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H.I. #56: Guns, Germs, and Steel (hellointernet.fm)

MindOfMetalAndWheels[GREY] が 1ヶ月前投稿

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[–]mmilosh 73ポイント74ポイント75ポイント 1ヶ月前* (80子コメント)

And the Guns, Germs, and Steel answer is that, because Eurasia, the whole of Eurasia, is more susceptible to human technological flourishing, let's say you should expect 80% of the time that the first to colonial technology, that happens in Eurasia. And maybe 10% of the time it happens in Africa, and like 5% of the time it happens in North America, and like 1% of the time it happens in Australia. Not that it could never happen, but it is just extraordinarily unlikely. And so that to me is the interesting thing; it is this theory of history.

This theory of geographical determinism is nothing new. It's been used in the 19th/20th century to justify imperialism and colonialism and fell out of academic discourse after the 1920s or so. Now that's not what JD is trying to do but the fundamental problem is that the arguments he makes for his particular brand of geographical determinism have been thoroughly debunked.

The way I understand it, culture and technology are understood to be (partly) the result of human decisions of how to overcome geographical limitations or take advantage of geographical advantages, not something that is determined by it.

For someone who essentially doesn't think people have free will (and thus they can't really make decisions), it's no small wonder that Grey doesn't get why historians are so very strongly against JD's idea.

There's absolutely nothing that tells us that if we started the whole thing all over again with the same geography, that things couldn't have been completely different.

And so in many ways, like, I agree with tonnes of the criticism about the particulars in the book, and tonnes of the details that Jared Diamond gets wrong, because Jared Diamond is not a professional historian, he's an ecologist.

I've seen this sort of response many times on the internet, usually when dealing with Dan Carlin and Jared Diamond fans. 'Well he's not a historian' is not really a defense if you're trying to present history. If I wrote a new theory of physics and got all the formulas wrong and none of my evidence held up to scrutiny you wouldn't say 'oh well he's not a physicist'. You'd say 'look at that crackpot'.

But then a historian wants to argue with me about why was it Spain who was the first to Meso-America, and why did Spain lose their lead to the United Kingdom. And my view is always okay, but that's too small. We want to talk about continent levels here, not particular countries. This is not meant to tell you why a particular country came about. It's only here to give you an estimation that people on a particular continent will be the ones to colonise the world. That's my view of this book.

If you're making an argument that the spread of plagues from the Old World to the New World was a huge deal in how the history of colonization of South America turned out, you can't then not want to get into the details of how it actually happened. It's the legs of the argument that Americapox stands on.

EDIT: clarification

[–]MindOfMetalAndWheels[GREY][S] 79ポイント80ポイント81ポイント 1ヶ月前 (60子コメント)

The way I understand it, culture and technology are understood to be (partly) the result of human decisions of how to overcome geographical limitations or take advantage of geographical advantages, not something that is determined by it. For someone who essentially doesn't think people have free will (and thus they can't really make decisions), it's no small wonder that Grey doesn't get why historians are so very strongly against JD's idea. There's absolutely nothing that tells us that if we started the whole thing all over again with the same geography, that things couldn't have been completely different.

I really wanted to bring up culture / free will on the podcast but the conversation didn't end up going that way. Your points are the next steps in the conversation whenever I talk with / see arguments about GG&S. Here are the questions I never get satisfying answers to:

I don't believe in free will, but let's grant for the sake of argument that it exists. Humans don't have the ability to choose from unlimited options. Desert nomads can't decide to become an agrarian society unless the resources are available in their environment. Does the current stance of history concede that human decisions are constrained by environment?
If so then doesn't it follow that some environments present more options for societies to choose a path of technological development? And thus humans living in those locations are more likely to end up in technological advancing societies with options for empire?
If not the above, is the conclusion that a Theory of History is a fundamentally impossible task? (Some historians seem to say yes: that the best we can ever do is keep a detailed log book of everything that happened everywhere and there is zero predictability -- implying that there is nothing in the past that can predict the future better than random guessing.)
If a Theory of History is impossible, is the current stance of history that if we rewind the clock to 10,000BC that Eskimos and Aborigines were just as likely to build world-conquering civilizations as Eurasians were they only to choose to?

[–]mmilosh 71ポイント72ポイント73ポイント 1ヶ月前* (56子コメント)

I don't believe in free will, but let's grant for the sake of argument that it exists. Humans don't have the ability to choose from unlimited options. Desert nomads can't decide to become an agrarian society unless the resources are available in their environment. Does the current stance of history concede that human decisions are constrained by environment?

