/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18202294]

I've just bought Guns, germs and steel lads. I've enjoyed the prologue and the initial chapter about how cultures on continents with no real domestication of livestock had a slower start at kick starting civilization (north America, Australia ect). I've seen that's it not really rated very highly on here. What's the criticisms of this that you have, and is the book outdated?

[Anonymous No.18202300]

>>18202294
It's basically a pop-science/history/geography book. It's not held in high regard in the academic community, and there are plenty of dubious claims in the book. Those are the main reasons that its not rated very highly here.

[Anonymous No.18202312]

>>18202294
Meme-tier book, it offers little substance and basically says “damn, Europe did well historically because lucky circumstances”. Diamond is a geographer and largely considered to be retarded by anybody who isn’t a redditor.

[Anonymous No.18202342]

>>18202294
It was debunked by real historians. Only english cuck that reviews historical films on youtube and redditors believe this fiction. The whole book can be debunked with mean iq map of the world.

[Anonymous No.18202354]

It's sjw trash, pic rel is the top review

[Anonymous No.18202369]

It’s pretty much entirely disregarded by academia as unscientific anglo cope. The only useful observation to take away is the river delta hypothesis.

[Anonymous No.18202589]

>>18202294
This was thoroughly debunked

[Anonymous No.18202616]

It should really be entitled Cope: The Book

[Anonymous No.18202617]

>>18202354
>>18202342

That's really disappointing. I'm basically a European supremacist reeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I'll read it because I've just spent £10, but I'm not happy about it

[Anonymous No.18202626]

>>18202294
>>18202300
>>18202312
>>18202342
>>18202354
>>18202369
>>18202589
Anthropochad here

The book is hated by "experts" mostly because they absolutely seethe at the amount of fame Diamond got. They're jealous, and nitpick on his theses but the end result is very confused, because if geography doesn't have the utmost effect on how peoples turn out, and at the same time we have to deny any sort of racism/race realism (because we're in the academia, duh), then what are we left with?

And the conclusions that these folks are coming up with, trying to deny both racists and Diamond, are very confused and overall, speaking in terms of the general essence, there actually doesn't seem to be that much disagreement over Diamond. The experts would like you to think that there's more disagreement and that Diamond was more discredited, than in reality.
That's all there is to the liberal "critique" from him. As for the /pol/tard "critique," you can expect the typical tired racist crap.

Read it. It's good.

[Anonymous No.18202634]

>>18202294
Do yourself a favor and don't read any history book written after about 1950.

[Anonymous No.18202636]

>>18202354
Who’s got that post where anon goes to a third world country and the taxi driver tells him that darker skinned people are dumber than lighter skinned people, and then when (white) anon asks him if that means he’s smarter than him he says yes

[Anonymous No.18202648]

>>18202626
Shalom, Moishe

[Anonymous No.18202651]

>>18202294
holy shit this cover is so bad

the worst thing is that this is the edition my gf bought me

[Anonymous No.18202653]

>>18202626
>at the same time we have to deny any sort of racism/race realism
Well...

[Anonymous No.18202657]

>>18202648
There's really no sensible critique against GGS. It's quite common sense desu. Basically - "we are all fostered by/adapted to/hindered by our environments"

[Anonymous No.18202658]

>>18202651
I liked this edition anon, it's why I bought it :(

[Anonymous No.18202661]

>>18202294
>>18202651
>Bullets, Insects, and Nuts

[Anonymous No.18202669]

[Anonymous No.18202671]

>>18202294
"Intelligent people are likelier than less intelligent ones to escape those causes of high mortality in traditional New Guinea societies. However, the differential mortality from epidemic diseases in traditional European societies had little to do with intelligence, and instead involved genetic resistance dependent on details of body chemistry...Besides this genetic reason, there is also a second reason why New Guineans may have come to be smarter than Westerners. Modern European and American children spend much of their time being passively entertained by television, radio, and movies. In the average American household, the TV set is on for seven hours per day. In contrast, traditional New Guinea children have virtually no such opportunities for passive entertainment and instead spend almost all of their waking hours actively doing something...Why did New Guineans wind up technologically primitive, despite their superior intelligence?"

