6 ms·

I really liked Guns, Germs & Steel. Not necessarily because I was immediately convinced that it explained everything and that was the end of it (I don't have th

by Vinnl 3y ago

I really liked Guns, Germs & Steel. Not necessarily because I was immediately convinced that it explained everything and that was the end of it (I don't have the relevant expertise to be the judge of that), but just because it showed me a way of looking at the world at a way larger scale than I had previously done, and was very engaging while at it. It makes sense that such theories like the continental axis hypothesis may turn out to play some role, but not be a single cause-and-effect. Earth is a pretty complex system, after all.

lock-the-spock 3y ago
You might enjoy this as well, similar big picture and fascinating, but a bit more scientific and focused on the human element. > The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
- Vinnl 3y ago
  Thank you, I've added it to my reading list!
- epivosism 3y ago
  100% agree w/this recommendation. The title is pretentious and put me off, so I missed out for a few years, but the contents are amazing. He has another related book, The Secrets of our Success, which is good. I'm happy that despite everything, at least a few people are doing cross-domain research and trying to put together and test ideas for how humanity came to be.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  "The Triumph of the West" by Roberts has a similar thesis. https://www.amazon.com/triumph-West-J-M-Roberts/dp/0760708509 https://www.amazon.com/triumph-West-J-M-Roberts/dp/076070850... It's been a long time since I read it, but as I recall the theses were that individual rights and freedoms coupled with things like the scientific method is what resulted in triumph.
  - ahmadmk 3y ago
    The scientific method wasn’t novel to the western world. It’s origins date back to when the Moors conquered the southern half of western europe - and by almost all historian accounts - modernized many institutions over the subsequent hundreds of years (eg, from cutlery to math and science). I think the most relevant book on the west’s success is called complexity: a guided tour
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      It doesn't matter where the idea originated, it matters where it is applied.
    - Log_out_ 3y ago
      And because they had to much of science, they rejected the printing press? Does anyone read the sources anymore before they start projecting utopias everywhere? Also by preventing proper analysis, one prevents the discovery of cultural defects and repairs, preventing liberating change and effectively kicking away the ladder of progress, a deeply colonial act.
zeruch 3y ago
That book, along with Peter Turchin's "Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall" made me a fan of 'Cliodynamics' (a field name Turchin coined) as a concept. It, along with general ideas in Complexity Theory, I find more useful for making sense of large human/societal systems than just "single bullet theory" case studies.
- TuringNYC 3y ago
  I read Turchin's book, but what I didnt understand was how you could fit large-parameter models on such a small number of instances provided by history, w/o cherry-picking examples? What is the intuition?
  - zeruch 3y ago
    Because there aren't that few. I'd need to revisit some of it really, but even in the late 90s, when I was doing a custom PS major, we were using comparatively larger models for conflict analysis, like the "Correlates of War" project, which were coded well enough to do some rough but statistically useful runs with...as an undergraduate back then it felt like something really useful to compliment/challenge/reconcile with the more common case study format prevalent in the field. https://correlatesofwar.org/ https://correlatesofwar.org/ https://www.jessicamaves.com/forge.html https://www.jessicamaves.com/forge.html https://www.csac.org.uk/dataset/ https://www.csac.org.uk/dataset/ etc
    - mjburgess 3y ago
      Models with non-linear dynamics will often need 10^(12+) examples to fit. You cannot, in practice, establish empirical adequacy of such models. (Making, imv, much of social "science" better regarded as semi-empirical speculation).
mwbajor 3y ago
You're never going to find a solid answer to these questions. The best you can do is ask yourself "does this seem reasonable".
- bhk 3y ago
  Doesn't sound like science at all, does it?
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Why would it? It’s anthropology
- Vinnl 3y ago
  That is absolutely fine to me. (I mean, I'd like answers, but I've gotten used to the idea of limits to our knowledge.) What I appreciated so much is that is broadened the range of potential answers for me, emphasising just how much I'm never going to find solid answers.
opo 3y ago
The AskHistorians group on reddit has a section of the FAQ devoted to Jared Diamond which you might be interested in: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  I don't really understand the hate /r/AskHistorians has for Diamond. When you look at the assessments of Foucault there, he basically will be criticized for somewhat similar things yet with a far more forgiving and even praising tone. I guess one can read into Diamond implicit atonement of the sins of white people because "it's just geography"; and it is just too much for some people, especially for this specific demographic who is into humanities and Reddit.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Foucault has strengths and weaknesses, makes good points, makes bad points, but is almost always read by people as part of or adjacent to some other ongoing education. Foucault gets debated and recognised for having pros and cons. Diamond, unlike Foucault, is damn near airport departure lounge fodder; historians and sociologists generally encounter general members of the public who are uncritically fans of Diamond and near venerate the GG&S book for radically changing their world view, etc. It's that association that grates after a while .. it can be as relentless as those who approach mathematicians with their novel proofs for squaring a circle.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      I have read both, and Foucault is 100x the charlatan than diamond is. Foucault is responsible for significant amounts of fashionable nonsense within the academy.
      - defrost 3y ago
        C'mon now, he was pretty spot on about that pendulum ... /jk
ramses0 3y ago
"A Short History of Mostly Everything" by Bill Bryson is next for you.
- lmm 3y ago
  I hope not. That book is more of a collection of biographies of a handful of random researchers than the details of what they're actually researching.
  - ramses0 3y ago
    "it showed me a way of looking at the world at a way larger scale than I had previously done, and was very engaging while at it." It's definitely "sitcom science", especially compared with Guns, Germs, and Steel (I've read both). I found it engaging (check!), and appreciated the earlier chapters that literally start by describing that single-celled organisms + billions of years == some other new form of life (way larger scale? check!) The comforting nihilistic internal response to that book was "doesn't matter if we nuclear war or death by solar flare, or whatever... a billion trillion years from now, it's intimately necessary that something would go from single-cell organism to multi-cell organism". Time marches on, even if we do not.
- Vinnl 3y ago
  I did actually read that, but it hasn't really stuck with me. I think (but based on faded memories) that it was mostly things I'd already seen in school, with more detail? It didn't really open up new ways of looking at the world for me. Alternatively, I was just too young to realise and appreciate that. It's been a while since I read it.
  - ramses0 3y ago
    It's worth a re-read of like the first 15-20%. A quick, fun read, but has that same feel (to me) of GG&S where it talks about microbiology life form evolution underwater, high acidity, low light, high temperature, etc. In that regard, it's like a precursor to GG&S which is "smarts + politics forward" vs a lighthearted approach to "which multi-cell organism has the right conditions to evolve limbs" (and presumably intelligence). ...or just chill out and accept that a world full of mushroom and fungus is just as intelligent and terraforming as humans can be.
huytersd 3y ago
What you really need to read is David Reich’s who we are. Totally based on genetic data and talks about how the “aryans” basically wiped out the male population of Europe and took all their women displacing them completely. Another branch went off to India and it has a pretty good breakdown of the genetics of the Indian population as well.
- ithkuil 3y ago
  Just a minor detail: when a population takes all the women of another population and has kids with them, it doesn't completely wipe out the previous genetic footprint since obviously the mothers contribute to half of the genetic material (and she in turn got half of it from her father)
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Wipes out the Y