Affected by the environment - yes, determined by it - no. People living in the desert can't just decide to become an agrarian society, but it's not like this is the only way. This is an example I keep bringing up all the time, but Palmyra built a prosperous society with distinct art and architecture, and all the things that in Western imagination are typically associated with civilization - wealth, monuments, colonies. They were in the middle of the desert.

Or lets take the Mongols. They held the largest land empire in the world for a time, and the steppes are not what one normally thinks of when you say geographical advantage that leads to a development of an agrarian society.

If so then doesn't it follow that some environments present more options for societies to choose a path of technological development? And thus humans living in those locations are more likely to end up in technological advancing societies with options for empire?

There is no one path of technological development nor a 'tech tree'. Tenochtitlan was one of the biggest cities of the world at the time when the Spanish arrived, and they also had an empire of their own. In a general sense, people through history were perfectly capable of using gunpowder and rifles when they got hold of them. Gunpowder wasn't a European invention, after all.

The point is, conquest of the Americas by the Europeans was not in any way inevitable. Many conquistadors failed where Cortes succeeded. That conquest was a result of a very specific set of circumstances, not geographical determinism. That's why people are getting in all those very specific arguments rather than talking about the continental big picture.

If not the above, is the conclusion that a Theory of History is a fundamentally impossible task? (Some historians seem to say yes: that the best we can ever do is keep a detailed log book of everything that happened everywhere and there is zero predictability -- implying that there is nothing in the past that can predict the future better than random guessing.)

I don't know if it's impossible. I fell in love with the idea of psychohistory by Asimov way back in high school, but I have yet to see any sort of 'historical law' that holds up on a large scale and for a very long time. Human societies and interactions between them are complex and devising a system that could accurately predict human behavior might require a system that's even more complex than the system you're trying to describe.

If a Theory of History is impossible, is the current stance of history that if we rewind the clock to 10,000BC that Eskimos and Aborigines were just as likely to build world-conquering civilizations as Eurasians were they only to choose to?

Historians don't like what-ifs. :)

To your question, I don't see the Inuits building a world conquering empire, but I don't see that as a sort of measure of their success. They have adapted to their environment and survived for thousands of years in a place I wouldn't visit as a tourist.

They could have made very bad choices over the centuries and not survived, though.

EDIT: fixed error

[–]MindOfMetalAndWheels[GREY][S] 75ポイント76ポイント77ポイント 1ヶ月前* (28子コメント)

I don't believe in free will, but let's grant for the sake of argument that it exists. Humans don't have the ability to choose from unlimited options. Desert nomads can't decide to become an agrarian society unless the resources are available in their environment. Does the current stance of history concede that human decisions are constrained by environment?

Affected by the environment - yes, determined by it - no. People living in the desert can't just decide to become an agrarian society, but it's not like this is the only way. This is an example I keep bringing up all the time, but Palmyra built a prosperous society with distinct art and architecture, and all the things that in Western imagination are typically associated with civilization - wealth, monuments, colonies. They were in the middle of the desert.

Or lets take the Mongols. They held the largest land empire in the world for a time, and the steppes are not what one normally thinks of when you say geographical advantage that leads to a development of an agrarian society.

Just to be clear: no one, not Diamond, not me, not anyone I've seen defending Diamond is arguing for determinism. That is the infuriating self-constructed totem for historians in this argument.

If humans are affected by the environment then we can say that not all humans everywhere are equally likely to make the same decisions because the environment is different. So some groups of early humans are more likely to do things that will eventually lead to greater technological development than other groups of humans.

I feel like this argument is me trying to say: 'throwing a pair of six-sided dice is more likely to get a seven than a twelve. And historians reply by saying: "look at all these twelves I rolled!". Yes, but what percentage of the total are those twelves?

If so then doesn't it follow that some environments present more options for societies to choose a path of technological development? And thus humans living in those locations are more likely to end up in technological advancing societies with options for empire?

There is no one path of technological development nor a 'tech tree'. Tenochtitlan was one of the biggest cities of the world at the time when the Spanish arrived, and they also had an empire of their own. In a general sense, people through history were perfectly capable of using gunpowder and rifles when they got hold of them. Gunpowder wasn't a European invention, after all.

The point is, conquest of the Americas by the Europeans was not in any way inevitable. Many conquistadors failed where Cortes succeeded. That conquest was a result of a very specific set of circumstances, not geographical determinism. That's why people are getting in all those very specific arguments rather than talking about the continental big picture.

