Guns, Germs, and Steel

[TCO]

Originally posted by Odin
GG&S is an excellent book. TCO needs to get over his "he complements the evil saavges, it must be motivated by the left blah, blah, blah."

I don't mind him complementing the evil savages. I have seen some results which showed very high IQ's for certain Amerind tribes. What I think is silly is to claim the NG superiority without evidence. It is simplistic to assume that distribution of intellignece is the same in different SORTs of primitive cultures.

[TCO]

It seems like he makes the statement more out of Odin-like frustration than any real evidence.

[TCO]

He wants it to be true, so it is. He is PC. Therefore, the Europeans need to be taken down a peg.

[TCO]

If I was really so Euro-centric racist, I would be pissed off about all the Chinese beating us on tests.

[Odin]

I was going to apoplogize to TCO untill I saw his "he is PC" rant.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Odin
Him being a conservative and a southerner makes it seems he has an ideological bone to pick.

So it's okay for you to make bigotted generalizations against a certain group (Southerners)?

Please. First, I don't think TCO has ever shown he's particularly conservative. Second, you should take his arguments for what they are and deal with the points he makes instead of attacking him for where he comes from. You'd think that being a progressive would clue you in as to how fallacious and weak such attacks are.

[TCO]

With you guys defending me so honorably and all, I am going to have to refrain from ad hominem attacks. I mean from flaming his cherry ass. Not used to this taking the high road.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's not all it's cracked up to be, bud .

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Odin


I am suspicious of the reasons he is dissing the book, it seems that he can't admit that us europeans are no better than anybody else. Him being a conservative and a southerner makes it seems he has an ideological bone to pick.

Let me ask you: Do you find anything bigoted in what you said?

[Elok]

Originally posted by Odin
GG&S is an excellent book. TCO needs to get over his "he complements the evil saavges, it must be motivated by the left blah, blah, blah."

He does not in any way complement the evil savages. So far as I can tell Diamond lives an entirely different lifestyle from the natives of New Guinea. They don't go together at all.
Coo-coo-ka-woo.

[TCO]

It's called "slumming"

[Ted Striker]

Take the low road Player it's alot more fun nowadays

[TCO]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Take the low road Player it's alot more fun nowadays

got the t-shirt.

[Ecthy]

TCO you've been multiposting.

[Ramo]

Don't have a problem with plausible arguments. He just overstates his thesis. Proving (giving him credit here) on factor does not disprove others.

I don't think he's saying that. I think that he's saying that his personal experience is that New Guineans tend to be smarter than Westerners, so factors other than ethnicity probably determine whether or not a society is capable of developing civilization. And the meat of the book explains what some of these factors might be.