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You’re kind of missing something. The interesting result is that they didn’t find evidence for Diamond’s theory, which isn’t so surprising to me. The world is a

by Gimpei 3y ago

You’re kind of missing something. The interesting result is that they didn’t find evidence for Diamond’s theory, which isn’t so surprising to me. The world is a very complicated place and mono causality is, almost surely, never the case.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"didn't find evidence". I thought they did, it just wasn't very pronounced. There was impact, but not to the degree the Diamond book theorized. "didn't" makes it sound a lot more definitive than the paper said.
- hwillis 3y ago
  Diamond's premise is that Europe's geographical layout gave it superior advantages to the rest of the planet. The paper found that Europe's layout is in fact not significantly better or even different from many other places on earth where early humans developed. They even found that in many cases civilization flourished in direct opposition to those qualities, like in southeast asia where mountainous terrain was compensated with rice terraces. They also confirmed that the things Diamond said about having interconnected similar areas etc being important to cultural spread were generally right, just that they aren't actually correlated very closely with europe/asia in particular. Diamond was right about them (they're very agreeable statements, and not unique to him) but they don't support his thesis.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Thanks for these clarifications. Though I still don't quite understand what is the original question here. I have not read Diamond's book, so I don't know what he is exactly trying to explain. The phys.org source talks about "Eurasian political and military dominance". First, the focus on Asia (in addition to Europe) is strange. The renaissance, the industrial revolution, the demographic transition, secularism, constitutional democracy, institutionalized science etc all started in Europe and not in Asia. So apparently Diamond tries to explain the current political dominance of (some parts of) Asia. But then he would need to also take into account the US, not just Europe and Asia. So I don't really understand what we are trying to explain here. One important point that hardly anybody dares to mention is that people of East Asian and European descent have significantly higher IQs than people from other geographic areas. Personal IQ is highly correlated with measures of life success, like income, highest education degree etc. Moreover, national IQ is substantially correlated with per capita GDP. We also know from twin studies that adults have similar IQ to their biological parents, not their adoptive parents. This suggests IQ causes both personal and national success, and isn't just correlated with it. So arguably the task should not be to explain some sort of "Eurasian" dominance, since this dominance can likely be explained sufficiently with IQ as a proximate cause. The open question is rather why people of East Asian and European descent have a higher average IQ. Or why modernity began in Western Europe, not Asia, despite East Asians today having higher IQs than Europeans (excluding people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, which have higher IQs than both gentile Europeans and East Asians).
    - tptacek 3y ago
      You've taken a wild leap from narrow psychometric observations to characterizing all of humanity, induced wholly from the observation that "children's IQ is closer to that of biological parents than to adoptive parents" (itself a complicated and tenuous finding). There is far more variation within large cohorts of humanity than between them. No, I don't think you can explain any kind of "Eurasian" dominance this way.
      - cubefox 3y ago
        In case you are interested in specific lines of research, here is a Twitter overview thread of 25 specific threads on that topic (you need an account to see them all): https://twitter.com/PaoloShirasi/status/1549416261075062785 https://twitter.com/PaoloShirasi/status/1549416261075062785 I don't blame you if you'd rather not look at the research too closely, it kind of feels like an infohazard. But it's a good source to bookmark and to perhaps come back later.
        hwillis 3y ago
        > it kind of feels like an infohazard. God, what a disappointing euphemism. Just stick with redpill, would you?
        cubefox 3y ago
        I don't know what you mean.
        tptacek 3y ago
        Re that Twitter account: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Monitoring_Bias https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Monitoring_Bias
        cubefox 3y ago
        That's speculation by "Rational Wiki", a far from rational and highly politically biased group that defames everything and everyone as "racist" that doesn't fit their world view. This has in the past included attacks against highly respected people like Scott Aaronson and Scott Alexander. They do not focus on evidence-based arguments, as real rationalists would. They don't calmly post peer-reviewed studies like Paolo Shirasi. Their Modus operandi is a) doxxing and b) to slander people with the label "racist". But reality is what it is. It doesn't care whether someone labels a hypothesis as racist or not. The only way to grapple with reality is to find out what it is.

