Search Results for: diamond

I will reread and review Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel

If the price is right. Running a GoFundME for $1000. Paypal and bitcoin are also acceptable. The idea is not to joyfully take out the trash, as I did with Cordelia Fine’s Testosterone Rex, but to answer a book that … Continue reading

Posted in GGS, Uncategorized | 54 Comments

Diamond on domestication

Jared Diamond, in discussing animal domestication, claims that the local availability of species with the right qualities for domestication was key, rather than anything special about the biology or culture of the humans living there. In some cases that may … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 48 Comments

Unbelievers

Nathan Cofnas wrote a paper [ Science is not always “Self-Correcting” ] on how various scientists and philosophers choose or reject scientific theories about human intelligence. Not just quietly avoiding truths they don’t like, but explicitly saying that everyone should … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 157 Comments

Guns, Germs, and Steel revisited

Jared Diamond’s thesis, in Guns, Germs, and Steel, is that regional differences in civilizational achievement are entirely caused by biogeographical factors, while regional differences in ability have had no effect. It isn’t that he believes that there are no such … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews, GGS | 220 Comments

Not without honor

Jared Diamond spends a lot of time in GGS making excuses for groups that didn’t do much domestication of animals and plants. Sometimes the excuses are valid: farming was hard for Eskimos. Mostly they’re not: the wild ancestors of horses … Continue reading

Posted in GGS, Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Domesticated animals and human disease

Jared Diamond considered the disastrous impact of Eurasian and African diseases on the inhabitants of the New World, contrasted with a much smaller impact in the opposite direction, and concluded that a major factor had probably been transmission from domesticated … Continue reading

Posted in GGS | 54 Comments

Regional change

Jared Diamond thinks that people in different parts of the world can and have evolved in different directions, depending on local selective pressures. He thinks that people in Eurasia and Africa evolved resistance to various crowd and tropical diseases, and … Continue reading

Posted in GGS | 69 Comments

Psychometrics

Jared Diamond says ” Sound evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence that parallel human differences in technology is lacking.” In short, he dismisses the entire field of psychometrics. Doesn’t even bother to argue about it. The word … Continue reading

Posted in GGS, Uncategorized | 63 Comments

Something changed

Jared Diamond notes (p 161) that the wild ancestors of domesticated animals are spread unevenly – only two are in South America, while none come from North America, sub-Saharan Africa, or Australia. He then argues that only a few special … Continue reading

Posted in GGS, Uncategorized | 90 Comments

Persistence

Jared Diamond notices that early development of complex civilizations had ongoing consequences: peoples that developed such things way later or not at all continue to do poorly today, even if they encountered Western technology and technologists several hundred years ago. … Continue reading

Posted in GGS, Uncategorized | 65 Comments