There is resistance to the tech tree metaphor from historical quarters that I have a hard time understanding. Perhaps a 'tech web' (like that awful one from Civilization: Beyond Earth is better, but the development of guns requires not only gunpowder (which is possible to make without a huge amount of tech) but also precision metal working which is much harder.

No matter how you slice it, no one jumps from stone tools to semi-conductors.

As for the conquest of the Americas being inevitable, I too would agree that is incorrect and too strong a claim. But if at the time of first contact, you had to wager your life on who would win that conflict I think you, and everyone else, in your heart of hearts would wager on the guys with the guns and the horses and the ocean-crossing ships and not on the very large, but still largely agrarian society, without war animals, iron armor, or wheels.

If not the above, is the conclusion that a Theory of History is a fundamentally impossible task? (Some historians seem to say yes: that the best we can ever do is keep a detailed log book of everything that happened everywhere and there is zero predictability -- implying that there is nothing in the past that can predict the future better than random guessing.)

I don't know if it's impossible. I fell in love with the idea of psychohistory by Asimov way back in high school, but I have yet to see any sort of 'historical law' that holds up on a large scale and for a very long time. Human societies and interactions between them are complex and devising a system that could accurately predict human behavior might require a system that's even more complex than the system you're trying to describe.

I completely agree with the last sentence of your second paragraph given the phrase 'accurately predict'. I literally think the Theory of History in GG&S makes no stronger claim than: "Eurasia (all of freaking Eurasia) was more likely than other places to develop societies interested in, and able to execute, Empires." That's not a very precise claim, but it's still better than: all of history is unpredictable.

If a Theory of History is impossible, is the current stance of history that if we rewind the clock to 10,000BC that Eskimos and Aborigines were just as likely to build world-conquering civilizations as Eurasians were they only to choose to?

Historians don't like what-ifs. :)

To your question, I don't see the Inuits building a world conquering empire, but I don't see that as a sort of measure of their success. They have adapted to their environment and survived for thousands of years in a place I wouldn't visit as a tourist.

They could have made very bad choices over the centuries and not survived, though.

I understand that historians don't like what-ifs. By asking about people struggling to survive at the absolute ends of the Earth I'm trying to get to the heart of the matter: do you think it's less likely that people living on a sheet of ice in 10,000BC will be the ones that conquer the world?

If you'll concede that one group of humans anywhere on the face of the Earth is less likely to do something because of their environment then that's all we need to start Moneyballing history.

[–]mmilosh 67ポイント68ポイント69ポイント 1ヶ月前 (13子コメント)

Just to be clear: no one, not Diamond, not me, not anyone I've seen defending Diamond is arguing for determinism. That is the infuriating self-constructed totem for historians in this argument.

You've argued in your Americapox video that (I'm paraphrasing): Domesticated animals in the Old World lead to bigger population density that lead to urbanization and plagues and the lack of domesticated animals in the New World lead to less domesticated animals and less population density and no plagues. Not to get into the specific problems with that argument (plagues coming from domestic animals, plagues wiping out the New World), your conclusion is very deterministic:

"The game of civilization has nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the map."

If humans are affected by the environment then we can say that not all humans everywhere are equally likely to make the same decisions because the environment is different. So some groups of early humans are more likely to do things that will eventually lead to greater technological development than other groups of humans.

I'm not arguing against the idea that geography has an effect on development of human societies.

Each society developed technologies to overcome their own specific geographical limitations. For instance, Incas dug terrace farms into the side of the mountain, and while they didn't have domesticated animals to pull their plows, they constructed tools like the human-powered foot plow and they built a road system to distribute crops. It's quite a complex agricultural system by any standard.

You could also look at the Maya and Yoruba. Yoruba used extensive iron implements including sharp machetes, and yet Maya were able to cultivate tropical forest environments far more intensively. Not to drag this point on much further but it doesn't automatically follow that the rise of early civilizations is closely linked with better quality of farming implements.

Once we get to development of smelting which allows mass production of farming tools then factors like iron and farm animals to pull the ploughs, come into play to a much larger extent to increase the agricultural output of societies that have access to them.

That doesn't really mean that these societies and cultures were doomed to fail and be destroyed by invasion. But we'll get to that in a minute.

I feel like this argument is me trying to say: 'throwing a pair of six-sided dice is more likely to get a seven than a twelve. And historians reply by saying: "look at all these twelves I rolled!". Yes, but what percentage of the total are those twelves?

If you're saying that certain geographical features give advantages to the people who live there, I'm not arguing against that.

There is resistance to the tech tree metaphor from historical quarters that I have a hard time understanding. Perhaps a 'tech web' (like that awful one from Civilization: Beyond Earth is better, but the development of guns requires not only gunpowder (which is possible to make without a huge amount of tech) but also precision metal working which is much harder.

Well, 'tech tree' is resisted because it isn't considered to be a good model for what happened in reality. History of technological development is not my expertise, so I'll have to leave it at that. I'm reluctant to give a half baked explanation because my inbox is already on fire for posting in this thread.

As for the conquest of the Americas being inevitable, I too would agree that is incorrect and too strong a claim. But if at the time of first contact, you had to wager your life on who would win that conflict I think you, and everyone else, in your heart of hearts would wager on the guys with the guns and the horses and the ocean-crossing ships and not on the very large, but still largely agrarian society, without war animals, iron armor, or wheels.

/u/anthropology_nerd did a much better job than I ever could do in his 'Myths of Conquest' series of posts on /r/badhistory. The relevant one for this is here. If you search that subreddit for 'Myths of Conquest', all of them should show up.

In short, Cortes arrived in the middle of a civil war. Many expeditions like his failed before, and his success wasn't a foregone conclusion (he was fortunate to cheat death many times) nor due to the technological advantage. The army that destroyed the Triple Alliance capital was mostly native.

In the long run, European conquest of the Americas wasn't a foregone conclusion. Launching a continental invasion against a united empire on their native terrain, supplying enough food, gunpowder, animal feed to supply it using sailboats, and dealing with all the tropical diseases? It took the Spanish centuries to accomplish what they did, things being as they are, I wouldn't be quick to jump to conclusions what would have happened otherwise. These guys were playing the game of Empires themselves, and the population didn't just roll over for the Spanish even after that initial enormous success.

In one alternate reality the Europeans might have figured that trading guns and metals and horses for all that gold was more profitable than launching one failed expedition after another. Who knows.

I completely agree with the last sentence of your second paragraph given the phrase 'accurately predict'. I literally think the Theory of History in GG&S makes no stronger claim than: "Eurasia (all of freaking Eurasia) was more likely than other places to develop societies interested in, and able to execute, Empires." That's not a very precise claim, but it's still better than: all of history is unpredictable. I completely agree with the last sentence of your second paragraph given the phrase 'accurately predict'. I literally think the Theory of History in GG&S makes no stronger claim than: "Eurasia (all of freaking Eurasia) was more likely than other places to develop societies interested in, and able to execute, Empires." That's not a very precise claim, but it's still better than: all of history is unpredictable.

It's hard to argue the what-ifs. We have no way of testing it one way or another.

Not knowing any history, if I gave you a full description of geography of villages in Europe in 700 BC, what would it take to predict which one would conquer Europe? Would that be even possible?

If I showed you the Mongol tribes living on the steppes, not knowing any history, what would make you say 'yes, these guys seem to be living in just the right sort of environment to conquer the largest contiguous empire in history. Look at all this potential.'

History just seems to be completely unpredictable and chaotic. Freak accidents happen all the time. Mongol armies get wiped out by typhoons while invading Japan, not once, but twice in eight years or so. Those types of freak accidents had a huge impact on history, and they happened all the freaking time.

When it comes to people changing their course of history, Japan completely overhauled their feudal system, threw out the 250 year old foreign policy book of isolation, and started industrializing in record time after the Americans showed up in gunboats. It was the most impressive overhaul of society in a short amount of time I know of, and relatively bloodless by the standards of European revolutions. There are many counter examples in history where people stuck to their own ways despite changing circumstances. Why did the Japanese choose this course of action and others throughout history didn't? It's complicated, and the more you get into it, the more it gets into the specifics of their particular situation and broad generalizations like 'X and Y have more chance of doing Z because geography' make less and less sense and like after-the-fact observations.

I understand that historians don't like what-ifs. By asking about people struggling to survive at the absolute ends of the Earth I'm trying to get to the heart of the matter: do you think it's less likely that people living on a sheet of ice in 10,000BC will be the ones that conquer the world?

Why is conquering the world a measure of one's historical success?

If you'll concede that one group of humans anywhere on the face of the Earth is less likely to do something because of their environment then that's all we need to start Moneyballing history.

This isn't something I've ever disputed. Geography has an effect on development of society. But there's too much general chaos to even call it a decisive factor. There's people everywhere making it messy with their free will and decisions. :>

[–]MindOfMetalAndWheels[GREY][S] 27ポイント28ポイント29ポイント 1ヶ月前* (7子コメント)

Apologies for not quoting all comments in full. Curse your character limit, reddit!

