model that tossed out every nuance which didn't fit the thesis

I think it's worth quoting Friedman from his essay on positive economics[1]

"In so far as a theory can be said to have "assumptions" at all, and in so far as their "realism" can be judged independently of the validity of predictions, the relation between the significance of a theory and the "realism" of its "assumptions" is almost the opposite of that suggested by the view under criticism. Truly important and significant hypotheses will be found to have "assumptions" that are wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality, and, in general, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions (in this sense).12 The reason is simple. A hypothesis is important if it "explains" much by little, that is, if it abstracts the common and crucial elements from the mass of complex and detailed circumstances surrounding the phenomena to be explained and permits valid predictions on the basis of them alone. To be important, therefore, a hypothesis must be descriptively false in its assumptions. it takes account of, and accounts for, none of the many other attendant circumstances, since its very success shows them to be irrelevant for the phenomena to be explained"

Diamond is often criticized for the simplicity, or geographic determinism of his argument but from the standpoint of an empirical science this is a strength. What matters is only the predictive power of a theory, not whether it is nuanced, realistic or representative. People sometimes seem to take almost offense to reductive theories in the social sciences.

Btw one recent development to really test Diamond's theory is I think the development of tropical wheat developed in Brazil. If this works and drastically uplifts the global south I'd count that as a big piece of evidence in his favor.

[1]https://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/fachbereich/bwl/pruefungs-st...

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#76

Post by FrustratedMonky »

yyyk wrote: post #51
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to tell because in the current political climate, there is such animosity against anybody mentioning human impacts on the 'environment', that someone could just state something obvious, like maybe we should stop polluting so much, and be called a 'woke liberal elitist'. So is his book Collapse forcing an environmental theory, or are you so against any theory of 'human caused environmental problems', that y…

>It has been awhile but think the Vikings had more variables, like weather that prevented fishing This was categorically refuted by bone analysis showing that Vikings did eat seaborne food[0]. The current hypothesis is that the fish bones were used to feed animals or burnt. The more important point that the thesis was absurd in the first place. The Vikings were seafarers, and we have no record of any such taboos. You…

Have an upvote. I can't argue the fish.

The settlements did fail though, right? So something happened. Doesn't he also outline poor soil and over-grazing, and the climate change when warm period ended. It is possible that there were enough negative variables that fishing alone couldn't save it. And it is a 26 year old book, so maybe he was speculating on what was known at the time. Like if it did fail, and they were great fishers, what could explain why fishing didn't save them. But, I don't have a citation.

Sorry also, since you have citations and I'm being lazy. But pretty sure there was a counter-counter addendum to the book on Easter Island. He published on his web site a new chapter re-discussing the latest theories on Easter Island. But I read it years ago, so not adding anything of value here. But to defend him, old history books do get revised.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#77

Post by worik »

prepend wrote: post #73
worik wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> book is plainly anti-racist and anybody who says otherwise probably never read it. I read it. It is deeply racist as none of the argument makes sense unless you look from a European POV from the end of the twentieth-century It so happens that the industrial revolution happened in England and not India, and a bunch of European gangsters went on a three hundred year world wide rampage that is coming to an ignoble end…

It was explicitly written with a European POC at the end of the 20th century. What else would you expect? That doesn’t make something racist if you’re European writing during that period. Should all books by euros from 1950-2000 be discarded? I’m not sure I understand your argument.

He mistook his post hoc analysis for historical and geographical determinism

Not all writers do that

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#78

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#79

Post by George83728 »

ramblenode wrote: post #60
zen_of_prog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oldes…

Wheels are also more advanced than they might appear to us nowadays. They are kind of a quantum leap because only a good wheel is useful, and a good wheel has multiple components that have to be fashioned and integrated in just the right way. Even if the idea of a wheelbarrow exists, it might not seem worth the investment when there isn't an established wheel industry and the wheel will need lots of tinkering and adj…

Wheels sturdy enough to carry light loads are easier to fabricate than wheels sturdy enough to carry heavy loads. Similarly low-speed wheels are easier to create than wheels suitable for a chariot pulled by a galloping horse.

So the thousands of years gap between heavy carts and chariots vs wheelbarrows, isn't something you can explain by citing insufficient technology or unsuitable environmental conditions. I think it all comes down to nobody had that idea yet.

Re: Jared Diamond: A Reply to His Critics

#80

Post by haroldp »

worik wrote: post #70
amateurCoder5 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Africa doesn't have East-West orientation, it extends across the tropics and into the North and South temperate regions.

Look at a map It has a huge east west extent https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/1...

You are being very silly. North Africa is oriented East-West in a way that allowed it to participate in the easy exchange of flora, fauna, culture and technology with the greater East-West zone that extends from Portugal to China. Saharan Africa is dominated by the Sahara Desert, which is a huge barrier to exchange. Sub-Saharan Africa is oriented mainly North-South, in comparison with the greater Mediterranean exchange region the Diamond outlines.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Eq...

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