by Vinnl 3y ago

lock-the-spock 3y ago

You might enjoy this as well, similar big picture and fascinating, but a bit more scientific and focused on the human element. > The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

Vinnl 3y ago
Thank you, I've added it to my reading list!
epivosism 3y ago
100% agree w/this recommendation. The title is pretentious and put me off, so I missed out for a few years, but the contents are amazing. He has another related book, The Secrets of our Success, which is good. I'm happy that despite everything, at least a few people are doing cross-domain research and trying to put together and test ideas for how humanity came to be.
WalterBright 3y ago
"The Triumph of the West" by Roberts has a similar thesis. https://www.amazon.com/triumph-West-J-M-Roberts/dp/0760708509 https://www.amazon.com/triumph-West-J-M-Roberts/dp/076070850... It's been a long time since I read it, but as I recall the theses were that individual rights and freedoms coupled with things like the scientific method is what resulted in triumph.
- ahmadmk 3y ago
  The scientific method wasn’t novel to the western world. It’s origins date back to when the Moors conquered the southern half of western europe - and by almost all historian accounts - modernized many institutions over the subsequent hundreds of years (eg, from cutlery to math and science). I think the most relevant book on the west’s success is called complexity: a guided tour
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    It doesn't matter where the idea originated, it matters where it is applied.
  - Log_out_ 3y ago
    And because they had to much of science, they rejected the printing press? Does anyone read the sources anymore before they start projecting utopias everywhere? Also by preventing proper analysis, one prevents the discovery of cultural defects and repairs, preventing liberating change and effectively kicking away the ladder of progress, a deeply colonial act.

zeruch 3y ago

That book, along with Peter Turchin's "Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall" made me a fan of 'Cliodynamics' (a field name Turchin coined) as a concept. It, along with general ideas in Complexity Theory, I find more useful for making sense of large human/societal systems than just "single bullet theory" case studies.