That section sums up the book. It's just him drawing conclusions, not from data, but from his own bias, and then using those conclusions to draw further conclusions so the whole thing is nonsense. I hate him. I mean maybe watching television makes you smarter than hunting, how do you test it? How do you define intelligence? How does he know?

[Anonymous No.18202865]

>>18202671
I define intelligence based off of the amount of innovative members your society produces. Otherwise you're trying to latch onto IQ because it is a form of measuring. A dumber society may have lots of skills that a smarter society does not, but they have evolved to not need them. White societies specialize so they don't have to be polymaths. Everyone wants to say whites have just been ahead so long that minorities can't catch up, but look at East Asians. They didn't invent most of the shit they make well, but they make way higher quality products than anywhere else.

[Anonymous No.18202874]

Name two books that did more damage to general historical understanding than GG&S and A People's History.

[Anonymous No.18202891]

>>18202294
Have fun but don't overstep with it, every Diamond fan I've known has been avidly dehumanizing.

[Anonymous No.18202932]

>>18202671

Yeah he's a retard

That other anon dickriding this shitty book looks like such a tool afrer reading this passage from it

[Anonymous No.18202940]

>>18202626
Log off, Jeremy

[Anonymous No.18203128]

>>18202932
He's right that the general academic response has been extremely limp-dicked and jealous. The whole ethical justification of 'why Europe ended up on top' is extremely tired. Diamond at least begins to bring the discussion towards the outcomes of prehistory rather than continued masturbation about classical technology.

[Anonymous No.18203169]

>>18202294
The bottom line is that his thesis is an oversimplification of reality, and anyone who actually spends time in the real world is cognizant that there are more factors at play. Not to mention according to mainstream we are all out of Africa are we not? So some of us seek opportunities while others do not.

[Anonymous No.18203236]

>>18202300
It's not very highly rated because it isn't literature, and it isn't on a /pol/ meme-list
No one on /lit/ actually gives a shit about reading

[Anonymous No.18203246]

>>18203128
What will be fun is that in a hundred years, when China is back as the central empire and Europe has returned to being squabbling, petty principalities, this whole "We were wrong in raping the world" discussion will seem silly

[Anonymous No.18203279]

>>18202636

[Anonymous No.18203336]

>>18202671
>In contrast, traditional New Guinea children have virtually no such opportunities for passive entertainment and instead spend almost all of their waking hours actively doing something
>all of their waking hours actively doing something
I don't know how New Guinea children spend their free time, but he's deluded if he really thinks that before passive media entertainment was a thing everyone would *actively* do something every waking hour.
People would spend hours upon hours staring at the fields or hurling rocks at a river. Not to mention post-18th century europe when folks got blackout drunk or high on opium and spent days in a state of inebriated languor

[Anonymous No.18203372]

>>18202671
>instead spend almost all of their waking hours actively doing something
We used to do that too. Sweeping chimneys and probing mine tunnels, or working in sweat shops for the man
Ahhh, the good old intelligent days when we were as busy and productive as savages

[Anonymous No.18203461]

>>18203336
People with few skills fantasize about a time when passive entertainment didn't occupy their freetime as an excuse to why they do nothing now. Modern first world society is, in fact, the best period to learn valuable skills. The internet is a testament to the amount of impressive feats people can accomplish. In my hobby of cooking, I'm certain the internet has quickly made cooking enthusiasts better cooks than most prior generations of people. Guess where the internet and web was invented and innovated? White countries. New Guinea will produce few things of note to society.

[Anonymous No.18203486]

>>18202626
Go home. Moshe.
This anon is correct: >>18202669

And everyone else listen to the video below if you want to know why modern anthrotards can't be taken serious.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/LDi0yd7E931v/

[Anonymous No.18203493]

>>18202294
The author said that "Why Nations Fail" is a better book.

