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Notes -
Not-so-small scale question but this is probably the only place I can get an informed answer on this not constrained by political correctness: what’s your overarching theory of why Western Europe and its descendants are the world’s most influential civilization of the past few centuries?
For reference: https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1434803410902167552
I think a couple different things factor into it. The most important aspect is that European languages use an alphabet with discrete letters, which is relatively uncommon compared to languages like Chinese that use glyphs, or Arabic that uses cursive. This means that Europeans have the easiest time using printing presses, which are required for speedy scientific advancement. Human scientific knowledge exploded shortly after the invention of the printing press. In 1450, things weren't vastly more impressive than a lot of things you'd find in like 50 BCE. There were definitely some new inventions, and gun powder weapons changed up warfare a lot, but really things weren't too different considering 1500 years had passed. Then over the next couple hundred years, before you even get to the industrial revolution, you had people like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Leonardo da Vinci, etc. Hell this [https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/scientists-at-a-glance/627228](list of greatest ever scientists) I looked up to give myself a few more examples has ends "ancient times" at the 1500s; something clearly happened to speed up science and I think it's obviously the printing press. And that scientific advantage let them achieve the industrial revolution and dominate everywhere in the 1800s.
Secondly, for why the West in particular is most influential than say Russia, I think it is just that the West, being the in the west, was able to colonize the Americas more easily. Obviously the Americas will be strongly influenced by the countries that colonized them. Then doubling up on that, Eastern Europe and then China basically crippled itself when it "chose" communism in the 20th century, communism with the benefit of hindsight being just an objectively worse system than capitalism.
HBD stuff may play into it too, but honestly I think some aliens could've dropped into aboriginal Australia in the 1200s and gene edited every human to have 20 extra IQ points and things wouldn't be too vastly different today in terms of geopolitics if they weren't able to have a discrete alphabet and printing press.
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