/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22425965]

Redpill me on this book: is it worth the read?

[Anonymous No.22425979]

Sois and (((academics))) seethe when its mentioned so yeah, its definitely worth it

[Anonymous No.22426094]

>>22425979
It's the opposite, actually.

[Anonymous No.22426189]

>>22425965
In the span of a few pages the author says he won't consider racist (pro euro) hypotheses because they are le bad (not because they are unscientific), and then claims that the indigenous savages of New Guinea are more intelligent than whites because "he can see it in their eyes". The whole book is written to explain his cognitive dissonance: If savage cannibal baby rapers are obviously so much smarter than Europeans, why do Euros have all the cargo? Remember, "Euros are smarter" as an explanation has been a priori ruled out as too terrifyingly repugnant to even consider, so now we have this meme of a book. Thank god someone like Jared "Diamond", who definitely has no ethnic vendetta against europeans, is here to correct the record once and for all: Euros just got lucky. Maybe not so lucky as to have literally been "chosen" by the all powerful creator of the universe, but still pretty lucky.

[Anonymous No.22426259]

>>22425965
The entire thesis of this book is:
>whitey only got lucky because of muh location and muh environment and muh access to resources
A total refutation of heredity qualities, ethnocultural excellence and a shallow materialist conception of the world.

[Anonymous No.22426372]

>>22425979
Nope it’s pop history trash by a seething small hat over European success.

[Anonymous No.22426378]

>>22425965
Absolutely not

[Anonymous No.22426644]

>>22425979
how are you this wrong you retard it's the other way around

[Anonymous No.22426685]

>>22426259
How are these points incorrect?

[Anonymous No.22426686]

>>22426259
>muh facts and muh empiricism
>why don't they just credit magical hyperborean space elves for everything, like a rational person??

[Anonymous No.22426691]

Usual Jewish lies.

[Anonymous No.22426702]

>>22425965
>>22425965
here's your redpill bud, book is trash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFECyeihuZY

[Anonymous No.22426821]

>>22426685
Because
1. His specific environmental arguments are obviously contrived, arbitrary, and subject to endless counterexamples. This plant is better than that plant, this animal better than that one, this geography better than that geography, everywhere across the entire planet blatantly reasoning from a predetermined conclusion.

2. He implicitly claims that even the most dramatic and world-shaking historical events, like the Indo-European or Roman conquests, either made no significant difference to the course of history or else couldn't have been otherwise. There can't ever have been a point anywhere where things could have happened otherwise and been different, because then he would have to talk about events and human decisions and not just the protein content of legumes.

[Anonymous No.22426895]

>>22425965
He doesn't understand the importance of Institutional development, so no. Geography and whatnot are only important relative to the level of societal complexity around them.

[Anonymous No.22426918]

>>22426189
Smartness got nothing to do with anything and racist hypotheses are indeed unscientific teleology.

[Anonymous No.22426953]

>>22426918
Cont.

Its a fact that none of the race realist theorist have any answer to how or why Europeans developed superior being over other races. Infact all claims of superiority are derived backwards from colonial success.

Much like how the race theory itself is a sad vestige of colonialism

[Anonymous No.22426969]

>>22426918
The actual realistic left wing position on scientific racism is something like "racial groups are flexible and shaped by culture, we'll all be one race eventually anyway so it doesn't matter". Which is debatable in its own right but the official line that there are literally no relevant mental differences between any two groups, hunter-gatherer pygmies with tiny skulls are just as smart as European aristocrats even though they're obviously not, is not something any intelligent person believes. It makes no sense on any level, if you take it seriously you'll never understand anything else either.

[Anonymous No.22427017]

>>22425979
>Deliberately wrong
>weird mind games
>shilling anti European, Jewish text
We've got a jew in the thread, boys

[Anonymous No.22427023]

>>22426691
This is such a common thing to see in contemporary society. I guess a leopard never changes its spots

[Anonymous No.22427025]

>>22426821
this post summarizes everything there is to say

read the wikipedia, but don't actually read the book

[Anonymous No.22427036]

Anyone got that paper of him talking about some schizo "hyperevolution" of the jewish people? According to him some jews look white in europe and black in ethiopia because of hyperevolution, how they've quickly adapted to the local environment which has caused them to look like the local population. Not because of mixing/converts but because of hyperevolution. There was a link to such pdf on his wiki page references like a decade ago. It was hilariously stupid and a good example how he just makes shit up.