[Anonymous No.18203505]

Here and i the description are the other parts:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/epX2dKqUJg9w/

[Anonymous No.18203515]

>>18203486
>can't be taken serious
You mean as opposed to illiterate poltards, of course

[Anonymous No.18203545]

>>18203515
Modern anthropology is just as scientific on every topic eve slightly political, as gender studies. Both work on real stuff, anthropology and sex differences, yet fuck it up completely.

If you seriously think Diamond is anything but a propagandist, you're retarded beyond recovery. Keep in mind, I haven't been to /pol/ since their last soccer game.

[Anonymous No.18203555]

>>18203545
Good we agree that poltards are retards

[Anonymous No.18203656]

he says africa failed because they never had a beast of burden, ignoring the domestication of zebras done by the white man the day he got off the boat there. total liberal cope.

[Anonymous No.18203669]

>>18203656
Africa, like the rest of the world, were doing great until the British invented the right kind of drugs and weaponry
Beasts of burden have nothing to do with it. Steam engines and machine guns does

[Anonymous No.18203675]

It's trash. Read this instead.

[Anonymous No.18203685]

>>18203669
king of the greatest empire africa ever knew

[Anonymous No.18203749]

>>18203685
>king
>empire
you're all kinds of retarded aren't you?

[Anonymous No.18203763]

>>18203749
Yes, you can be King of an Empire. If the Empire is tied to an hereditary Monarchy.

[Anonymous No.18203773]

>>18203749
>sometimes referred to as the Zulu Empire or the Kingdom of Zululand,
who gives a shit he was the ruler of 12 cattle and a mud hole

[Anonymous No.18203788]

>>18203773
And yet the British shat themselves despite having machine guns, and having effortlessly subjugated every other on the globe

[Anonymous No.18203797]

>>18203788
they brought 3 machine guns to take on 35,000 men

[Anonymous No.18203820]

>>18203797
>12 cattle and a mud hole

[Anonymous No.18203847]

>>18203820
i was just saying that to illustrate the two great accomplishments of the sub saharan african peoples, cattle farming and mud pie gathering holes

[Anonymous No.18203859]

>>18202626
based

[Anonymous No.18203882]

>>18202626
>no written languages
>no wheel
>no beasts of burden
fuck off diamond

[Anonymous No.18203976]

Man i really hate niggers.

[Anonymous No.18203991]

It's a Jew taking down Europe and the achiements of its peoples, that's all there is to it. Jews have this never ending need to destroy Europe, this need will never go away and they will always find new outlets for this need.

[Anonymous No.18203995]

>>18203847
And I was saying they still made the British shit themselves, even after they had subjugated the rest of the world, and discarded America as being a worthless sinkhole

[Anonymous No.18204096]

>>18203991
I think he explains the achievements pretty well. Achievements can't be explained by genetic superiority because the dark ages happened and european nobility didn't have toilets in the palace 200 years ago

[Anonymous No.18204126]

>>18204096
This is sarcasm, r-right? Surely people aren't that retarded.

[Anonymous No.18204135]

>>18204096
Man I hope this is bait

[Anonymous No.18204183]

>>18204126
Surely most of the world is /pol/! Oh wait

>>18204135
Yeah he must be baiting. We wuz kangz n sheeit and nobody can deny it.

[Anonymous No.18204187]

>>18203749
Are you under the impression that the British Empire was ruled by an emperor?

[Anonymous No.18204230]

>>18204096
Good bait, negro. At least I hope it is.

[Anonymous No.18204262]

>>18202294
https://archive.is/PWyaZ

[Anonymous No.18204275]

>>18204262
Your image doesn't even mention jews or white genocide. But it does mention politics as a boogeyman so we know where it's coming from.

[Anonymous No.18204306]

>>18204275
Rent free.

