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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Can you recommend some kind of a summarized version of his argument, that does not misrepresent him? "Carefully argued" doesn't do much for me. It's not hard to argue for something carefully, and the result being something that should never have been taken seriously to begin with. Guns, Germs, and Steel would be a good example.

I read it many years ago, but this seems to be pretty good: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-End-of-History-and-the-Last-Man/plot-summary/

I am curious why you see Guns, Germs and Steel as something not to be taken seriously.

Note, that to me, "not to be taken seriously" implies that it can be summarily disregarded, whereas something that is carefully (and thoroughly, I should have included that as well) might be wrong, but cannot be dismissed, even if it wrong; it must be engaged with. Of course, there are some exceptions, such as works based on clearly erroneous factual premises, but that does not seem to me to describe either Guns, Germs and Steel or The End of History.

I read it many years ago, but this seems to be pretty good: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/The-End-of-History-and-the-Last-Man/plot-summary/

Thanks!

Note, that to me, "not to be taken seriously" implies that it can be summarily disregarded, whereas something that is carefully (and thoroughly, I should have included that as well) might be wrong, but cannot be dismissed, even if it wrong; it must be engaged with.

I disagree, this sort of approach is easily hackable by mining scholarly works for whatever data suits your idea and shaping it into a narrative that is trendy with the current zeitgeist, thus ensuring few people will be interested in challenging you to begin with, and the remainder is too intimidated by the sheer magnitude and obscurity of the material you've dug out.

Massive Theories of Nearly Everything belong in the same category as musing of your local pub philosopher until they withstand the test of time, and many challenges from opponents.

You might ask how are you supposed to challenge something without taking it seriously, but at least half of what I meant by "taking seriously" would be something more like "putting on a pedestal". When 4channers were freaking out about what's going on in Wuhan circa 2019, while all the experts were asleep, no one was taking them seriously. You could still engage with their arguments though.

but that does not seem to me to describe either Guns, Germs and Steel

Didn't it spend pages upon pages talking about how lucky Europeans were because they started off with caloric and easy to cultivate crops, and easily tamable animals, only for it to turn out that ancient European plants/animals were about as useful to humans as those anywhere else, and what the authors were comparing were products of generations of artificial selection to wild plants/animals?

I disagree, this sort of approach is easily hackable by mining scholarly works for whatever data suits your idea, shaping it into a narrative that is trendy with the current zeitgeist, thus ensuring few people will be interested in challenging you to begin with, and the remainder is too intimidated by the sheer magnitude and obscurity of the material you've dug out.

Yes, but isn't that a claim that the argument might be wrong, rather than a claim that they must be wrong? It seems to me to be an argument for skepticism, rather than an argument for dismissal out of hand.

Didn't it spend pages upon pages talking about how lucky Europeans were because they started off with caloric and easy to cultivate crops, and easily tamable animals, only for it to turn out that ancient European plants/animals were about as useful to humans as those anywhere else, and what the authors were comparing were products of generations of artificial selection to wild plants/animals?

  1. As a possibly non-relevant aside, the book is about why Eurasia developed more quickly than elsewhere, rather than Europe.

  2. Glancing at my copy of the book, he says: "Experimental studies in which botanists have collected seeds from such natural stands of wild [fertile crescent] cereals, much as as hunter-gatherers must have been doing over 10,000 years ago, show that annual harvests of up to nearly a ton of seeds per hectare can be obtained[.] ... [In contrast,] [c]orn's probable ancestor, a wild plant known as teosinte, ... was less productive in the wild than wild wheat . . ." So he certainly at least tried to compare like with like. In addition, that is only one of three advantages he claims that Eurasian cereal plants had over wild plants elsewhere; the others, he argues, are that they are annuals, and that most are plants that "usually pollinate themselves but are occasionally self-pollinated." I don't know whether either of those attributes can be changed via artificial selection. Re animals, he notes that only 14 of the world's large (100lbs+) herbivorous animals were ever domesticated (including only 13 of 72 in Eurasia) and notes that even modern efforts to domesticate large wild animals other than the "ancient fourteen" that were domesticated failed, and makes arguments why so few have been domesticated.

  3. Most importantly, that is an argument that Diamond is wrong, or that that he overstates his case. But it is not an argument that "no one ever should have taken him seriously," and I note that on the Wikipedia page on the book, Joel Mokyr is cited as saying that "Diamond's view that Eurasia succeeded largely because of a uniquely large stock of domesticable plants is flawed because of the possibility of crop manipulation and selection in the plants of other regions, the drawbacks of an indigenous plant such as sumpweed could have been bred out, Mokyr wrote, since 'all domesticated plants had originally undesirable characteristics' eliminated via 'deliberate and lucky selection mechanisms'", which sounds like the criticism you are citing.* But he is also quoted as saying that the book is "one of the more important contributions to long-term economic history and is simply mandatory to anyone who purports to engage Big Questions in the area of long-term global history". And I will say that one of the strengths of the book is that is explicitly states the assumptions behind its arguments, repeatedly refers to possible weaknesses in supporting evidence, and also repeatedly suggests avenues for future research which might undermine some of its claims.

  • But I note that, re teosinte, Diamond's argument is not that such changes were impossible -- they obviously weren't -- but that they took a very long time (at p. 137), which helps explain why development in the Americas lagged behind development in Eurasia (and, of course, it is the lag that he seeks to explain).

I understand your objection, but I think Diamond's book is one of those that taken as how he states it fits into the not even wrong category. You read the book, and it all sounds very science-y and convincing. But then you think about it again and it occurs to you that, hmm wait a minute, how can you even suppose to think about what a "wild" pig, chicken, horse etc actually is? The fact is the ostensibly wild populations of these things are hopelessly interbred with escaped chickens and horses from the early and current selectively bred populations, and its not easily done determinable when breeding really started.

Then you did down into things like his zebra arguments, and they are just obviously rubbish because there are multiple instances of Europeans going to Africa in the 1800s and early 1900s and remarking on how easy to break zebras are, and it seems his zebra-horse comparison is actually like 180 degrees from what actually was the difficulty level. And then you have to think to yourself, "huh, if he got this super easy thing so wrong, how much else is just him spinning nonsense?" And then even small inquiries indicate yes. And your logical conclusion is delving into the rest is simply a massive waste of time and energy.

Then you did down into things like his zebra arguments, and they are just obviously rubbish because there are multiple instances of Europeans going to Africa in the 1800s and early 1900s and remarking on how easy to break zebras are,

But, breaking an animal is not the same as domesticating an animal. As noted on page 159: "Elephants have been tamed, but never domesticated. Hannibal's elephants were, and Asian work elephants are, just wild elephants that were captured and tamed; they were not bred in captivity. In contrast, a domesticated animal is defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal's breeding and food supply."

And of course to this day zebras have not been domesticated.

Why are you ignoring the rest of the definition of "domesticate"? And, your very source s headlined, "Zebra breeding tough" and says "The striped equines are still wild animals at heart." And here is an article about that guy from 2021 which says, "Unlike Watusis, which have been domesticated for thousands of years, zebras are still very feral."