What do you guys think of Guns,Germs and Steel?

>>8503958
I don't think of it very much at all.

Meme history for plebs

>>8503958

The book is really quite dumb. It is hailed by "anti-racists" as proof that Europeans were only successful due to environment.

Guns, Germs, and Steel all were brought about by European ingenuity.

wtf i hate racism now

pretty bad. trivial explanation that has te uous basis in serious scholarship and also completely glosses over how Asia developed as it did, which fucks over a lot of the core points

it's pop non fiction aka garbage

>>8504086
I'm incredibly anti-racist and Diamond is still an environmental reductionist hack who hasn't actually been trained in historiography, sociology, or anthropology, all of which he tries to do, and all of which he fails at miserably. Hell, the guy actually is an ecologist and ornithologist and biologists inform me that he did terrible biology as well.

Not to mention he's actually a fucking imperialist who thinks modern nation-states should rule everything. He spent significant time with Papuan people and then wrote a book about them which was largely just fabricated, after which they demanded an apology:

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8958

His work would honestly be cute if it weren't so damaging.

>>8503958
Cuck literature, really

The white race is inherently superior and it has nothing to do with geographical determinism

We are simply born better

>>8504163
>I'm incredibly anti-racist

Then maybe 4chan isn't for you, sweetheart

>>>/r/books
>>>tumblr

>>8504174
I've been on 4chan since 2007.

>>8504150
This.

>>8504177
And your still not redpilled?

Get fucked

>>8504188
/lit/ is a marxist board, please go back to /pol/ or /a/ or where you come from

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>>8504190
This
Sorry /pol/ you need an IQ of at least 90 to post here

>>8504188
>redpill meme

underage not allowed

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>>8504190
>>8504197
Anarchists welcome?

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>>8504230
Tolerated, for now...

>>8504240
Geez. Sorry I axed.

How many of you have actually read this? I suspect not very many considering just how long and tedious a read it is. There are many specifics within Guns, Germs, and Steel that are undoubtedly inaccurate, misleading, or outright wrong, but I don't think that means the general premise of his argument is necessarily incorrect. Diamond's thesis is that the success of various peoples throughout history until the beginning of trans-ocean colonialism is largely determined by the environmental conditions and the degree with which that enables them to create agricultural societies. In spite of its failings, Guns, Germs, and Steel does provide a suitable standard of empirical data to suggest this is the case in terms of animal domestication, crop yield and variety of crop available, soil conditions etc. This, of course, neither rules out the possibility that certain human sub populations could have different mean values or standard deviations in intelligence, and is certainly not a support of imperialism either, but it merely an explanation of why certains groups gained advantages from their environment and certain chains of events occurred in the places they did at the time that they did.

>>8504086
>>8504163
I'm not denying that Diamond is reductionist, but this does not imply his ideas carry no weight whatsoever. Of course the success of Europe wasn't 100% determined by environmental conditions and of course his arguments are often simplistic and overlook sections of historical or anthropological knowledge, but this doesn't mean arguments have no relevancy, especially as he makes detailed arguments to support that they are mostly true.

>>8504166
>nothing to do with
You mean 0%, right? How can seriously believe this? Please support your claims.

>>8504174
>>8504190
/lit/ is not an X board and 4chan is not a Y site. As long at someone follows the rules and isn't a total newfag shitter, I honestly don't care if they're not a racist or not a Marxist or not a whatever. Also please don't try and ascribe some kind of political status to /a/. /a/ is still largely apolitical and the last thing it needs is politics derailments in threads like on /v/, whichever side of ideological aisle that happens to come from.

>>8504262
Ironic shitposting is still shitposting

>>8504262
>cuck

>>>/pol/

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>>8504262
no u

>>8504252
>/lit/ is not an X board and 4chan is not a Y site
this is true, but I'm okay with pretending lit is a Marxist board if it means we can fight off the poltards

It's not that I even ascribe to marxism or a priori disagree with all of the things pol says.
it's just that, in my experience, Marxists tend to actually be willing to discuss their views, whereas poltards are always at least half-trolling so that if you back them into a corner they can just pull the "I was only pretending to be retarded" card.

