I think Diamond's greatest fault as a researcher is his reliance on reductivism. Anyone can cherry-pick history to support "5 simple rules that explain X" if the rules are even reasonably sane.

It may be satisfying and entertaining to read, but human history is much more complex than just a few rules.

I bet I can take anyone's favorite history books and paint them as reductivist.

The charge of reductivism can be made against anyone who attempts to explain big patterns in comprehensible ways.

In fact, isn't it reductionist to claim that a historian's entire view on a topic can be reduced to theories they developed in a single book?

Exactly. Have you seen how many WWII or Civil War books there are. Do I need to read them all before I am allowed a valid opinion? All history gets condensed and interpreted. This thread isn't really do a very good job arguing that Jared is wrong, it seems much more like they disagree with some particular point politically, thus he must be wrong.

It's easy to level a charge of reductionist when the book is presenting a model for why things happened a certain way, instead of just describing what sort of things happened. GG&S is all about the why, and is therefore inherently reductionist.

I took his rules as high level observations of the environment's impact on human evolution. But human experience is much more nuanced like you say. I do remember thinking some of the observations could come across as very blunt.

There is a video on the internet of him trying to shoot an old style gun... pretty funny... needless to say it's not his greatest skill.

Jared Diamond Funny video: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxm-OUN3XNSdXmZ_fkXs1zZUQziwjaLZN...

No ear protection... most people not yet accustomed to guns would probably react about the same way.

I keep seeing this robot-like criticism of Diamond as "over-simplistic" or "hyperreductionist". But it's just a model? The map is not the territory, and Diamond has never claimed to explain all human development. His thesis is merely that geography and environment contribute to biological and cultural dominance to a disproportionate degree compared to other factors. I don't see how this is controversial.

I think it is because he's showing the colonial powers weren't especially evil, just more successful at being evil.

the irony is that I've seen Guns, Germs, and Steel get trashed by people on the right for downplaying the idea that Western culture was/is special and the key to success/wealth/innovation and attacking Diamond for saying it was only due to geography and other random factors rather than Western culture itself

Universities and academics have shifted so far left that they are increasingly eating their own, the entire point of the book was to try and say that race and Western culture wasn't a factor. It's a pretty obvious argument against most right wing talking points, but apparently that isn't enough anymore in academia

Yep. It said Europe's balkanized geography (islands, peninsulas) begat literal balkanization, which begat competition, which begat innovation, which begat exploration and technology which dominated the world despite all other European failings.

Meanwhile, Asia's geography lent itself to unifying monopolization, which begat immense totalitarian states which were more complacent.

Both geographies fostered dense cities with draft animals, creating plagues and immunity to those plagues, which let the Old World dominate the New in numbers, technology, and immunology (nevermind that they had a few thousand years' head start in technology since they didn't have to switch continents).

And note that totalitarian states tend to become anti-science because it might upset their applecart. China was the dominant power, it didn't need innovation so why take the risk?

Free markets are a big deal. They are indeed the key to success/wealth/innovation.

And part of Diamond's book was about how geography helped form free markets.

Sorry, free markets are not dependent on geography. Any country/civilization can adopt them any time they want to.

And the point of the book is that Balkanized geography makes countries more likely to want to adopt free markets whereas big continents will be more likely to adopt authoritarian state control.

Sounds like nonsense - the US straddles an entire continent. At the opposite geographical extreme we have Taiwan and Japan, both highly successful free markets.

The US was colonized, it didn't spring forth from pre-history this way. Diamond's theory is about the foundations of civilization and how they led to the broad strokes of history, not about modern events.

South America was colonized at the same time, but they didn't recognize rights and never amounted to much economically.

South America was pretty much entirely a jungle-covered mineral colony. Resource curse theory applies.

I'm not buying those excuses. SA failed to prosper because they had unfree economies. Chile has prospered when it went more free market, and regressed when it turned away from them.

>Universities and academics have shifted so far left that they are increasingly eating their own, the entire point of the book was to try and say that race and Western culture wasn't a factor. It's a pretty obvious argument against most right wing talking points, but apparently that isn't enough anymore in academia

Is there any evidence that any actual 'eating' is happening here? I can't find any instances of it being banned or removed from curriculum. Jared Diamond continues to teach at UCLA.

Is the 'eating' the fact that people critiqued a pop anthropology? The author of the article is creating strawmen and then defeating them.

I was left with, who actually is the author of the article referencing and what is their actual argument.

Are you active in any of tho relevant fields? If not, then why do you think you are better qualified to judge the academic quality of his work than actual academics with the proper background?

> better qualified to judge the academic quality of his work than actual academics with the proper background

that argument only holds up if the group with the "proper background" is NOT a giant echo chamber where non-conformity is ruthlessly punished.

Can you specify which fields you have in mind and why you think so, or are you speaking in hypotheticals just for the sake of appearing to make a counterpoint?

I guess you think this is a witty thing to say.

we're already talking about a specific field.

No, I think you're trying to dismiss critics of Diamond without ever engaging with the actual criticism by blanket-accusing them of living in "an echo chamber" (and missing the irony of doing so on HN), without providing a shred of evidence.

It's a wonderful mental trick to convince yourself you're right without fact-checking yourself, not to mention dismiss any field of expertise that you disagree with, but it doesn't actually prove anything.

Well, I think you're trying to dismiss defenders of Diamond by saying "those people aren't published 'experts' in the field."

Which is, as you said, "a wonderful mental trick to convince yourself you're right without fact-checking yourself." They're not in our club, so they don't count.

What’s the “proper background” to comment on a pop anthropology book?

Anthropologist, historian, geography. Take your pick. There's ton's of specialties involved and he has received criticism from all angles.

It's a very inspiring and interesting book. And it causes a lot of discussion, that alone was(?) usually enough to get a lot of recommendations for reading. Academically, we must of course read it before we can criticise it.