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It's like you didn't even read my comment. Why do you think everybody is just stacking technologies on top of a shared pool? That's a post-globalisation concep

It's like you didn't even read my comment. Why do you think everybody is just stacking technologies on top of a shared pool? That's a post-globalisation concept. African people discovered plenty of technologies including metal forging - but they were less technologically advanced than Europeans when they were invaded. Why? Because the material situation in Europe is ideal for technological development. The climate is temperate, food is abundant, the Romans went everywhere dumping their own advanced tech on everybody, probably other factors a historian could elaborate. There are plenty of alternative explanations to the one you're implying, and the one that's been historically taught, which is "black people are not capable of developing civilisation or technology". Edit given you appended "at any point in time": basically no milestone technological development has happened anywhere for quite some time now, excluding computers and the Internet. Everything's incremental now. Plus for much of that time many African countries have either been trying to recover from colonialism or been caught up in civil war (which should be expected when a power vacuum is created). I would say that mobile money is a good candidate for a meaningful invention though, and that came out of Nigeria.

edmcnulty101 5y ago
>> Because the material situation in Europe is ideal for technological development. The climate is temperate, food is abundant, >> the one that's been historically taught, which is "black people are not capable of developing civilisation or technology". Jared Diamond posits the first theory, as well, in Guns, Germs, Steel. These are competing theories for sure, amongst probably a massive number of other theories. If you're trying to have a more accurate perception of reality you have to leave yourself open to even uncomfortable truths.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  The "uncomfortable truth" (that black people are socially or intellectually inferior to white people) /is/ the established idea. We're only just now looking for alternative explanations because it turns out black people are regular people too and can function perfectly well within our "superior white civilisation", assuming they're not too busy being lynched or pushed into ghettos. White superiority (dare I say, white supremacy?) has only just become uncomfortable instead of the accepted truth, because the evidence points to other explanations, and we've recently noticed what racial ideology leads to. It is not those looking at material explanations and examining African culture and development that are dogmatically clinging to ideological explanations - it's those who still think that colonial propaganda and white savior mythology represent a disinterested examination of the evidence.
  - edmcnulty101 5y ago
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      This conversation has been done to death, there's no value to be had from racial ideology because it's been disproven for a long time. To be clear, this isn't a discussion - I'm trying to hand hold you into thinking about your positions. I have nothing to learn from the "race realist" position; I've seen the arguments for and against and it's really easily disproven. You may think that the "race realists" are holding onto the secret truth that's been suppressed by the woke postmodernist academics, but the reality is that you've fallen for some online conservative propaganda and the academics are just trying to find the truth.
      - edmcnulty101 5y ago
        [flagged]
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        edmcnulty101 5y ago
    - dang 5y ago
      You can't do race war on HN, and we ban accounts that do. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > Jared Diamond posits the first theory, as well, in Guns, Germs, Steel. No, he doesn't. GGS explicitly rejects any sort of pseudo-racial theory of civilizational superiority. The entire book is a methodical dissection of why different regions experienced different paces of development in the pre-colonial era, with climate, geography, and endemic food species being the leading factors.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    But that's what I was saying as well - that civilisational development is not driven by some concept of racial traits, but that it's driven by material conditions.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Yes, I think we're on the same page. Racialized theories of civilization are, on face value, absurd (and, well, racist). GGS goes to significant lengths to debunk them, including thoroughly collapsing the racial categories that colonial and post-colonial Westerners use.
      - edmcnulty101 5y ago
        I don't think they're absurd. Humans are tribal to the core of our being. Race matters, culturally, genetically, and is how we typically organized throughout history and even today. The Irish, French, and British are pretty similar racially but divide pretty significantly on the tiny differences in that race. To cast aside race as an arbitrary characteristic seems inaccurate view of reality. Race is one of the most important attributes that makes us human.
        chillacy 5y ago
        The question of whether race or location is the causal factor seems to just be different dimensions of the same thing, no? Given that they pretty much correlate though most of history.

edmcnulty101 5y ago

>> Because the material situation in Europe is ideal for technological development. The climate is temperate, food is abundant, >> the one that's been historically taught, which is "black people are not capable of developing civilisation or technology". Jared Diamond posits the first theory, as well, in Guns, Germs, Steel. These are competing theories for sure, amongst probably a massive number of other theories. If you're trying to have a more accurate perception of reality you have to leave yourself open to even uncomfortable truths.

beaconstudios 5y ago
The "uncomfortable truth" (that black people are socially or intellectually inferior to white people) /is/ the established idea. We're only just now looking for alternative explanations because it turns out black people are regular people too and can function perfectly well within our "superior white civilisation", assuming they're not too busy being lynched or pushed into ghettos. White superiority (dare I say, white supremacy?) has only just become uncomfortable instead of the accepted truth, because the evidence points to other explanations, and we've recently noticed what racial ideology leads to. It is not those looking at material explanations and examining African culture and development that are dogmatically clinging to ideological explanations - it's those who still think that colonial propaganda and white savior mythology represent a disinterested examination of the evidence.
- edmcnulty101 5y ago
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    This conversation has been done to death, there's no value to be had from racial ideology because it's been disproven for a long time. To be clear, this isn't a discussion - I'm trying to hand hold you into thinking about your positions. I have nothing to learn from the "race realist" position; I've seen the arguments for and against and it's really easily disproven. You may think that the "race realists" are holding onto the secret truth that's been suppressed by the woke postmodernist academics, but the reality is that you've fallen for some online conservative propaganda and the academics are just trying to find the truth.
    - edmcnulty101 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        edmcnulty101 5y ago
  - dang 5y ago
    You can't do race war on HN, and we ban accounts that do. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
woodruffw 5y ago
> Jared Diamond posits the first theory, as well, in Guns, Germs, Steel. No, he doesn't. GGS explicitly rejects any sort of pseudo-racial theory of civilizational superiority. The entire book is a methodical dissection of why different regions experienced different paces of development in the pre-colonial era, with climate, geography, and endemic food species being the leading factors.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  But that's what I was saying as well - that civilisational development is not driven by some concept of racial traits, but that it's driven by material conditions.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Yes, I think we're on the same page. Racialized theories of civilization are, on face value, absurd (and, well, racist). GGS goes to significant lengths to debunk them, including thoroughly collapsing the racial categories that colonial and post-colonial Westerners use.
    - edmcnulty101 5y ago
      I don't think they're absurd. Humans are tribal to the core of our being. Race matters, culturally, genetically, and is how we typically organized throughout history and even today. The Irish, French, and British are pretty similar racially but divide pretty significantly on the tiny differences in that race. To cast aside race as an arbitrary characteristic seems inaccurate view of reality. Race is one of the most important attributes that makes us human.
      - chillacy 5y ago
        The question of whether race or location is the causal factor seems to just be different dimensions of the same thing, no? Given that they pretty much correlate though most of history.