>>>/his/

>>8504274
>pulling the "I was only pretending" card is bad
>but I'm okay with pretending lit is a Marxist board

How do you reconcile these positions?

>>8504174
I honestly think you're being serious. I feel sorry for you.

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every one got trolde

>>8504284
I'm only promoting pretending that lit is a marxist board in order to get poltards to leave, I'm not going to actually push their rhetoric. I'm not trying to win imaginary rhetorical points by being ironic to the point I don't have any views that can be critiqued.

Had to drop it halfway, as I couldn't stomach another chapter on how wheat in Africa developed poisonous rape tentacles and was therefore inedible and whatnot. As far as reductionist explanations go I very much prefer Acemoglu's.

what do you guys recommend instead of this?

>>8504430
Mein Kampf and The Bell Curve

>>8504443
kek

>>8504166

gr8 b8 but how do racists actually believe this when kentucky, slavic countries, and trailer parks everywhere are proof to the contrary

when was the last time a kid escaped his poor upbringing in a baptist appalachian oxy-addicted mining town to become a great author?

Poorly researched and at times makes simply baffling assertions. Like his argument about the role of piracy and coastline convolution in the development of Europe.

When you read shit like that it just casts everything else into extreme doubt by association. How could someone who has written something so earthshatteringly stupid actually have valid points?

>>8504086
Europeans are only Europeans due to environment though. There's no denying that races evolved differently in different places.

But that's probably not the point Diamond made since that point would legitimatise racism I guess.

>>8504464
>when kentucky, slavic countries, and trailer parks everywhere are proof to the contrary
You should visit Sub-Saharan Africa if you think that is bad. Even the shittiest white communities are paradise compared to places where people believe that eating the heart of a slaughtered innocent will make you immune to gunfire.

>>8504501
well, have you tried it?

>>8504252
His core point is a big 'no fucking shit' yet the majority of evidence he uses to argue for it is patently bullshit. I agree with his central point and parts of his central analysis (only an idiot doesn't support some sort of soft environmental determinism in 2016, considering the environment obviously influences genetic traits of a population as well as its memetic traits) but he floods the book with so much peripheral bullshit that it weakens his argument rather than strengthening it.

>>8504501
>compared to places where people believe that eating the heart of a slaughtered innocent will make you immune to gunfire.
It works

>>8504298
>I'm going to push a narrative that I don't believe to be true solely to spite people I dislike
fookin utilitarians, I swear to god

>>8504520
>majority of evidence
>patently bullshit
How so?

>>8503958
Incredibly stupid. I'm reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America and in a few lines he says that North America was occupied but not possessed. It takes agriculture to possess it but its first inhabitants lived by hunting. He says their way of living marked them out for destruction and North America was "an empty cradle" waiting for the birth of a great nation. Take this as you will.

Jared Diamond is definitely not anywhere near Tocqueville that's for sure.

>>8504230
>no Homage to Catalonia
ISHYGDDT

>>8504826
it's the far right of the second row m8

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>>8504746
>North America was "an empty cradle"

>what are the Mississipian mound-building civilizations
>what are the ancestral Puebloans
>what is the Chaco culture

He's a nut.

>>8503958
Needs more germs.

>>8504856
wow a few mudhuts

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>>8504230
Only in the Siberia general.

>>8504188
I'm not redpilled either and I've been here longer. Get fucked kid.

Any attempts at attributing the extent of societal developent to the general intelligence of its constituents is simple minded but also incredibly conceited. this kind of biological reductionism was deployed unsuspectingly as a series if power devices during the 18th century, as ways of reinforcing the integrity of social hierarchy, primarily by and for the hapless bourgeoise.
These notions should and have long been debunked by structuralists and many many more social and biological sciences.
By regurgitating these indulgent claims you (yes you) are real just complacently maintaining a perpetual ignorance about the world.

i suppose the question is- do you want to really see and understand? or do you really just want to feel better about yourself for something that was neither willed nor earned?

>>8505570
>structural repression is not a thing

On a related note have any of you guys read war and peace and war?

>>8505776
>implying anything is 'willed' or 'earned'

>>8504163
>I'm incredibly anti-racist

Why?

>>8504190
>/lit/ is a marxist board
Yeah but marxists can still be racist.