TuringNYC 3y ago
I read Turchin's book, but what I didnt understand was how you could fit large-parameter models on such a small number of instances provided by history, w/o cherry-picking examples? What is the intuition?
- zeruch 3y ago
  Because there aren't that few. I'd need to revisit some of it really, but even in the late 90s, when I was doing a custom PS major, we were using comparatively larger models for conflict analysis, like the "Correlates of War" project, which were coded well enough to do some rough but statistically useful runs with...as an undergraduate back then it felt like something really useful to compliment/challenge/reconcile with the more common case study format prevalent in the field. https://correlatesofwar.org/ https://correlatesofwar.org/ https://www.jessicamaves.com/forge.html https://www.jessicamaves.com/forge.html https://www.csac.org.uk/dataset/ https://www.csac.org.uk/dataset/ etc
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Models with non-linear dynamics will often need 10^(12+) examples to fit. You cannot, in practice, establish empirical adequacy of such models. (Making, imv, much of social "science" better regarded as semi-empirical speculation).

mwbajor 3y ago

You're never going to find a solid answer to these questions. The best you can do is ask yourself "does this seem reasonable".

bhk 3y ago
Doesn't sound like science at all, does it?
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Why would it? It’s anthropology
Vinnl 3y ago
That is absolutely fine to me. (I mean, I'd like answers, but I've gotten used to the idea of limits to our knowledge.) What I appreciated so much is that is broadened the range of potential answers for me, emphasising just how much I'm never going to find solid answers.

opo 3y ago

The AskHistorians group on reddit has a section of the FAQ devoted to Jared Diamond which you might be interested in: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...

LudwigNagasena 3y ago
I don't really understand the hate /r/AskHistorians has for Diamond. When you look at the assessments of Foucault there, he basically will be criticized for somewhat similar things yet with a far more forgiving and even praising tone. I guess one can read into Diamond implicit atonement of the sins of white people because "it's just geography"; and it is just too much for some people, especially for this specific demographic who is into humanities and Reddit.
- defrost 3y ago
  Foucault has strengths and weaknesses, makes good points, makes bad points, but is almost always read by people as part of or adjacent to some other ongoing education. Foucault gets debated and recognised for having pros and cons. Diamond, unlike Foucault, is damn near airport departure lounge fodder; historians and sociologists generally encounter general members of the public who are uncritically fans of Diamond and near venerate the GG&S book for radically changing their world view, etc. It's that association that grates after a while .. it can be as relentless as those who approach mathematicians with their novel proofs for squaring a circle.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    I have read both, and Foucault is 100x the charlatan than diamond is. Foucault is responsible for significant amounts of fashionable nonsense within the academy.
    - defrost 3y ago
      C'mon now, he was pretty spot on about that pendulum ... /jk

ramses0 3y ago

"A Short History of Mostly Everything" by Bill Bryson is next for you.

lmm 3y ago
I hope not. That book is more of a collection of biographies of a handful of random researchers than the details of what they're actually researching.
- ramses0 3y ago
  "it showed me a way of looking at the world at a way larger scale than I had previously done, and was very engaging while at it." It's definitely "sitcom science", especially compared with Guns, Germs, and Steel (I've read both). I found it engaging (check!), and appreciated the earlier chapters that literally start by describing that single-celled organisms + billions of years == some other new form of life (way larger scale? check!) The comforting nihilistic internal response to that book was "doesn't matter if we nuclear war or death by solar flare, or whatever... a billion trillion years from now, it's intimately necessary that something would go from single-cell organism to multi-cell organism". Time marches on, even if we do not.
Vinnl 3y ago
I did actually read that, but it hasn't really stuck with me. I think (but based on faded memories) that it was mostly things I'd already seen in school, with more detail? It didn't really open up new ways of looking at the world for me. Alternatively, I was just too young to realise and appreciate that. It's been a while since I read it.
- ramses0 3y ago
  It's worth a re-read of like the first 15-20%. A quick, fun read, but has that same feel (to me) of GG&S where it talks about microbiology life form evolution underwater, high acidity, low light, high temperature, etc. In that regard, it's like a precursor to GG&S which is "smarts + politics forward" vs a lighthearted approach to "which multi-cell organism has the right conditions to evolve limbs" (and presumably intelligence). ...or just chill out and accept that a world full of mushroom and fungus is just as intelligent and terraforming as humans can be.

huytersd 3y ago

What you really need to read is David Reich’s who we are. Totally based on genetic data and talks about how the “aryans” basically wiped out the male population of Europe and took all their women displacing them completely. Another branch went off to India and it has a pretty good breakdown of the genetics of the Indian population as well.

ithkuil 3y ago
Just a minor detail: when a population takes all the women of another population and has kids with them, it doesn't completely wipe out the previous genetic footprint since obviously the mothers contribute to half of the genetic material (and she in turn got half of it from her father)
- huytersd 3y ago
  Wipes out the Y