[Anonymous No.22427093]

>>22426918
>>22426953
>Its a fact that none of the race realist theorist have any answer to how or why Europeans developed superior being over other races.
Sounds like you've just never seriously considered any of those "racist" theories. It's as simple as this: living though the winter requires more intelligence, so people who were forced to do so were forced to develop it.

The relatively harsh living conditions of Europeans is what led to the development of increased intelligence. Humans living in tropical regions never had any evolutionary pressure to develop advanced intelligence. When food is plentiful and easily found year-round, there's a limit to how much foresight is required. You don't need to plan weeks or months ahead to figure out how you'll get food. If you need more food, you go get it as the desire arises. You don't need complex clothing or housing because it never gets cold enough to be a threat. You don't need to cooperate with your fellow humans basic a very basic level.

Europeans, on the other hand, had to deal with harsher climates and specifically harsh winters. Surviving the winter requires advanced intelligence. You need to be able to plan ahead for what food, clothes, and shelter you'll need, and you need to have a societal structure that lets you split tasks among a group. This sounds like it's not a huge deal but it's all that is needed for there to be an intelligence gap between humans from mild and harsh climates. The easiest proof of this is the huge variance in time preference/delayed gratification between Europeans and Africans, the former being far more willing to delay an immediate reward in exchange for a greater one obtained later. This trait is an essential one for surviving a harsh seasonal climate.

>...animals that can store food and defer eating are more likely to survive during harsh conditions, and thus delaying gratification may also incur an evolutionary advantage. It is likely that there is a strong genetic component to deferred gratification, though no direct link has been established.

[Anonymous No.22427279]

>>22427036
I think he's just tacitly admitting to their being shape-shifting lizard people there.

[Anonymous No.22427501]

>>22426685

[Anonymous No.22427516]

>>22425965
Read Why Nations Fail, which is a direct rebuttal to this book

[Anonymous No.22427740]

>>22427093
The seems to imply only Europeans have cold winters which isn't the case

[Anonymous No.22427830]

>>22427093

This implies that the Cradle of Civilization was located in Europe and not in places like the Euphrates/Mesopotamia, the Nile or the Indus valley.

[Anonymous No.22427968]

>let me just project some shit onto you and claim you "implied" it
Poor form anon, extremely poor.

>>22427740
When it comes to early human development then it absolutely is the case. Humans didn't just spontaneously generate in Alaska and Tibet. For a very long time humans were limited to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. By the time they spread to other regions, these adaptations had already taken place. The majority of Africa did not have a climate that requires extensive future planning to survive seasonal fluctuations, nor did the Middle East. It was only once humans spread to regions with harsh winters that there began to be heavy evolutionary pressure selecting for individuals with high intelligence and low time preference.

>>22427830
I implied no such thing. We were discussing the development of intelligence, not civilization. Ancient Africa had plenty of large civilizations and population centers and the one does not require the other. Civilizations have developed in every corner of the planet but only one of those civilizations is is responsible for 95% of all scientific progress.

[Anonymous No.22428027]

>>22427968
95% may be a stretch considering that a lot of knowledge is passed on from generation to generation. Where would Egypt be without Mesopotamia and so on? You see what I mean?

[Anonymous No.22428095]

>>22428027
>You see what I mean?
What I see is that you're trying to avoid the topic. The periods you're referencing are extremely recent from an evolutionary point of view and have no relevance to the conversation. By the time Mesopotamia was developing agriculture, humans had been inhabiting North America for well over 10,000 years. The developments I'm talking about >>22427093, if they happened, would have started to occur as soon as humans began migrating to regions with harsh seasonal climates, which happened at least tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Were German rocket scientists in the 1950s using a chain of knowledge that, at some point, owed credit to Al-Khwarizmi's work in the 7th century? Sure, but that doesn't have anything to do with the question of why European civilization developed such a massive technological and scientific advantage over every other.

[Anonymous No.22428129]

>>22426918
>Smartness got nothing to do with anything and racist hypotheses are indeed unscientific teleology.
lol Jared Diamond doesn't believe that for a second. He wrote actual "jews are racially intellectually superior" treatises for Nature prior to this book being published.

[Anonymous No.22428170]

>>22428095
>that doesn't have anything to do

Hmm... so the fact that they inherited all the knowledge (technology and animals) from the Middle East/Mediterranean basis doens't have anything to do with the advantage they might have had over the Aztecs who were an ocean away and had no benefit of borrowing from the rest of the world?

Even China and Japan lagged Europe at a certain point and nobody says that East Asian intelligence is below European. But probably now you're going to claim that they're intelligent but not creative.

