Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries discussion thread.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Berzerker


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.

While complicated, its not dangerous. The state makes sure to keep murder relatively low compared to the high murder rates among very primative groups.

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.

That was not natural selection, but human-guided selection. There is a difference, a big difference.

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.

What are you talking about? Living in jungles is extremely demanding- lots of things to kill you, and its very hard to find food.

Juts look at New Guineans- you don;t really see any fat, contended ones, or you didn;t in the show among those still caryring out subsistance farming.

[GePap]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
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.

Oh, I agree that this is the correct way to challenge Diamond's claim that these people are "more intelligent", such a statement being based on your definition of "intelliegence".

But honestly, Eisntein is never a good example of anything, being so relatively out of the curve. Also, did Einstein have many kids?

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.

Diamond does go into that- that being the "Germs" part of Germs, Guns, and Steel.

[lord of the mark]

i read the book, but am not following the miniseries.

The part on smart new guineans was short, and was one of the weaker parts of the book. The notion that New Guineans are more intelligent cause of Darwinian selection - that would imply that the period in which there is no survival advantage to intelligence in the West is long enough to allow for significant genetic change, which is doubtful, IIUC. It would have been better to leave it at the fact that he knows plenty of smart of New Guineans, etc. and you dont need IQ differences to account for macrohistorical patterns.

Ditto, the part about post - bronze age macrohistory, at the end of the book, was short, and also not that strong. On China, Ray Huang wrote a pretty good macrohistory. Why europe didnt unite is not all that clear. Despite the mountains and valleys and all, and the resulting linguistic fragmentation, etc there was a considerable trend to territorial consolidation from the middle ages up to the late 16th century. Ultimately the Hapsburg drive for dominance was defeated less by terrain than by balance of power politics, and by a number of historical accidents (what if Spanish policy in the Netherlands had been more intelligent, what if the armada had been better managed, What if Queen Bess had been less competent, what if a series of assasinations in France goes differently, what if Wallenstein lives, etc). Of course this begs the question of why balance of power did not keep China from reuniting after being divided several times - but a real comparison to Europe would require a detailed analysis of those individual times, not a handwave and blanket assertion that its the terrain.

[Ramo]

Regarding China, Diamond's thesis addresses specifically the rise and spread of civilization. Not the industrial revolution, etc. There are other factors involved in differences between East and West, but Diamond specifically didn't make any comprehensive analysis of them in GG&S. The last chapter was more or less a throwaway, but some of the ideas are compelling, i.e. lack of internal and external competition among the Chinese, Mughals, etc. hampering innovation.

Regarding the difference between hunter-gatherers' and civilized peoples' intelligence, we've only been civilized for several thousand years. That's not the timescale for very much genetic drift in terms of intelligence. Furthermore, who's to say that h-g's are not (as of several thousand years ago) already optimally intelligent for their environment?

As for GG&S (the book), there are a bunch of interesting ideas, but it's very repetitive and badly written.

And lotm stole my post.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Theben
How would he know of it without assistance?

well, that's true

[GePap]

Diamond never talks about IQ, since I doubt anyone has ever gone around giving IQ test to Papuan New Guineans.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap
Diamond never talks about IQ, since I doubt anyone has ever gone around giving IQ test to Papuan New Guineans.

in the book he specifically mentions the Bell Curve, IIRC.

[GePap]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
in the book he specifically mentions the Bell Curve, IIRC.

Not in the passage JohnT quoted, which is were he talks about this issue. Besides, he is against the Bell Curve and its "message".

Beyond that, I don;t remember him endorsing IQ anyways, nor talking about IQ in the context of his New Guinean statements.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap


Not in the passage JohnT quoted, which is were he talks about this issue. Besides, he is against the Bell Curve and its "message".

Beyond that, I don;t remember him endorsing IQ anyways, nor talking about IQ in the context of his New Guinean statements.

alright, intelligence, rather than measured IQ, whatever.

Change my earlier to "you dont need intelligence differences to explain macrohistory"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ramo

As for GG&S (the book), there are a bunch of interesting ideas, but it's very repetitive and badly written.

And lotm stole my post.

I actually enjoyed the book - plenty of cool stuff about plant and animal domestication, linguistics, Madagascar, etc, etc - he brings stuff together and synthesizes well.

Though he is apparently wrong on a number of specifics - in particular he accepts the Renfrew hypothesis on the expansion of Indo European.

[JohnT]

I'm surprised that, over 80 years after physics got rid of determinism, that so many people want to work determinism into the social sciences, which are just as chaotic as physics.

[GePap]

And yet Diamond has at least given a comprehensive answer to that simple question- "why do the white men have more cargo".

I have seen no other coherent theories put up lately, specially any based on such ever changing things as "cultural" values.

[GePap]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


alright, intelligence, rather than measured IQ, whatever.

Change my earlier to "you dont need intelligence differences to explain macrohistory"

That's what Diamond states: Even though his beliefe if that the Papua New Guineans are as smart as anyone (or possibnly smarter than whites) they sure aren't rich and powerful. Hence intelligence has nothing to do with it (hence the racists are wrong).

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GePap


That's what Diamond states: Even though his beliefe if that the Papua New Guineans are as smart as anyone (or possibnly smarter than whites) they sure aren't rich and powerful. Hence intelligence has nothing to do with it (hence the racists are wrong).

i think the first parenthetical is weak, though, and thats what all of you are focusing on. missing the point, I think.

[JohnT]

Not really. China is a relatively flat- a conqueror can, with sufficient power, easily come to control the entire land of China. Many people have done so. NO State has ever had complete control over the area of Europe- its terrain (lost of natural barriers) has made it difficult for any single government to take over the whole.

So? What does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

Here's the thing. If the Chinese Emperor had told Zheng He "Go East, young man!", followed by (as in the European example) the colonization of the "Americas" and the Sinocization of the world, their Diamond equivalent would be arguing that China really had no choice but to find herself on the forefront of global modernization because of her monolithic status, the "ability to command vast resources at her whim."* In fact, the Chinese Diamond would argue that Europe couldn't have done it because the mountain ranges made political Europe "too fragmented", her resources "too poorly distributed" to allow any one of the nations to be at the forefront of modernization.

*That's an ironic quote, btw, which is different from an actual quote. Just FYI.