[Anonymous No.18204504]

>>18202658
i think it's pretty cool

[Anonymous No.18204763]

>>18202294
European colonisers started breaking Zebras within decades of arriving in sub-Saharan Africa, thus proving that Africans' problems weren't with a lack of easily domesticable animals, but with the complete ineptitude of the people themselves.
The fact that Amerindians managed to develop so much prior to the European colonial era, in spite of perhaps less ideal conditions (eg the poor agricultural prospects the Inca were faced by in the Andean uplands), is testament to the fact that Diamond's environmental determinism counts for jack shit.

[Anonymous No.18204918]

>>18204763
So you're a supporter of Civilization potential? How does that work btw?

[Anonymous No.18205575]

Here's a tip, niggas are pretty dumb and violent lot. No need for a book, they have low iq.

[Anonymous No.18205631]

>>18202294
Just read Nietzsche, Genealogie of Morality. He condenses all of it into 100 pages, it's far more insightful and artistically written.

[Anonymous No.18205641]

>>18202671
Why would he think that the last 50 years is relevant in the context of 5000 years. Lol.
In New Guinea the kids run around all day. Thats all they do, run around.

[Anonymous No.18205664]

>>18205631
Oh yeah, TL;DR, what is responsible for the rise of technology is a race of aristocratic blonde beasts conquering the non-Aryan native inhabitants of Eurasia (including Europe), forcing them to develop feelings of ressentiment, who eventually depose the aristocratic ruling class, and lead to a spiral of introspective intellectualism (philosophy and its outgrowth, science and the scientific method) which culminates in the technological world we see today.

[Anonymous No.18205673]

>>18205641
>In New Guinea the kids run around all day. Thats all they do, run around.
Making them smarter than western tv addicts

[Anonymous No.18205681]

>>18205641
Because the only people who read historical cope books are tech illiterate boomers, and catering to their worldview makes more money. Obviously.

[Anonymous No.18205682]

>>18205664
retarded pseudo-history. All our philosophy, mathematics, science, religion, etc. comes from the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. Retarded germans who lived in huts and painted themselves blue are not responsible for anything but the capitalism that has destroyed all culture.

[Anonymous No.18205687]

>>18205682
>All our philosophy, mathematics, science, religion, etc. comes from the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant.
Exactly. From the non-Aryan native inhabitants, which is exactly what I stated. The development of technology and philosophy was primarily done by non-Aryan ressentiment-bearers.

[Anonymous No.18205730]

>>18202626
thanks reddit

[Anonymous No.18205741]

>>18202657
yeah not a single one

[Anonymous No.18205796]

>>18202294
I agree that biogeography has some role to play in the determination of history at least pre-industrialism. It's pretty clear why Europe kept getting bum rushed by the Huns and other central Asian bow-legged nomadic pony riders, in the same way they got pounded by Vikings. Nothing grows there except grass, so they can't settle there as a docile agrarian society. What they can do is raise a lot of horses because of all the grass and hunt other ungulates, making them very good with horses and with bows. So it's only natural for them to take to the four winds and raid and pillage the sedentary decadent nations of the west and south east who can't counteract their highly mobile means of warfare.

Similar for the Vikings. The Scandinavian geography makes sailing a natural option, and also you can't grow anything there. So the only option is to take to the longships and pillage the monasteries of fat content Christians.

Still, any attempt to explain the complexity of history in terms of one central concept or variable is doomed too inadequacy. There's always something else to consider.

[Anonymous No.18205815]

>>18203515
>If you dont believe x's shit, you must believe y's

[Anonymous No.18205857]

>>18205673
I ran around as a kid all day and I'm pretty fucking stupid

[Anonymous No.18205903]

>>18203279
I always wonder. When IQ lovers see that East Asian nations have higher IQs than the west do they think the same thing? Asians should be running the world then right?

[Anonymous No.18205924]

>>18202669
>domesticable mammals to extinction
Australia didn't have any. The only extinct megafauna are things that wouldn't have been feasible to farm. The fauna which is farmed is pretty much limited to Emus.
Otherwise, nice.

[Anonymous No.18206429]

>>18205903
Yes Asians have a higher iq you fucking retard. Us pol types acknowledge this, now go back to sucking blm cocks.