Just to be clear: no one, not Diamond, not me, not anyone I've seen defending Diamond is arguing for determinism. That is the infuriating self-constructed totem for historians in this argument.

You've argued in your Americapox video that [...] Domesticated animals in the Old World lead to bigger population density that lead to urbanization and plagues and the lack of domesticated animals in the New World lead to less domesticated animals and less population density and no plagues. [...] , your conclusion is very deterministic: "The game of civilization has nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the map."

Determinism is not a claim that statement makes. I think historians want to hear their opponents arguing for determinism because it's an easy claim to shoot down. I think you can make a statistical prediction about where empires will appear based on continents not people. That's why the game of civilization has everything to do with the map.

If humans are affected by the environment then we can say that not all humans everywhere are equally likely to make the same decisions because the environment is different. So some groups of early humans are more likely to do things that will eventually lead to greater technological development than other groups of humans.

I'm not arguing against the idea that geography has an effect on development of human societies.

Let's come back this below...

Each society developed technologies to overcome their own specific geographical limitations. For instance, Incas dug terrace farms into the side of the mountain, and while they didn't have domesticated animals to pull their plows, they constructed tools like the human-powered foot plow and they built a road system to distribute crops. It's quite a complex agricultural system by any standard.

Agreed. Different places have different problems to overcome.

You could also look at the Maya and Yoruba. Yoruba used extensive iron implements including sharp machetes, and yet Maya were able to cultivate tropical forest environments far more intensively. [...] it doesn't automatically follow that the rise of early civilizations is closely linked with better quality of farming implements.

Intensity of cultivation is not the same thing as efficiency of cultivation. But again, I agree: different societies make tools specific to their situation.

Once we get to development of smelting which allows mass production of farming tools then factors like iron and farm animals to pull the ploughs, come into play to a much larger extent to increase the agricultural output of societies that have access to them. That doesn't really mean that these societies and cultures were doomed to fail [...]

You don't need mass production and iron to make use of domesticated animals. An Ard (a pre-plow) can be made out of wood. Lots of animals can produce food without needing iron.

Again, please stop using worlds like 'doomed' that imply inevitability I don't claim.

I feel like this argument is me trying to say: 'throwing a pair of six-sided dice is more likely to get a seven than a twelve. And historians reply "look at all these twelves I rolled!". [...]

If you're saying that certain geographical features give advantages to the people who live there, I'm not arguing against that.

Good. Would you not also agree that certain advantages are in favor of developing Empire-like civilizations? Agrarian societies? That some features favor hunter gatherers? If you don't agree, then what do you mean by advantages?

Let's come back to this.

As for the conquest of the Americas being inevitable, I too would agree that is incorrect and too strong a claim. But if at the time of first contact, you had to wager your life on who would win that conflict I think you, and everyone else, in your heart of hearts would wager on the guys with the guns [...].

/u/anthropology_nerd did a much better job than I ever could do in his 'Myths of Conquest' series of posts on /r/badhistory.

In short, Cortes arrived in the middle of a civil war. Many expeditions like his failed before, and his success wasn't a foregone conclusion [...].

In the long run, European conquest of the Americas wasn't a foregone conclusion. Launching a continental invasion against a united empire on their native terrain, supplying enough food, gunpowder, animal feed to supply it using sailboats, and dealing with all the tropical diseases? It took the Spanish centuries to accomplish what they did, [...] I wouldn't be quick to jump to conclusions what would have happened otherwise. These guys were playing the game of Empires themselves, and the population didn't just roll over for the Spanish even after that initial enormous success.

In one alternate reality the Europeans might have figured that trading guns and metals and horses for all that gold was more profitable than launching one failed expedition after another. Who knows.

Please stop putting the words 'forgone conclusion' in my mouth. You and me and everyone else agrees that history could have gone differently! All I'm trying to argue for is that some paths are more likely and some paths are less likely. The fact that it took the new world centuries to dominate the old isn't a refutation of a theory that only works on long time scales.

I completely agree with the last sentence of your second paragraph given the phrase 'accurately predict'. I literally think the Theory of History in GG&S makes no stronger claim than: "Eurasia (all of freaking Eurasia) was more likely than other places to develop societies interested in, and able to execute, Empires." That's not a very precise claim, but it's still better than: all of history is unpredictable.

It's hard to argue the what-ifs. We have no way of testing it one way or another.