[Anonymous No.22428248]

>>22428170
>Hmm...
Yes, hmm. For the third time I'll remind you that the period being discussed (human migration into regions with harsh seasonal climates) took place hundreds of thousands of years ago. This is long, long, LONG before the development of any of the knowledge you're referencing.

But I'll indulge you nonetheless.

>the fact that they inherited all the knowledge (technology and animals) from the Middle East/Mediterranean
This is a massive overstatement. I know that we're on 4chan but you can still at least try to offer intelligent points instead of nonsense like this. If all these other civilizations had advanced knowledge that Europeans simply "inherited" then why didn't the Middle East conquer the world? Do you think this is as simple as "Europe vs. America"? Africa had a literal hundreds of thousands of years head start on Europe. Why didn't Africa conquer the world? China? India?

There's a reason why Europe became the overwhelmingly dominant technological and scientific power of the world and if you have any alternative explanations for this fact then you're welcome to share them. I offered a very rational explanation >>22427093 and so far all you've done is try to change the subject and pick at semantics.

>Even China and Japan lagged Europe at a certain point
Perhaps you meant "for the vast majority of their existence"?
>East Asian intelligence
What "intelligence" are we talking about, exactly? Standardized test scores? The entirety of Asia was centuries (if not more) behind Europe in development before they, as you put it, inherited European knowledge. Why was it Asia being colonized by Europe rather than the reverse?

I can see that you're desperately trying to drag this down to the level of modern identity politics and I'll tell you now that there is very little you could do that I would find more boring. If you can't make intelligent criticisms then I'm not going to waste my time responding to you.

[Anonymous No.22428256]

read Understanding Human History by Kevin Hart instead. All of these pop-history books ignore racial differences and end up creating elaborate stories that are unverifiable

[Anonymous No.22428643]

>>22425965
I bought this book over ten years ago, didn't read it, then last year dropped it off at Goodwill. Someone might benefit from it if it's a cold winter.

[Anonymous No.22428708]

>>22428248
>why didn't the Middle East conquer the world?

If you had half an ounce of intelligence and weren't so myopic you would ask yourself that question and come up with a reasonable answer.

[Anonymous No.22428729]

>>22425965
It's another meme book that gets over posted.

[Anonymous No.22428734]

>>22426702
I was going to post this, but couldn't find it. Thanks, anon.

[Anonymous No.22428763]

>>22428708
>uhh i don't know, why don't you tell me?
Embarrassing. It's getting to the point where I feel like I need to start critically responding to my own posts since it's clear that no one else here has the brains to do it.

[Anonymous No.22428764]

>>22428248
So your belief is that Europeans had no interactions with other parts of the world for that whole time and visa versa? It's definitely not as clear cut as your trying to make it out to be. The middle east did conquer a good chunk of the world at one point fyi, Europeans did not live in a vacume.

[Anonymous No.22428820]

>>22428764
>So your belief is that Europeans had no interactions with other parts of the world for that whole time and visa versa?
I'm so tired of you slimy little disingenuous morons. Who do you think you're impressing with this shit? Are you genetically incapable of honest debate? Did you even read the thread? Do you understand what's being discussed?

Yeah, sure, I think that Europeans lived in a vacuum, that's absolutely what I was saying here:
>>22428095
>Were German rocket scientists in the 1950s using a chain of knowledge that, at some point, owed credit to Al-Khwarizmi's work in the 7th century? Sure, but that doesn't have anything to do with the question of why European civilization developed such a massive technological and scientific advantage over every other.

>It's definitely not as clear cut as your trying to make it out to be.
I'm sure you get this a lot but no intelligent person is going to take you seriously while you're being confused by homophones.

[Anonymous No.22429132]

>>22425965
No. None of these pop shit books are worthwhile. Not even for an overview or introduction, as they don't do that either. They're aiming for the mass market, primarily meant to be sensationalist and accessible, explicitly/ridiculously ideological, they have no intellectual purpose or niche.

Instead refer to textbooks and read papers. Read about the history of a discipline also. You must note that these pop shit books do not contribute anything that is academically valid and often distort and mislead on the very basic information and concepts the author really shouldn't be struggling with.

It's no better if the author is a legit academic either. Because he's writing for an audience where he can assert whatever he likes. And being an academic doesn't mean you're smart or knowledgeable. it often means you are intimate with ideological currents and have the means to write something that can exploit its presence in popular culture or proliferate it to be reaped later.

