>A boomer in my extended family passionately believes that Guns, Germs and Steel is one of the most important and profound books ever madeWhat did I think of him?I have never read Jared Diamond btw
>>25287371Its literally been debunked by plenty academics.You think his opinion is as dumb as someone who still thinks Kahnemann’s Thinking Fast And Slow is not-debunking essential economic reading
>>25287396how does one literally debunk something as opposed to figuratively or metaphorically debunking something
It’s a thought provoking book but I think the real reason the West took over the world is that the West managed to chew and digest Aristotle which Muslims and Jews could not do. (For contingent historical reasons). Just like the reason Germany is so prominent in philosophy is that they happened to produce a Kant. I’m a great man theorist, sue me, or prove me wrong I’m not that attached to this idea but it’s what I think. Aristotle said that the world - THIS world - is completely intelligible. Catholics got on board with this in the high middle ages and here we are.
>>25287413>sue meYou're broke so idk why you think I would bother.
>>25287413The Romans took over the "world" and they didn't know shit about Aristotle (besides his rhetoric) so you're going to have to re-write this. The Greeks had Aristotle and they got raped by the Romans.
>>25287446The Romans had an empire, they did not change the nature of humanity the way modernity did, and modernity comes from Aristotle. Low IQ, /pol/ post.
>>25287458They had an empire, and they got it not by reading books about faggoty first cause arguments, but picking up the javelin, and marching in formation. Modernity comes from modernity; sure, previous elements worked to create it, but please; you are retarded if you think Aristotle would have anything nice to say about the west.
>>25287396How can it be debunked? It's on the U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List.
>>25287497It posits that the courses of societies and civilizations were determined entirely by their start locations
>>25287371my history professor likes it but I don't agree with the premise. culture plays a way bigger part than people assume.
>>25287413>Just like the reason Germany is so prominent in philosophy is that they happened to produce a Kantthe man who created the concept of german philosopher was fredrick iii hohenzollern, elector of brandenburg, and his cleric martin luther
>>25287413>great man theoristyou must really love tolstoy lmao
It has flaws and is overrated but also gets dismissed too easily
Debunked by On Contradiction by Mao
>>25287413>Aristotle said that the world - THIS world - is completely intelligiblemore on this anon.
>>25287607and culture is shaped by geography, so?
>>25287497Basically in Guns, Germs, and Steel, the author asks the question: why did Europe and Asia rise to power and not a continent like Africa or pre-colonial Australia? He then instantly refuses to accept that genetics has anything to do with the answer. And the only reason why he refuses to consider genetics is because he thinks the idea of IQ being linked to genetics leads to racial superiority and it makes him feel icky. The rest of the book is mental gymnastics as he tries to answer the question while turning a blind eye to genetics and IQ. However. He also contradicts himself on this. At one point he sucks off the natives of Papua New Guinea, and talks about how amazing they are at this skill and that skill, better than white people even! So after saying racial superiority makes him feel icky he had no qualms about talking how superior the people of Papua New Guinea are to us. But he ignores the fact that the natives of Papua New Guinea, today, in 2026, will assume a car crash was caused by a witch putting a curse on the car, and burn a random witch to death to restore hoodoo. Most notably Guns, Germs, and Steel spends the majority of its argument based on the "out of Africa" theory. Asking why some people left Africa while others didn't. But the out of Africa theory has been long debunked by-- say it with me now: genetics. Basically reading Guns, Germs, and Steel is like reading a book on phrenology. It's rooted in outdated concepts. It doesnt present any real evidence or statistics for anything it says. It lies by omission. It's a piece of shit book and I couldnt stomach reading more than a few chapters of it.
