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Diamond’s ideas seemed pretty intuitive to me. The idea that geography is the primary shaper of civilisations seems _very_ likely to be true in general. I’ve re

Diamond’s ideas seemed pretty intuitive to me. The idea that geography is the primary shaper of civilisations seems _very_ likely to be true in general. I’ve read other books on the impact of geography on military defence and how that shapes geopolitics, for example. Having worked in academia for many years, when I see academics attack a book such as GGS my instinct is to question their motives. Academics can be very egotistical and territorial. A priori, it is very difficult to imagine a situation where academics would say to any book like Diamond’s “oh yes this is a really great point and we need to learn from this guy” and very very likely to say “this guy doesn’t know anything about (less important factors that I know a lot about)! What an idiot! He even gets the date of this event wrong, proving I am clever and he is wrong.” So when I hear about academics attacking something that seems to be fairly obviously correct at least at a very general level, my instinct is not “oh, yes, this guy must be completely wrong” but rather “this guy is probably mostly right but of course there will be a lot of other factors and it will be very easy to pick apart his book if you so wish, especially if your ego relies on you finding fault with him.” I’m not so easily dissuaded that GGS isn’t mostly right that geography and in particular agricultural factors are the broad strokes of history, rather than the less permanent and smaller scale “Gaussian noise” of cultural events that intuitively are likely to mostly even out over time.

ak_111 3y ago
"Academics can be very ...territorial" Ironic statement given the context.
FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
Ah yes, the ''this feels right to me, a layman who knows nothing about it, so clearly he is right and people attacking him just are out for a cheap hit'' defense. A classic.
- eggdaft 3y ago
  No, just I have a lot of experience of academia so I’m wary of motives.
  - shellfishgene 3y ago
    Well, one could always just read the paper and judge the science. Your comment above almost sounds like you won't because you think it's not worth reading it.
    - eggdaft 3y ago
      That’s a fair point. I skimmed it and got the gist of their approach, but I didn’t deep dive. It’s very hard to do what they’re trying to do rigorously. The real problem lies in the formulation of the question. It also doesn’t feel like they’ve “steelmanned” the original thesis, which is suspicious (tbf it’s rare in most of academia to see folks genuinely try to disprove their own position).
  - FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
    So you are wary of the motives of academics saying ''this is wrong for these reasons', but you dont think that Diamond has any motives, so you take his argument at face value (because it aligns with your feelings on the subject most likely)?
    - eggdaft 3y ago
      Not sure why downvoted, maybe because it’s a bit of a personal attack on me. Well, we can say everyone has motives but that does not mean some incentives are more misaligned than others. So it’s not really a counter argument to say “everyone has motives”. I wouldn’t say it’s my “feelings”, but my common sense, which is mostly derived from wider reading. Quite often we wish to overcomplicate subjects to make them seem sophisticated. But many topics just don’t lend them to the complex analysis of say, high energy physics, they’re just much more prosaic. It’s ok to say “someone who lives near the sea has accessed to an additional food source and that’s probably beneficial” (as a random example) without having to write a thesis on it. I defer to Charlie Munger on this topic, as he expresses it so well.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
In fighting there are various factors at place, the size and speed of those in the fight, the area they are in, the training. Some areas are more conducive to victory for specific body types and training. This kind of dynamic plays out everywhere, the race is not always to the swift but you should place your bets that way. Geographical factors would seem to be this kind of importance that establishes a long dominance and strong chance of success, sure, but what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Almost all countries nowadays are industrialized therefore there is no geographical factor that prevents industrialization in those nations. Finally, historical trends seem not really to last more than 200-400 years, which 200 years really seems like the kind of thing that can be effected by a cultural issue - somebody who was a really bad king came along and reined for 70 years and destroyed the country, now you're in a weakened condition and get picked on by everyone else for the next 130 years. Yeah - your country's rich geographical resources finally lead to comeback but it just does not seem a very profound or interesting point the more I think about it.
- Radim 3y ago
  > what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Wasn't there a whole book devoted to exploring exactly this question? Now what was its name…
  - BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y ago
    https://bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2023/06/14/how-the-world-became-rich/ https://bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2023/06/14/how-t...
- Gud 3y ago
  >Geographical factors would seem to be this kind of importance that establishes a long dominance and strong chance of success, sure, but what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Almost all countries nowadays are industrialized therefore there is no geographical factor that prevents industrialization in those nations. the Industrial Revolution started because Great Britain had an over abundance of coal, so another point for the geographical theory?
pipes 3y ago
I think his theory on what happened to Easter island has been debunked? I wasn't convinced by guns germs and steel at all. It seemed to ignore the fact that western Europe was a cultural backwater for most of known history. Anyway it was a long time ago that I read it, so I could be remembering it wrong.
- chongli 3y ago
  Northern Europe didn't take off until the invention of the moldboard plough. The Romans took advantage of the looser, sandier soils around the Mediterranean which didn't need such a heavy plough to work. To bring the moldboard plough into fruition required the development of better steel and the breeding of heavy horses, something that was just not possible earlier on.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Diamond explicitly calls out the fact that Western Europe was a backwater for most of history until a few hundred years ago in the first dozen pages of the book.

ak_111 3y ago

"Academics can be very ...territorial" Ironic statement given the context.

FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago

Ah yes, the ''this feels right to me, a layman who knows nothing about it, so clearly he is right and people attacking him just are out for a cheap hit'' defense. A classic.

eggdaft 3y ago
No, just I have a lot of experience of academia so I’m wary of motives.
- shellfishgene 3y ago
  Well, one could always just read the paper and judge the science. Your comment above almost sounds like you won't because you think it's not worth reading it.
  - eggdaft 3y ago
    That’s a fair point. I skimmed it and got the gist of their approach, but I didn’t deep dive. It’s very hard to do what they’re trying to do rigorously. The real problem lies in the formulation of the question. It also doesn’t feel like they’ve “steelmanned” the original thesis, which is suspicious (tbf it’s rare in most of academia to see folks genuinely try to disprove their own position).
- FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
  So you are wary of the motives of academics saying ''this is wrong for these reasons', but you dont think that Diamond has any motives, so you take his argument at face value (because it aligns with your feelings on the subject most likely)?
  - eggdaft 3y ago
    Not sure why downvoted, maybe because it’s a bit of a personal attack on me. Well, we can say everyone has motives but that does not mean some incentives are more misaligned than others. So it’s not really a counter argument to say “everyone has motives”. I wouldn’t say it’s my “feelings”, but my common sense, which is mostly derived from wider reading. Quite often we wish to overcomplicate subjects to make them seem sophisticated. But many topics just don’t lend them to the complex analysis of say, high energy physics, they’re just much more prosaic. It’s ok to say “someone who lives near the sea has accessed to an additional food source and that’s probably beneficial” (as a random example) without having to write a thesis on it. I defer to Charlie Munger on this topic, as he expresses it so well.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

In fighting there are various factors at place, the size and speed of those in the fight, the area they are in, the training. Some areas are more conducive to victory for specific body types and training. This kind of dynamic plays out everywhere, the race is not always to the swift but you should place your bets that way. Geographical factors would seem to be this kind of importance that establishes a long dominance and strong chance of success, sure, but what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Almost all countries nowadays are industrialized therefore there is no geographical factor that prevents industrialization in those nations. Finally, historical trends seem not really to last more than 200-400 years, which 200 years really seems like the kind of thing that can be effected by a cultural issue - somebody who was a really bad king came along and reined for 70 years and destroyed the country, now you're in a weakened condition and get picked on by everyone else for the next 130 years. Yeah - your country's rich geographical resources finally lead to comeback but it just does not seem a very profound or interesting point the more I think about it.

Radim 3y ago
> what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Wasn't there a whole book devoted to exploring exactly this question? Now what was its name…
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 3y ago
  https://bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2023/06/14/how-the-world-became-rich/ https://bayesianinvestor.com/blog/index.php/2023/06/14/how-t...
Gud 3y ago
>Geographical factors would seem to be this kind of importance that establishes a long dominance and strong chance of success, sure, but what Geographical factor allowed for Industrialism to be established in Western Civilization, with all the force multipliers that Industrialism gives? Almost all countries nowadays are industrialized therefore there is no geographical factor that prevents industrialization in those nations. the Industrial Revolution started because Great Britain had an over abundance of coal, so another point for the geographical theory?

pipes 3y ago

I think his theory on what happened to Easter island has been debunked? I wasn't convinced by guns germs and steel at all. It seemed to ignore the fact that western Europe was a cultural backwater for most of known history. Anyway it was a long time ago that I read it, so I could be remembering it wrong.

chongli 3y ago
Northern Europe didn't take off until the invention of the moldboard plough. The Romans took advantage of the looser, sandier soils around the Mediterranean which didn't need such a heavy plough to work. To bring the moldboard plough into fruition required the development of better steel and the breeding of heavy horses, something that was just not possible earlier on.
Manuel_D 3y ago
Diamond explicitly calls out the fact that Western Europe was a backwater for most of history until a few hundred years ago in the first dozen pages of the book.