Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries discussion thread.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Berzerker

Were we talking about intelligence?

The difference is a dumb or weak person can survive in a desireable place much longer than in an undesireable one. hence, after many generations of selection, you would be less likely to expect dullards to have been able to pass their genes along people living in harsh conditions than those living in easy conditions.

[Theben]

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the premise of what Diamond has to say. I just never liked his interjecting opinion into the essay- really leaves him open to criticism.

Btw plenty of people get hit or almost get hit by autos all the time- you think a bushman who's disoriented by his new, unfamiliar surroundings doesn't stand a good chance of getting run down? How about shot by a grocer when he 'steals' some food? And even tho NYC has a lot of food, how's he going to access it without money?

[MrFun]

He can access food at a shelter where they feed homeless people.

[Theben]

How would he know of it without assistance?

[Berzerker]

And yet that's not true. New York's more temperate weather, gretaer supply of fresh water, and much greater availability of food make is a much simpler place to live than the horribly arrid Khalahari, a place tough on any life.

Correct, it doesn't take as much intelligence to survive in NYC except for the fact there are people and the Bushman will have to adapt to their system - and its the system that is much more complicated.

And Diamond's point about intelliegence is based on simply on natural selection.

A similar argument - American blacks - was made by Roy Campanis (or some guy in the LA Dodger main office) to explain black dominance of sports but not the key management positions. They were genetically chosen via slavery for brawn, not brains. I think Diamond is just so used to western culture he takes it for granted when making comparisons.

New Guinea isn't exactly that demanding, at least westerners had Indians, bears and wolves chasing them around when they showed up here. Nice climate in New Guinea, lots of easy fishing. Does he document widespread eugenics? I doubt New Guineans were in the practice of killing off less smart people. That isn't the same as allowing the infirm to die off in hard times.

[Berzerker]

The difference is a dumb or weak person can survive in a desireable place much longer than in an undesireable one. hence, after many generations of selection, you would be less likely to expect dullards to have been able to pass their genes along people living in harsh conditions than those living in easy conditions.

But those harsh conditions bring with it limits on intelligence, reduced gene flow is just one. And I doubt Diamond observed eugenics, the weak and infirm are the first to go in any species when times get severe. But while no weak or infirm person can be said to be physically fit, they may be smart nonetheless. So which is being selected - brawn or brains?

[Mr. Harley]

There appears to be some confusion, in that some posters here and the documentarian are mixing up technological cognitive thought with the survival skills necessary to survive in an extreme environment. Quickness and immediacy of reaction to threats, a capacity for immediate violence when faced with the appropriate threat, an utter awareness of the senses including not just sight but smell, hearing, taste, and touch, etc. will be selected for in an extreme environment like the Kalahari, parts of the western coastal deserts of Chile, and parts of Australia.

Those traits may well have nothing to do with the intellectual ability to engage in higher mathematical reasoning or writing skills (though the verbal skills may be much better - all traditions are passed on via those), that would take a neurobiologist and modern PET scanning to see if there is a relationship. Einstein's generally inattentive, inner focused mind would have gotten him killed rapidly in the Kalahari, even with support.

More germane is that those extreme environments do nothing for disease resistance. Large cities can be pestholes, and without modern medicine can actually have negative internal population growth (they rely on immigration to support their numbers - NYC until the 20th century is one of the most notorious examples). And in fact it has been the disease resistance issue that has so often been the bane of peoples living in extreme environments that support smaller populations, ones too small to maintain a reservoir of infection, i.e like measles. Thus every new exposure starts a killing cycle again, unlike the larger cities where eventually resistance is bred for. That was even a problem in the Civil War, with soldiers from small agricultural towns being significantly less resistant to disease than their urban compatriots, even though the farm boys were bigger and stronger. Yet those farm boys died in substantially greater numbers from disease, especially during their initial months of deployment.

[Ecthy]

After seeing it mentioned hundreds of times on this place, I once decided to acquire GGS. It's in my bookshelf now, too, yet I never completely read it.

Soon after I started reading I was bored by how he repeats himself over and over again, at least that was my impression from the first third of the book. The thesis itself was rather exciting, I shall have a detailed look at the discussion of you guys here.

[Sikander]

It's a shame that Diamond decided to approach these questions from the position of advocating for a particular point of view rather than a more scientific method of asking good questions and providing possible answers. When he sticks closely to science he's pretty interesting and often has good pertinent points. When he strays into opinion or
human social systems he more often wastes my time and makes himself look foolish. His book has been influential, but it's really hard to take it all that seriously otherwise.

[Drake Tungsten]

China is a relatively flat- a conqueror can, with sufficient power, easily come to control the entire land of China.

[VetLegion]

China is not flat. But does have a "smooth" coastline compared to Europe.

http://www.riseofthewest.net/dc/dc249nature.htm

Figure 1 Sketch maps of Europe and China. Europe's coastline is much more indented and includes more peninsulas; the continent also has internal mountain chains, such as the Pyrenees, Alps and Carpathians, and two large islands. Graeme Lang argues1,2 that it is this comparative geographical fragmentation in Europe that resulted in the persistence of many independent states, as compared with the long-standing political unity of China. Competition between states, he proposes, permitted and fuelled the wave of scientific and technological innovation that began in Europe from the mid-fifteenth century AD. Scale bars are 500 miles.

[Drake Tungsten]

That map of China is missing a lot of mountains.

[Dis]

Re: Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries discussion thread.

Originally posted by JohnT
In case y'all don't know, there's a GGS miniseries starting tonight at 10:00pm (EST), continuing tomorrow and Wednesday.

Tonights episode is about New Guinea - I hope Mr. Diamond goes further into what he was saying in the prologue, about NGers being genetically smarter than Westerners (though theories based upon race are bad, bad! )

grr, you could have gave me more advanced warning.

I would have liked to seen it. Is it repeated anytime?

[VetLegion]

More importantly, is there a torrent I can download?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
That map of China is missing a lot of mountains.

And yet none of those ranges in the eastern parts, the heavily cultivated and populated parts, are really high enough to be too great an obstacle for conquest, otherwise it would not have been possible to have a united China so early and for so long.

And for you, here is a map with topographical reliefs: