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I'd say it was more like Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology too, it's the growth mindset th

I'd say it was more like Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology too, it's the growth mindset that didn't take over there as much as in Europe. Anyway too few data points and too much speculation to be able to say that advancement of civilization is casually dependent on the climate. We have agriculture/cities/empires/writing/some technology that developed independently in many parts of the world, and the rise of Europe from the Reinessance. Very few data point for "civilization advancement events"

yunohn 4y ago
> Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology The irony in this view is that almost everything tech and otherwise is manufactured by developing countries. And in places like Shenzhen, they innovate at an unimaginably rapid pace. But sure, Europe has “world class” tech and Asia has “pretty good” tech…
- sharikous 4y ago
  Had, not has. I spoke of the '500s more or less. The exponential spike in innovation from that century until these days was something unprecedented in human history and started in Europe. Of course today Europe is not the central point for technology anymore. Still they have a legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class, something that is less radicated (for now) in the East
  - yunohn 4y ago
    > legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class Where do you get the notion that developing countries don’t have “good schools”? They’ve had formalised education for millennia. Unless you are measuring wealth purely in post colonial USD/EUR, every single country (developing or developed) clearly has an accumulated wealth class, middle class, and poor class. It’s absurd that you think isn’t the case?
    - sharikous 4y ago
      Look at a high level journal and top published papers. Most papers come from certain institutions, mostly from developed countries. Those institutions don't live in a vacuum but have a big cultural and economical environment around them that would take decades to build from scratch.
      - yunohn 4y ago
        I want to clarify that this is a tangential point to by our previous comment and my reply, which you did not address. Regardless, I don’t have the energy to debate your random points and why there are issues with your understanding of them. I’d like to end with the fact that “developed” countries don’t have the ability to actually manufacture most of their “genius” inventions, so…
fallingfrog 4y ago
There are all sorts of different ideas about why Europe developed before the rest of the world- maybe it was because of the scientific method, maybe it was finance capitalism, maybe it was wealth looted from other countries. But I’ve never heard it attributed to a “growth mindset”, whatever that means. That sounds like magical thinking, honestly.
- sharikous 4y ago
  I probably meant what you name as "finance capitalism" - the expectation that if you invest money you get a return on the investment, so you are encouraged to invest more money.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    I tried researching “finance capitalism” but it is unclear to me what the innovation is. It’s wild to me that the definition and your viewpoint presume that somehow non-European countries never considered making profit on investments? That’s… I don’t know what to say. Maybe read a book about history.
    - fallingfrog 4y ago
      I think maybe part of the problem is that for idealogical reasons people lump a lot of things together and call it "capitalism" like the invention of calculus or the steam engine, but those are really separate things. They like to just put anything useful that people do and label it "capitalism" even though communist and other non-capitalist countries have created a lot of science. I don't know a lot about eastern financial structures. What I meant was the way that everything in Europe after a certain point becomes financed with debt, which then has to be paid back with interest, and you get these huge amounts of money owed by everyone, creating this requirement to expand or die, and you see all these expeditions launching and pillaging the rest of the world, and you see the commons privatized and the people living on agriculture are forced into the cities where they are packed together and put to work 16 hours a day, and all of it is to service debts that are instantly flipped around and used as collateral to obtain more debt, and so on. It's sort of a monster that has to grow or die, so maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know.

yunohn 4y ago

> Europe had world class technology and much better growth. In Asia you could find pretty good technology The irony in this view is that almost everything tech and otherwise is manufactured by developing countries. And in places like Shenzhen, they innovate at an unimaginably rapid pace. But sure, Europe has “world class” tech and Asia has “pretty good” tech…

sharikous 4y ago
Had, not has. I spoke of the '500s more or less. The exponential spike in innovation from that century until these days was something unprecedented in human history and started in Europe. Of course today Europe is not the central point for technology anymore. Still they have a legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class, something that is less radicated (for now) in the East
- yunohn 4y ago
  > legacy of good schools, accumulated wealth and a middle class Where do you get the notion that developing countries don’t have “good schools”? They’ve had formalised education for millennia. Unless you are measuring wealth purely in post colonial USD/EUR, every single country (developing or developed) clearly has an accumulated wealth class, middle class, and poor class. It’s absurd that you think isn’t the case?
  - sharikous 4y ago
    Look at a high level journal and top published papers. Most papers come from certain institutions, mostly from developed countries. Those institutions don't live in a vacuum but have a big cultural and economical environment around them that would take decades to build from scratch.
    - yunohn 4y ago
      I want to clarify that this is a tangential point to by our previous comment and my reply, which you did not address. Regardless, I don’t have the energy to debate your random points and why there are issues with your understanding of them. I’d like to end with the fact that “developed” countries don’t have the ability to actually manufacture most of their “genius” inventions, so…

fallingfrog 4y ago

There are all sorts of different ideas about why Europe developed before the rest of the world- maybe it was because of the scientific method, maybe it was finance capitalism, maybe it was wealth looted from other countries. But I’ve never heard it attributed to a “growth mindset”, whatever that means. That sounds like magical thinking, honestly.

sharikous 4y ago
I probably meant what you name as "finance capitalism" - the expectation that if you invest money you get a return on the investment, so you are encouraged to invest more money.
- yunohn 4y ago
  I tried researching “finance capitalism” but it is unclear to me what the innovation is. It’s wild to me that the definition and your viewpoint presume that somehow non-European countries never considered making profit on investments? That’s… I don’t know what to say. Maybe read a book about history.
  - fallingfrog 4y ago
    I think maybe part of the problem is that for idealogical reasons people lump a lot of things together and call it "capitalism" like the invention of calculus or the steam engine, but those are really separate things. They like to just put anything useful that people do and label it "capitalism" even though communist and other non-capitalist countries have created a lot of science. I don't know a lot about eastern financial structures. What I meant was the way that everything in Europe after a certain point becomes financed with debt, which then has to be paid back with interest, and you get these huge amounts of money owed by everyone, creating this requirement to expand or die, and you see all these expeditions launching and pillaging the rest of the world, and you see the commons privatized and the people living on agriculture are forced into the cities where they are packed together and put to work 16 hours a day, and all of it is to service debts that are instantly flipped around and used as collateral to obtain more debt, and so on. It's sort of a monster that has to grow or die, so maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know.