by Gimpei 3y ago

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

"didn't find evidence". I thought they did, it just wasn't very pronounced. There was impact, but not to the degree the Diamond book theorized. "didn't" makes it sound a lot more definitive than the paper said.

hwillis 3y ago
Diamond's premise is that Europe's geographical layout gave it superior advantages to the rest of the planet. The paper found that Europe's layout is in fact not significantly better or even different from many other places on earth where early humans developed. They even found that in many cases civilization flourished in direct opposition to those qualities, like in southeast asia where mountainous terrain was compensated with rice terraces. They also confirmed that the things Diamond said about having interconnected similar areas etc being important to cultural spread were generally right, just that they aren't actually correlated very closely with europe/asia in particular. Diamond was right about them (they're very agreeable statements, and not unique to him) but they don't support his thesis.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Thanks for these clarifications. Though I still don't quite understand what is the original question here. I have not read Diamond's book, so I don't know what he is exactly trying to explain. The phys.org source talks about "Eurasian political and military dominance". First, the focus on Asia (in addition to Europe) is strange. The renaissance, the industrial revolution, the demographic transition, secularism, constitutional democracy, institutionalized science etc all started in Europe and not in Asia. So apparently Diamond tries to explain the current political dominance of (some parts of) Asia. But then he would need to also take into account the US, not just Europe and Asia. So I don't really understand what we are trying to explain here. One important point that hardly anybody dares to mention is that people of East Asian and European descent have significantly higher IQs than people from other geographic areas. Personal IQ is highly correlated with measures of life success, like income, highest education degree etc. Moreover, national IQ is substantially correlated with per capita GDP. We also know from twin studies that adults have similar IQ to their biological parents, not their adoptive parents. This suggests IQ causes both personal and national success, and isn't just correlated with it. So arguably the task should not be to explain some sort of "Eurasian" dominance, since this dominance can likely be explained sufficiently with IQ as a proximate cause. The open question is rather why people of East Asian and European descent have a higher average IQ. Or why modernity began in Western Europe, not Asia, despite East Asians today having higher IQs than Europeans (excluding people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, which have higher IQs than both gentile Europeans and East Asians).
  - tptacek 3y ago
    You've taken a wild leap from narrow psychometric observations to characterizing all of humanity, induced wholly from the observation that "children's IQ is closer to that of biological parents than to adoptive parents" (itself a complicated and tenuous finding). There is far more variation within large cohorts of humanity than between them. No, I don't think you can explain any kind of "Eurasian" dominance this way.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      In case you are interested in specific lines of research, here is a Twitter overview thread of 25 specific threads on that topic (you need an account to see them all): https://twitter.com/PaoloShirasi/status/1549416261075062785 https://twitter.com/PaoloShirasi/status/1549416261075062785 I don't blame you if you'd rather not look at the research too closely, it kind of feels like an infohazard. But it's a good source to bookmark and to perhaps come back later.
      - hwillis 3y ago
        > it kind of feels like an infohazard. God, what a disappointing euphemism. Just stick with redpill, would you?
        cubefox 3y ago
        I don't know what you mean.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Re that Twitter account: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Monitoring_Bias https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Monitoring_Bias
        cubefox 3y ago
        That's speculation by "Rational Wiki", a far from rational and highly politically biased group that defames everything and everyone as "racist" that doesn't fit their world view. This has in the past included attacks against highly respected people like Scott Aaronson and Scott Alexander. They do not focus on evidence-based arguments, as real rationalists would. They don't calmly post peer-reviewed studies like Paolo Shirasi. Their Modus operandi is a) doxxing and b) to slander people with the label "racist". But reality is what it is. It doesn't care whether someone labels a hypothesis as racist or not. The only way to grapple with reality is to find out what it is.