[Anonymous No.18206501]

>>18205903
they are. your liberal overlords literally sold the west out to china

[Anonymous No.18206581]

>>18206501
>>18206429
I'm not a liberal, I'm alt-right I just don't go into IQ shit.

[Anonymous No.18206606]

>>18202294
>Africa has little land fit for agriculture
>the Americas had no horses
>there for they did not rise up in civilization past Bronze equivalent
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THATS RACIEST!!!!! NO NO NO STOP MUH AFRICAN QUEEN EGYPT WAS BLACK AND SHIT YO

[Anonymous No.18206619]

>>18206581
>>18205903
IQ isn't important because it's some kind of end-all be-all signifier of racial superiority, but because it's an obvious marker that significant differences exist between various racial groups that can lead to vastly different social/political/economic etc outcomes on the ground. It's a measurable chink in the armor of liberal racial science denial, but that doesn't mean it's the only important thing. You'd have to be grug to dismiss it but spergs that put it on a pedestal are midwitting themselves.

[Anonymous No.18206649]

>>18202626
Blessed Anthropochad

[Anonymous No.18206669]

>>18203991
/Thread.

[Anonymous No.18206684]

>>18202626
how the fuck can you study anthropology, post on 4chan, and still go around pretending that distinct populations with demonstrably varying genepools has no effect on social outcomes? you're a fucking fraud, a faggot, and a pseud
go back to plebbit

[Anonymous No.18207410]

>>18202342
>IQ map
Nutrition, culture and literacy play a huge role in IQ. Africans in Europe do just fine.

[Anonymous No.18207442]

>>18207410
Literacy and culture is completely irrelevant to IQ. There are tests designed even for actual animals like coco the gorilla. And I wont even tell you the results.

Africans sure as fuck don't do "fine" in europe IQ wise. There's a reason why literacy and pisa is constantly dropping the more diverse europe becomes, ya fugging mong.

[Anonymous No.18207697]

>>18202626
While environmental factors undoubtedly contribute to the differences in intelligence between the races, there are a number of considerations that suggest that genetic factors are also involved. First, it is a principle of evolutionary biology that when sub-populations of a species become geographically isolated and occupy different environments, they become genetically differentiated and eventually diverge so much that they become different species. Thus, squirrels in North America have evolved gray fur while those in Europe have evolved red fur. From an original ancestral species, cats have evolved into lions, leopards, and cheetahs in Africa, tigers in Asia, and jaguars and pumas in the Americas. The general principle has been stated by Dawkins (1988, pp. 238-9), who writes that “when two populations become isolated from one another they become so unlike each other that, after a while, naturalists would see them as belonging to different races; after a longer time, they will have diverged so far that we should classify them as different species... the theory of speciation resulting from initial geographical separation has long been a cornerstone of mainstream, orthodox neo-Darwinism.”

[Anonymous No.18207711]

>>18205903
Rich cities in east asia don't actually have noticeably higher IQ than majority white rich cities in europe do. other anon is also right that IQ is just the best we have for this crude measuring, its very, very far from perfect.

[Anonymous No.18207718]

>>18202626
>>18207697
It is in accordance with this principle that the races have become genetically differentiated for all characteristics for which there is genetic variation, including body shape; color of skin, hair, and eyes; prevalence of genetic diseases; and blood groups. It is inconceivable that intelligence would be the single exception to these differences. Some racial differences in intelligence must also have evolved as a matter of general biological principle. Second, the studies summarized by Lynn show a consistency of the IQs of the races in a wide range of geographical locations that can only be explained by some genetic determination. For instance, in the 57 studies of general population samples of Africans in 17 African countries, all the IQs lie in the range between 59 and 88 , and in the 14 Caribbean and Latin American countries all the IQs lie in the range between 60 and 80 .Similarly, in the 58 studies of indigenous East Asians in 6 countries all the IQs lie in the range between 100 and 120. Only a genetic factor can explain the consistency of these race differences in so many different environments. It is curious that those who support the environmentalist theory of race differences in intelligence, such as Neisser (1996), Mackintosh (1998), Jencks and Phillips (1998), Nisbett (1998), Flynn (1980), Fish (2002), and Brody (2003), fail to make any mention of the consistency of the racial differences in so many different environments and nations. >>18207697

[Anonymous No.18207935]

>>18207718
>still believing in IQ
Anon...