>>25287505How has that particular claim been debunked? I have yet to hear a convincing argument about it
>>25287413The Arabs translated Aristotle and taught it to the sons of Europeans Kings at the world’s best Universities at the time in Andalusia and Egypt
>>25287497>It's on the U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading ListAnd those people are genuine retards. Cry more, ZOGbot
>>25288167So, you didn’t read the whole book? There are two problems with your argument; firstly, you are relying on an entirely arbitrary categorisation of “race” in support of your genetic superiority theory, which you are presupposing as correct ahead of any actual argument against the author’s hypothesis. The second issue is your belief in pseudoscience such as IQ being in any way relevant to the rise of societies.
>>25288516lol
>>25287458>implying the nature of humanity has changed in any meaningful capacity
>>25288503people will always say this and then just ignore the fact that they then went on to do nothing with it.
>>25288527nigga u be acting like the ottoman empire wasnt a thing
>>25288599Ottomans weren't arabs. They were steppe people who moved to Anatolia, whilst their cousins moved to Baghdad. Arab power has not recovered from the Mongol invasion. The Turks did help the Renaissance blossom as Byzantine scholars and artists escaped to Italy. Islamic world inherited much of the ancient wisdom because it conquered Syria, Egypt and Persia. It's not because the Arabs were particularly inventive people.
>>25288624well it sounds like you know what you are talking about so im not going to dispute ya.
>>25288518>i'm smart and i belong here
>>25288661You're dumb and belong locked up in an insane asylum.
>>25288624there were plenty of arab scientists. people like to imagine their history as riding camels in the desert. in reality they dominated trade for centuries throughout asia. islam did not reach all the way out to the philippines just by koranic verses floating through the air
>>25289008you will never be smart and you will never win arguments online
>>25287371people who hate intellectuals despise this book because it doesn't genuflect to their popsci cult that tells them they're inherently intelligent due to their haplogroup even though they don't read.
>>25289524good synopsis
>>25288631He does. The Ottomans were Turkic steppe archers who conquered the Byzantine empire and inherited their power and knowledge, much like the Mongol Empire did to China. They have nothing to do with Arabs, other than sharing the Islamic religion with them.
>>25288527I don’t think they did nothing with it
>>25288527>did nothing with ithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_slave_trade
>>25289524maybe im ignorant but i thought guns germs steel was considered popsci or at least pop history
GG&S is badYes, obviously, geography plays a role in how societies develop over time, anybody with a brain understands that, but (as I understand it, I haven't read it front to back) the book drastically overemphasizes that fact and downplays other factors (human agency, chance, cultural norms, etc), and also just has a bunch of incorrect information, both due to newer research invalidating some of it's points and conclusions, and from Diamond being misinformed and ignorant about a bunch of stuffSpeaking as somebody who follows Mesoamerican history and archeology, I can confidently say that a lot of the stuff he says about the Spanish colonization of the Americas and it's Prehispanic civilizations is outright wrong. >Plebbit, but this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2bv2yf/guns_germs_and_steel_chapter_3_collision_at/ outlines a bunch of such issues as it relates to the Inca, but again basically everything it says about the Aztec and the Mesoamericans is incorrect too:>Claims the Mesoamericans only had stone tools, which is wrong, they smelted Bronze and used bronze tools and likely weapons, see >>>/his/18471859 , >>>/his/18475363 ,>>>/his/18475396 , >>>/his/18475417>Says that there were only two Prehispanic Empires (the Aztec and Inca) as of 1500, not mentioning the Purepecha Empire, Tututepec, etc, and dmissisng other Mesoamerican states as "chiefdoms" >Misunderstands and mis-states how and why Cortes got allies against the Aztec, and understates their importance>Claims Moctezuma II mistook Cortes as a god, which even a modicum of research would show is incorrect as Cortes's own letters outright dispute this (see pic)>Claims poor choices by the Mesoamericans and other Indigenous groups is due to not knowing about the Old World, which is stupid for reasons the reddit post already notes, but is also dumb when Cortes was regularly used and manipulated by local kings due to his own ignorance about Mesoamerican politics>Calls Prehispanic Mexico "Prehistoric" in the same lines he talks about them having written records 1/?
