/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16510611]

Bought one of two copies I found at my local thrift shop. What am I in for, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.16510628]

>>16510611
it sucks and is mainly just coping with africa being shit

[Anonymous No.16510670]

>>16510611
Geographic determinism. An outdated and almost objectively wrong ideology. A bit about horses and corn, I suppose.

[Anonymous No.16510700]

>>16510611
evil racism

[Anonymous No.16510702]

>>16510670
>outdated
Unfortunately it's still very much mainstream, and we continue to get publications like this every couple years.

[Anonymous No.16510711]

Simple and flawed, but obviously closer to truth than the /pol/tards.

[Anonymous No.16510744]

>>16510611
It's somehow massively popular. Takes human agency out of pretty much every equation. If you're a liberal you'll believe it lifts the burden of the decision to conquer the world off the shoulders of the Euros and if you're Not Liberal you'll see it as Cope for Africa being shit.

[Anonymous No.16510779]

>>16510611
>Actually there's no evidence for IQ differences, the tests are culturally biased
>New Guineans are actually more intelligent than Europeans, is base this entirely on my own experience.

There's a few Stephen J Gould inspired, 21st century liberal trash takes on IQ and cultural issues to be found it this book, especially in the intro.
Broadly speaking however, his environmental explanations for technological differences between civilizations convincing and bound to be at least partly correct.
It has its biases, but it's not useless.

[Anonymous No.16510781]

>>16510611
Diamond is on to something with the idea that geographical positioning predetermines advantages.
One of the most obvious historical examples of this is the differential access to horses. All throughout the world horsemanship was independently discovered to be of great advantage. Sucks to be if you live in a part of the world that doesn't have horses! North America for example. That's why when the Spanish showed up with calvary it terrified the local empires. The idea of Man and Horse (some alien war machine) fighting together as a unit and trampling down their finest warriors as if they were nothing was terrifying. (add to this steel armor, gunpowder etc.)

Not long ago Mongolia almost conquered the entirety of euasia because their culture was so centered around horses. HORSES.

But of course the Mayans were the last to discover gunpowder! They were on the other side of the world from China who happened to discover it. They had no hope of connecting to the silk road and discovering gunpowder.

Neither could they have any hope of developing immunities to Eurasian diseases.

I could go on. Diamond's environmental determinist thesis is brilliant, and provides a staunch rebuke to racialist theories of Eurocentric expansion.

[Anonymous No.16510898]

>>16510781
Geographical advantage plays a part, but so do ideas and ways of thinking. Euros were much more willing to admit their ignorance, they didn't believe to know everything and therefore were curious and sought to create new knowledge
Chinese for instance just believed that the emperor knew everything, and when they did invent shit they didn't do anything with it
Also go back to r*ddit with your faggot formatting

[Anonymous No.16510918]

>>16510898
You are a simpleton.

>Eyedeuhs play da part toooook

Hmmm yes quite.

[Anonymous No.16510927]

>>16510898
No good arguments presented
Reddit spacing is not an argument
1/10

[Anonymous No.16511055]

>>16510611
I've read it and it was ok but /lit/ told me that is "muh juice" science. What is a similar book /lit/ approved? Decline of the west?

[Anonymous No.16511069]

>>16510611
Lies and bad scholarship mostly.

[Anonymous No.16511082]

>>16510611
>>16511055
Here's the best refutation of the book.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/qvaxPH3ftUQ/

[Anonymous No.16511527]

>>16510611
Reddit hates it so basic logic dictates that it must be good. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22

[Anonymous No.16511549]

It's shit. Read the German Ideology and Capital instead if you want materialist analysis of European hegemony.

[Anonymous No.16511552]

It's written by a man who've published nature articles on why jews are superior due to IQ who claim that the opposite about whitey in his book.
Wanna take a stab at what ethnicity he belongs to?

[Anonymous No.16511573]

>>16510611
This book was recommended to me by that fat fuck amazing atheist when I was a teenager when he made a response to some “racist” video. Good thing I didn’t buy into it.

[Anonymous No.16512217]

>>16510611
It's an enjoyable read but don't take it as gospel. Read it as you would read Continental philosophy

[Anonymous No.16512235]

>>16511527
Non-history focused reddit subs love it though.

[Anonymous No.16512264]

>>16511573
and now he's the racist

[Anonymous No.16512497]

>>16510611
I just recently finished this and had no idea about the "controversy" surrounding it. Just interested in pre-history and this was recommended to me. Bizarrely enough I kind of think that the book disproves its main thesis almost immediately. The bit about animal domestication and the two different donkeys. African and Asian. First one was easily domesticated and the latter one was impossible to domesticate since it was so aggressive. So the same parent animal species split in to two populations with different selection pressures can result in populations which can interbreed, look almost similar, but are totally different mentally? So genes control behavior and it can't be changed (he even went on and on about how the Romans really really tried for a long time).

Then the rest of the book went in to great detail about how vastly different the environments were for different human populations and how great the time gaps were between them last interacting with each other. All of the stuff about linguistics and population movements through the ages was neat though.

>>16510779
I also listened his appearance on Sam Harris after reading about all of the stuff about the book. I was really unimpressed. Has a bad case of noble savages fetish.

[𒂊𒊑𒀁𒌅 !!ph+3gMFUUxd No.16512513]

>>16510611
Lots of geographic determinism. I really enjoyed it but I wasn't overly satisfied with (((Diamond's))) overarching claim that "it was all geography an shiet mang". Still fun to read. If you got the same version I have, you're in for a treat with his bonus chapter on ancient Japan at the very end. Best part of the book in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.16512850]

>>16510611
(((Jared Diamond)))

All you need to know, really.

[Anonymous No.16512876]

>>16510611
It starts with the assumption that difference in outcomes between racially disparate groups can't possibly due to genetics differences and then tries to rationalize history around that assumption.

[Anonymous No.16512880]

>>16510611
A midwit trap

[Anonymous No.16512892]

>>16510711
>but obviously closer to truth than the /pol/tards.
Not even close. The difference in outcomes is because of genetic difference.

[Anonymous No.16512908]

>>16510611
>>16511552
>Diamond was born on September 10, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Both of his parents were from Ashkenazi Jewish families who had emigrated to the United States.

[Anonymous No.16512924]

>>16512892
Ok you've convinced me.

[Anonymous No.16512969]

>>16512924
His examples for geographical determinism are all cherry picked. He works backwards from his assumption. Everywhere he sees a European success he looks back in time and makes an effort to attribute it to some sort of geographical advantage.

The thing is this kind of argument is unfalsifiable because of course Europeans succeeded by using their environment to their advantage. Just because you can point to a handful of things that wouldn't have been as easy in Africa doesn't mean Africans would have done the same in Europe, or that Africa didn't have difference geographical advantages that genetic Europeans would have taken advantage of.

[Anonymous No.16513052]

/pol/ loves the book because it's so easy to disprove and so full of jewish chauvinism and pilpul though?
New Guinean cannibal praise, lowbrow attacks on whitey, misunderstanding of African resources et cetera.

[Anonymous No.16513081]

>>16513052
I think this is the worst part of it. How they treat this stuff is almost like they want to create more /pol/acks. instead of at least comming from an equal footing they have to presupose european superiority and break it down rather than simply going from a net zero.