[Anonymous No.18207995]

>>18202294
>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.18208013]

Cross-board posters are always cancer

[Anonymous No.18208111]

>>18202294
I was convinced by the arguments of this book at first.
But I also read up on the counter arguments and that made the thesis of the book end up looking really weak.

Some examples:
- One of the weaknesses less developed regions supposedly had were unusable crops. But we forget that a lot of crops that later had high yield in the prosperous areas used to look very different, too. They didn't fall from the sky, we made them this way. So that leaves you with a chicken and egg problem. What came first? The bountiful, nutritious crops or the idea to domesticate them? Similar with life stock, cattle: see his arguments against domestication of Zebras. Yes, maybe Zebras are mean animals, but do you think wolves just come to your door and turn themselves into tame puppies without effort?

- Jared argues that geographically east-west oriented regions are superior, due to homogenous climate. But people were free to concentrate to the areas most suitable for domestication if their areas were north-south oriented.

- IQs correlate much better with development than the reasons proposed in the book. See Rushton, Lynn and others. Was IQ a consequence or a precondition of development?

Lynn, Richard, Tatu Vanhanen, and M. Stuart. IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.

Overall, Jared Diamond makes virtually no effort to do with his hypothesis what should be done with any good hypothesis: to think of falsification. What would need to be true for his hypothesis to be wrong? Then, go out and reality test it. His hypothesis is a just-so story narrative.
But I won't deny that he can be very convincing and writes engagingly. I will even say that you should read the book, for the purpose of exercising your critical thinking skills alone. I must admit, I think he had tricked me in many ways. But maybe that is the way you should read books at first: without too much resistance, along for the ride and mind open, before you judge and reject the hypothesis.

[Anonymous No.18208129]

The liberal mindset is something else to behold. There was a passage where he flat out says aboriginals are actually "more intelligent" than whites because they're better at calculating spear trajectories or something because at the lowest level the brain is doing something computationally equivalent to calculus.

And the funny thing is I have no problem accepting that as fact if it's true. But the SJWs would balk at it as soon as it's reversed in the other direction.

[Anonymous No.18208186]

>>18208129
Yeah, that's complete nonsense.
It doesn't mean that throwing a spear accurately doesn't take skill, but skills that are evolutionarily familiar are least correlated with the g factor of general intelligence.
Many people confuse a harsh climate with one that requires intelligence. To them "survival of the fittest" means that it must favor the strongest and the most intelligent. But even if hunting in Africa requires effort, effort alone is not conducive to IQ. Even if plowing your field might seem less effort now, what it does require is forethought and planning. In Africa, no matter how brutal the Sun might be beating down on you, what you are doing is the same every day, you need to make little adjustments to seasonal differences and so forth.

Harshness is not the same as a high IQ climate. But harshness of winter might stimulate IQ -- if it requires a skill that is correlated with IQ. Wrestling bears would be hard but if it does not require intelligence, intelligence will not be promoted.

Dutton, Edward. “The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis: A Critical Examination of the Comprehensive Case Presented in Kanazawa’s The Intelligence Paradox.” Intelligence 41, no. 5 (2013): 607–14.
Orians, Gordon H. “Savanna Hypothesis, The.” In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, edited by Viviana Weekes-Shackelford, Todd K. Shackelford, and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford, 1–8. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2930-1..

[Anonymous No.18208192]

>>18207697
>>18207718
We have good race realism threads on /sci/,keep them there.
It's filled with /b/ tier political discussion but just ignore that
>>>/sci/13090668

[Anonymous No.18208198]

>>18208192
If you can't discuss this book without talking about it, then I'm not sure how we would avoid it here.