>>25290061Cont:And this is me being generous, there's a lot of other questionable lines or statements that are arguably not incorrect in a technical sense but have implicit issues (EX him making claims about the superiority of Spanish armor in the conquest against the Inca which is perhaps true there, but which wouldn't apply in Mesoamerica, or him only really mentioning Maize/corn as a crop that traveled between Mesoamerica and South America when there were others, but he does at one point say "a few"), or which seem sketchy but I can't fully dispute due to ambiguity (EX: he says a lot of questionable stuff about the emergence of water management systems among the Maya and Olmec and their scale, but he doesn't define small vs large scale systems so it's difficult for me to say for sure that he's wrong, without knowing what he counts as one or the other) . I'm also ignoring stuff I know is wrong that he says about other parts of the Americas outside of Mesoamerica (EX: I'm pretty sure him saying Bronze tools were only recently commonly adopted in the Andes before Spanish contact is wrong, tho I'm not confident). I'm sure there's also stuff I missed since it's been a while since I looked over it in depth and here I just ctrl+F'd. Lastly, I don't even know anybody who thinks the book is good. Actual historians hate it, actual archeologists and anthropologists hate it, /pol/ hates it, etc. I think the only people who like it are economists (and almost everything I've read from economists on history has been bad) and I guess what people would call libs/neocons? I don't into politicsMaybe I'm being a little harsh, as I said I have not read it in full, and I'm sure some of the stuff it says are reasonable, but the fact it has so much wrong about the topics I know enough about to gauge and how harshly it is criticized by researchers probably says something>>25288167>>25287497>But the out of Africa theory has been long debunked by-- say it with me now: genetics. No, it hasn't. Humans and other Homo species unequivocally evolved in Africa. What has shifted is that we now know that rather then there being one large migration of Homo Sapiens out of Africa, that there were\ multiple migrations waves of different Homo species out of Africa over time, and newer migrants, after diapering into Europe, Asia, etc, interbred with earlier migrant populations who had already spread out (with potentially some groups even migrating back into Africa). See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222560456_From_Africa_to_Eurasia_-_Early_dispersals or https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3991479/ and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06055-yNobody outside of we-wuzzing coping nationalists in China, India, and i'm sure other places are proposing that homnids and homo genus species initially evolved in other parts of the world2/?
>>25290063>>25288167>>25287497Cont:>At one point he sucks off the natives of Papua New Guinea, and talks about how amazing they are at this skill and that skill, better than white people even! So after saying racial superiority makes him feel icky he had no qualms about talking how superior the people of Papua New Guinea are to us.I haven't read this chapter, but that's only hypocrititical if he is saying that the Papua New Guineas were genetically predisposed to being skilled in those areas. If he's just saying that their geographic envoigmental conditions forced, encouraged or enabled them to focus on those disciplines, then that's entirely consistent with his thesis, and in fact throughout the book he repeatedly praises and emphasizes the superiority of European technology, social practices and institutions, etc over say Precolumbian, African etc ones (even when those claims aren't even correct). He just doesn't credit that superiority due to genetics.>>25289524Even people who don't think that intelligence is racial think the book is shit, anon>>25287446The Romans did not take over the world. That had a very impressive empire that managed to nearly/basically swallow up it's own entire region and continued to expand to be an interegional and cross continental empire , which was very rare and laudable in premodern history, but it obviously didn't have global influence or even total Afro-Eurasia dominance, or even dominance over all of Europe or all of the Near East, with it having competing empires of a similar scale in Persia etc3/3 for now
>>25290061You haven’t read the book faggot STFU Nothing you say has any merit your opinion on this matter is worthless you have wasted your time I’m not going to read your post
>>25290072>NOOOOOOO YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO CRITIQUE SOMEBODY FOR SAYING 2+2=5 IF YOU DIDN'T READ EVERY OTHER PAGE OF THEIR BOOK