[Anonymous No.22429196]

>>22425965
>europeans dirty and stupid their conquest of the world was pure coincidence, geography determines every cultures success
There, i saved you some time. Thats the entite book.

[Anonymous No.22429507]

>>22426189
>In the span of a few pages the author says he won't consider racist (pro euro) hypotheses because they are le bad (not because they are unscientific), and then claims that the indigenous savages of New Guinea are more intelligent than whites because "he can see it in their eyes"

That's where I refunded my audiobook.

[Anonymous No.22429897]

Am I right to get the impression that this book is just a really bad knockoff of Braudel for the american grievance studies types?

[Anonymous No.22429970]

https://blog.daviskedrosky.com/p/jared-diamond-a-reply-to-his-critics

[Anonymous No.22429972]

>Ahem, Melanesians are actually more intelligent than Europeans because they live in a harsher ecology with fewer resources, and IQ tests are biased and don't actually measure anything.

[Anonymous No.22429981]

>>22425965
This book sucks. I had a genuine interest in the content, but he comes off as whiny. I don't know what it is, but he just seems to have this effete, "akshually" style that can't help but come across.

[Anonymous No.22429993]

I can't speak on whether his explanations are correct, but I appreciate the book for furnishing yet another proof of how leftists and right-wingers are mirror images.
leftists are mad at the book for explaining colonizing through material factors instead of some inherent evilness of white people, while right-wingers are mad at it for explaining getting colonized through material factors instead of some inherent inferiority of colored people.

[Anonymous No.22430034]

>>22428248

I have some points of disagreement.

My first contention is that your thesis hosts the implication that not being in a cold climate doesn't require foresight... but we know that many communities around Africa were nomadic -- indicating that they did move around a lot in response to environmental pressure. Also, many of the most intelligent mammals (gorillas, chimpanzees, elephants, niggers) live in Africa. Furthermore, living on a more densely populated continent would, presumably, reward the group that was more intelligent, as the more intelligent group would be more likely to dominate the other groups (isn't that why white people are so dominant?).

And there's a counter-point here: perhaps evolution would instead select for physical traits that allow a person to excel in the exercise of force. But then why couldn't you argue that evolution would've selected for traits of robustness, whereby the group that "succeeded" in a particular place was simply the one with the most adaptations for the robust climate?

Another point I have to raise is that, for the vast majority of human civilization, the Middle East HAS been especially prominent. Why can we argue that the most recent timeslice is the one where ethno-intellectual cream has risen to the top when, by your own admission, anything less than a thousand years is a drop in the bucket of humanity's history?

Anyway anon thanks for sharing your stance. Hope you have a good day and I'm looking forward to your response.

[Anonymous No.22430065]

>>22427093
Cold Winters theory is not really testable, though the relationship that exists between latitude and IQ and brain size is real and cannot be ignored. I do suspect that is part of the reason why Europeans, especially Northern Europeans, tend to be much more intelligent on average than the world average. But that is only part of the reasoning. But one really need not know the exact mechanisms as to HOW x trait developed. What we do know for an absolute fact is that populations separated for tens of thousands of years under different evolutionary pressures (like the cold mountainous, dense forest terrain of Europe, and the grasslands of Africa) diverged to the extent that it manifest in a myriad of physical traits (height, muscle composition, bone structure, skull shape, skin color, eye color, hair color etc.), up to and including brain size and structure, which must imply different functioning (behavior), which is easily observed in every day life or through a cursory glance at history.
To be honest, this entire topic to me is so tired and old; there is no real debate to be had here. Any theory that a-priori rules out genetic differences between the very peoples and societies they're studying is bunk and belongs in the trash.
Also, I should note there is more involved such as migrations. Modern Europeans are descendants of the Aryan/Steppe/PIE peoples who conquered Europe and the then-natives of Europe such as the (called EEF, WHG etc.; Early European Farmer, Western Hunter-Gatherer etc.).
>>22430034
NTA
>implication that not being in a cold climate doesn't require foresight
No, it doesn't. I agree the wording can be annoying, but simply you agree the behavioral pressures are different.
>Another point I have to raise is that, for the vast majority of human civilization, the Middle East HAS been especially prominent.
Civilization first developed among extremely fertile rivers such as the Nile and Euphrates. Farming techniques that would work here, would not work in the hard, cold terrain of say Germany and Britain. For example, technology would need to develop to at least the Iron Age in order to develop the tools necessary for agriculture, as bronze plows are very ineffective in Northern European soil, as compared to more temperate climates.

[Anonymous No.22431068]

>>22426259
those are factors though