"respectively"

Is this meme book worth reading or is it just a bunch of pop science?

>>9292370
why nations fail is far superior

>>9292370

Many historians and anthropologists believe Diamond plays fast and loose with history by generalizing highly complex topics to provide an ecological/geographical determinist view of human history. There is a reason historians avoid grand theories of human history: those "just so stories" don't adequately explain human history. It's true however that it is an entertaining introductory text that forces people to look at world history from a different vantage point. That being said, Diamond writes a rather oversimplified narrative that seemingly ignores the human element of history.

>Cherry-picked data while ignoring the complexity of issues

In his chapter "Lethal Gift of Livestock" on the origin of human crowd infections he picks 5 pathogens that best support his idea of domestic origins. However, when diving into the genetic and historic data, only two pathogens (maybe influenza and most likely measles) could possibly have jumped to humans through domestication. The majority were already a part of the human disease load before the origin of agriculture, domestication, and sedentary population centers. This is an example of Diamond ignoring the evidence that didn't support his theory to explain conquest via disease spread to immunologically naive Native Americas.

>>9292370
depends what your looking for if your of /pol/ origin like me youll hate this because he constantly talks shit about racists and racist ideology

>>9292400
A similar case of cherry-picking history is seen when discussing the conquest of the Inca.

>Pizarro's military advantages lay in the Spaniards' steel swords and other weapons, steel armor, guns, and horses... Such imbalances of equipment were decisive in innumerable other confrontations of Europeans with Native Americans and other peoples. The sole Native Americans able to resist European conquest for many centuries were those tribes that reduced the military disparity by acquiring and mastering both guns and horses.

This is a very broad generalization that effectively makes it false. Conquest was not a simple matter of conquering a people, raising a Spanish flag, and calling "game over." Conquest was a constant process of negotiation, accommodation, and rebellion played out through the ebbs and flows of power over the course of centuries. Some Yucatan Maya city-states maintained independence for two hundred years after contact, were "conquered", and then immediately rebelled again. The Pueblos along the Rio Grande revolted in 1680, dislodged the Spanish for a decade, and instigated unrest that threatened the survival of the entire northern edge of the empire for decades to come. Technological "advantage", in this case guns and steel, did not automatically equate to battlefield success in the face of resistance, rough terrain and vastly superior numbers. The story was far more nuanced, and conquest was never a cut and dry issue, which in the book is not really touched upon. In the book it seems to be case of the Inka being conquered when Pizarro says they were conquered.

>Uncritical examining of the historical record surrounding conquest

Being critical of the sources you come across and being aware of their context, biases and agendas is a core skill of any historian.

Pizarro, Cortez and other conquistadores were biased authors who wrote for the sole purpose of supporting/justifying their claim on the territory, riches and peoples they subdued. To do so they elaborated their own sufferings, bravery, and outstanding deeds, while minimizing the work of native allies, pure dumb luck, and good timing. If you only read their accounts you walk away thinking a handful of adventurers conquered an empire thanks to guns and steel and a smattering of germs. No historian in the last half century would be so naive to argue this generalized view of conquest, but European technological supremacy is one keystone to Diamond's thesis so he presents conquest at the hands of a handful of adventurers.

>>9292406
>The construction of the arguments for GG&S paints Native Americans specifically, and the colonized world in general, as categorically inferior.

To believe the narrative you need to view Native Americans as fundamentally naive, unable to understand Spanish motivations and desires, unable react to new weapons/military tactics, unwilling to accommodate to a changing political landscape, incapable of mounting resistance once conquered, too stupid to invent the key technological advances used against them, and doomed to die because they failed to build cities, domesticate animals and thereby acquire infectious organisms. When viewed through this lens, we hope you can see why so many historians and anthropologists are livid that a popular writer is perpetuating a false interpretation of history while minimizing the agency of entire continents full of people.

>>9292408
also he says that Europeans deliberately gave smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans to kill them when in fact it was an accident.

>>9292400
>>9292406
>the same tired criticism posted and explained over and over again
yeah but what about the rest of the book?

File: I'll kill you, white devil!.png (55KB, 416x132px) Image search: [Google]

55KB, 416x132px

>>9292400
>>9292406
please write a history book so i can read it

>>9292413
it likely did happen in specific instances, but overall the lethal spread of infection seems like chance/circumstance.

let me see if I can find the source, hang on

>>9292413


http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/34_40_305_fn.jpeg
>P.S. I will try to inocculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to oppose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spaniard's Method, and hunt them with English Dogs. Supported by Rangers, and some Light Horse, who would I think effectively extirpate or remove that Vermine.

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/34_41_114_fn.jpeg
P.S. You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race. I should be very glad your Scheme for Hunting them Down by Dogs could take Effect, but England is at too great a Distance to think of that at present.

this was during the French and Indian War. I reckon any enterprising honky who was hungry to settle the West (i.e. all of them) would not have had much trouble coming up with the same idea, although how often it was actually implemented is guesswork. In any event--intentionally or not--the natives got infected.

>>9292675
>>9292413

source of the jpgs:

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html

>>9292675
>>9292698
>nativeweb.com
Totally unbiased.

>>9292370
His arguments were supplanted by the trend towards arguments regarding inclusive and exclusive societies and institutions by >>9292379 as well as several other authors like Fukuyama. He has become something of a whipping boy in modern academia.

>>9292402
>"i need my nonfiction to be ideologically pure"
Just as bad as post-structuralists or Diamond's geographical determinism. Acemoğlu can extrapolate his theory into the microstudy, ie why does x kingdom on one side of the river succeed over y kingdom on the other, when racially they are nearly identical.

>>9292406
I like this post.

>>9294182
Saying the source is biased is not the same as disproving the evidence.

Not that guy, but come the fuck on.

>>9292379
Seems just as horrible desu. I saw "Why the West rules for now" by Ian Morris recommended somewhere.
Was gonna read it

>>9294678
Wnf is better than gg&s but still lacking as no single popularish book with one main theory will adequately explain such broad and complex things

Dude zebras lmao

>>9292370
((((Diamond))))

>>9294182
the jpgs are scans of the fucking original letters that I quoted. it doesn't matter what website is presenting it, ya dip.

>>9292370
The title of the book can be simplified into
>intelligence, genetics, and intelligence

>>9292370

It's not worth reading because it is racist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mGvZXvRNLs

>>9292370
Almost every argument he makes can easily get BTFO by fact checking
His core idea (guns, germs, and steel) is correct but he either intentionally leaves out (or is totally unaware) that many other societies had knowledge of metallurgy and did nothing with it for over a thousand years

>>9294701
/thread.
Books with such large scopes are doomed to fail.

>>9292402
He also claims New Guineans are probably more intelligent than Europeans... after claiming race has no impact on intelligence.

>>9292370
i thought he made a lot of sense with the horizonal crop distribution thing, but a lot of other anons hate it because he keeps saying "africa didn't fail because nigs are inferior", over and over.

he has to repeat it because crackers desperately want a respectable-sounding authoritah to say they're right.

>>9296483
kek it's true

I couldn't get 10 pages in.

Subversive, deconstructionist, politicised.

The only real way to describe it is Jewish.