[Anonymous No.18208420]

>>18202626
human progress relies only on material condition = marxism

kys lefty tranny

[Anonymous No.18208671]

>>18207995
This says it all.

[Anonymous No.18208710]

>>18202294
It's not liked here because it's popular. 4chan hates everything that is popular in an attempt to appear cooler, more edgy and better than twitter.

[Anonymous No.18210187]

>>18202294
Watch the AltHype video on it

[Anonymous No.18210737]

The book is kind of amazing. Before I read it I just foolishly assumed that he was some kind of anti racist lying for the sake of equality. Actually, he's a racist who somehow convinced himself that savages are inherently more intelligent than races who pretty consistently throughout history were able to maintain complex and advanced societies. The fact that it ever became as popular as it did is shocking. the fact that I heard people talking about it for years without mentioning that part fucking blows my mind.

[Anonymous No.18210854]

>>18202369
Diamond is a Jew, how could it be an Anglo cope?

[Anonymous No.18210864]

>>18202626
Thank you

[Anonymous No.18211270]

>>18202294
>I've seen that's it not really rated very highly on here.
book that destroys /pol/cels beliefs is not rated on 4channel? What a surprise.

[Anonymous No.18211279]

>>18211270
i'm sure africa will launch a satellite any day now

[Anonymous No.18211333]

>>18211279
it's funny how you resort to textbook non-argument

[Anonymous No.18211586]

>>18202294
This book is pretty based, it filters literally everyone. Nobody is safe from the chad birdwatcher Jared Diamond. Reddit AND 4chan hates it, what more evidence of said basedness do you need?

[Anonymous No.18211675]

>>18207410
lel, niggers are literally mentally retarded; niggers cost the dutch state 600 000 k europe in a lifetime because they're too dumb to be useful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uIDsO8YnJU

[Anonymous No.18211832]

>>18211675
Im not gonna watch your video and Im not gonna disagree that 1st generation immigrants from africa or the middle east are mostly useless but I'll just add that governments want a class of welfare dependent idiots.
Its votes, it splits the population, it gives reason to keep printing money.

[Anonymous No.18211842]

>>18211333
you are unworthy of an argument if you take this self-subverting yid drivel seriously

[Anonymous No.18211845]

>>18211832
I think the govt. prefers immigrants come in to give it more money rather than leech off of it -- largely, anyway; but you've gotten general the sentiment correct.

[Anonymous No.18211849]

>>18207410
[sound of charles murray screaming in the distance]

[Anonymous No.18212909]

>>18211675
i wonder who gets to fuck this chick every night.

[Anonymous No.18214244]

This book is criticised here for being anti-White propaganda. I'm sure this criticism comes mostly from people who are into /pol/ and cultural Marxism conspiracy theories. Of course it isn't propaganda - it's a pretty informative book, with some novel ideas, but it has problems which make it easy to understand why some people think (((Jared Diamond))) has ulterior motives.

The core content in Guns, Germs, and Steel is fairly uncontroversial: a short history of plant and animal domestication, and the benefits that this gave people around the world. Then the implications follow. Diamond posits that this decisive advantage was the fundamental reason that Europe beat its competition, because it lead to writing, technology, weapons, and immunity. This is also not that radical an idea - at some point, all humans were very similar so a geographic discrepancy must have led to developmental differences.

But Diamond doesn't stop there. The book is not only littered with snide remarks towards Europeans, but his narrative is so biased it detracts from the work. Here are some examples.

- Throughout the book Diamond praises the Chinese, Arabs and Africans, for their inventions, and even adds bitter remarks that sound like “bet you thought Europeans invented that, not so clever are we guys?” But when it comes to European inventions, he dismisses them as inevitable products of a lucky geographic advantage.

- When he gives accounts of Europeans invading peoples outside of Europe, he uses emotive language - slaughter and murder - but when invasions happen outside of Europe (e.g. north Asians invading their southern neighbours) he describes it neutrally as one nation “engulfing” another. Most of the time he spares you the details when it suits him.

- Diamond spends entire chapters defending primitive peoples like the Aboriginals. Yes, it’s true, they lived in pretty bad terrain and it’s understandable that they never even developed basic tools. It’s also possible that if they were placed in Europe 15,000 years ago, they might have invented the computer by now. But the author feels the need the speculate that these primitive people are actually more intelligent than the average White person, because, apparently, in the West we live lives so comfortable we don’t need to think. Not only are primitive people just as capable as us, we’re actually dumber!

Basically, the book is insightful, and you should read it for the parts about prehistory. Just ignore Diamond’s butthurt side commentary.

[Anonymous No.18214447]

>>18214244
Honestly most of this can be simply explained by Diamond simply not wanting to come under fire for putting forward "racist" ideas by leftists and marxists with their own secular Ideas of history, just look the book is still considered controversial and dangerous by some people even despite all the countermeasures he put in his book to reduce it. I think it was Thomas Sowell who once said that for some people the idea that one group of people(Europeans) surpassed another group (or or less everyone else) can only be explained through the concept of exploration of the latter group by the former.

Diamond knows this and the atmosphere of academia and tries to make his book as digestible as possible by directy threatening these ideas as little as possible despite the fundamental nature of his book. I honestly cant blame him.

This is the same reason why he rejected race realism out of hand. If he dident his book would get completely swamped with controversy and likely banned or suppressed not to mention potentially threaten his career.

I think diamond does a good job of tackling the environmental side of history, problem comes when someone assumes that is the only side of history instead of reading others like Peter Turchin for the demographic side and Richard Lynn for the racial side in order to build a cohesive and holistic interpretation. There is no one single book that can explain all of history, atleast not yet, but if you try you can probably get pretty damn close.

[Anonymous No.18214464]

>>18214447
Ooops.
When I said (or or less everyone else) I meant (more or less*...)
And when I said exploration I meant exploitation*
Fucking autocorrect.

[Anonymous No.18214514]

>>18202626
>ecause if geography doesn't have the utmost effect on how peoples turn out, and at the same time we have to deny any sort of racism/race realism (because we're in the academia, duh)
So are you asserting that humans' environments affect them, but these environments somehow don't apply any evolutionary selection pressure?

[Anonymous No.18214519]

>>18214447
>>18214464
Perhaps, but the impression I got was some resentment towards the west, despite his whole message being one of geographical determinism.

[Anonymous No.18215389]

>>18202669
>uses Pizarro as example then says epidemic disease only an issue post-conquest
The Inca were in the midst of a smallpox epidemic and civil war (due to previous Sapa Inca dying of smallpox) when Pizarro showed up.
I can only assume the rest of that post is full of mistakes.

[Anonymous No.18216146]

Reddit really hates that book.

[Anonymous No.18216216]

>>18202300
Actually, academics take the book seriously. It is written by an academic. My lecturer in economics had it on the reading list for an undergraduate course in economic history. It makes an argument along the lines of geographic determinism.

>>18202294
To answer OP's question, the book is excellent and makes a good case for geographic determinism explaining cross-country differences in income today. The reason the book is criticised is because it does not take its argument to its logical conclusion. The logical conclusion of his argument is that geography could also play a role in explaining differences in immutable characteristics of ethnic groups, which would explain why certain countries (in Europe and Asia) are wealthy today. Some other authors make this argument, that geography would influence genetics (such as Clark in A Farewell to Alms).

[Anonymous No.18216236]

>>18214244
The main problem with the book as I see it, is that Diamond refuses to take his argument to its logical conclusion, that favourable geographic conditions in Europe and East Asia may have led to the earlier development of agriculture and selection for different types of genes suited more to industrial society, which are now more common in these societies.

[Anonymous No.18216346]

>>18216216
>Actually, academics take the book seriously. It is written by an academic.

[Anonymous No.18216356]

>>18216346
Well, I know from personal experience that they do, because academics at my university literally discussed it in a lecture