Not knowing any history, if I gave you a full description of geography of villages in Europe in 700 BC, what would it take to predict which one would conquer Europe? Would that be even possible?

I agree this would be an impossible task. On sub-continent, sub millennia scale I agree that the forces of randomness are probably too great to make predictions like this. But again, I think the valuable claim from GG&S opperates only on the grandest historical scale and only until continentally separated civilizations meet.

If I showed you the Mongol tribes living on the steppes, not knowing any history, what would make you say 'yes, these guys seem to be living in just the right sort of environment to conquer the largest contiguous empire in history. Look at all this potential.'

Again, the GG&S theory of history makes no sub-continental claims. I agree that picking conquering kingdoms as opposed to continents is mostly playing roulette.

History just seems to be completely unpredictable and chaotic. Freak accidents happen all the time. Mongol armies get wiped out by typhoons while invading Japan, not once, but twice in eight years or so. Those types of freak accidents had a huge impact on history, and they happened all the freaking time.

When it comes to people changing their course of history, Japan completely overhauled their feudal system, threw out the 250 year old foreign policy book of isolation, and started industrializing in record time after the Americans showed up in gunboats. [...] Why did the Japanese choose this course of action and others throughout history didn't? It's complicated, and the more you get into it, the more it gets into the specifics of their particular situation and broad generalizations like 'X and Y have more chance of doing Z because geography' make less and less sense and like after-the-fact observations.

AGAIN: The theory has no answers and makes no predictions about the particulars of Japanese history.

I understand that historians don't like what-ifs. By asking about people struggling to survive at the absolute ends of the Earth I'm trying to get to the heart of the matter: do you think it's less likely that people living on a sheet of ice in 10,000BC will be the ones that conquer the world?

Why is conquering the world a measure of one's historical success?

This point comes up out of the blue so much I'm beginning to think it's a diversionary tactic. This whole discussion is 'who conquered the world' so we are talking about what leads to empires.

If you'll concede that one group of humans anywhere on the face of the Earth is less likely to do something because of their environment then that's all we need to start Moneyballing history.

This isn't something I've ever disputed. Geography has an effect on development of society. But there's too much general chaos to even call it a decisive factor. [...]**

OK, this goes with the statement from above I said we'd get back to. So I see many historians say that 'Geography has an effect' but then immediately argue that the effect yields zero predicability. Which seems to me like a linguistic trick not be forced into making unreasonable claims (like: a tribe a starving desert nomads in the middle of nowhere is just as likely to conquer the world as this abundantly fed group of sea-faring people with leisure time) while still holding onto the claim that not even on the grandest of scales over the longest of time frames can any statistically valid predictions be made.

My hypothesis is that were we to have a million Earths there would be a probability distribution of continents where the empire builders show up.

Do you agree with, what I view as your counter claim: "All continents are equally as likely to produce empire-building civilizations. A million earths would yield a perfectly flat probability distribution of the continental location of the first appearance of world-spanning empires."

[–]anthropology_nerd 25ポイント26ポイント27ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

Mr. Grey, what I see as a fundamental error in your line of questioning, and what we tried to show in the /r/badhistory theory thread on Wednesday, is that historians are not in the business of “Moneyballing” history.

Historians do not view the global story of our species as a video game, much less one with a restart button. We see little value in developing generalized probability models to create a positive predictive value for alternative timelines of human history. Our real timeline is fascinating enough. When we say “’Geography has an effect’ but then immediately argue that the effect yields zero predictability,” it isn’t a linguistic trick on our part, it is a failure on yours to understand the methods, theory, and purpose of our field of study.

If you want to develop your model, hit the reset button, and see the results of a thousand iterations of FakeEarth you can call such endeavors “Moneyballing”, or “What-ifing”, or “Grey and Brady discuss hypotheticals over a pint”. We don't call that history because it bears little resemblance to our methods of investigating the past.

[–]jormundgard 18ポイント19ポイント20ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

[–]mmilosh 24ポイント25ポイント26ポイント 1ヶ月前* (3子コメント)

Determinism is not a claim that statement makes. I think historians want to hear their opponents arguing for determinism because it's an easy claim to shoot down.

It wasn't my intention to make a straw man argument, but determinism is an impression I got from watching your video. If you say that civilization has 'nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the map', it follows that everything is decided by the map and there shouldn't be major variations, the way I understood it.

I think you can make a statistical prediction about where empires will appear based on continents not people.

You can't make a statistical prediction with a sample size of one. It would be nice if we had a million Earths to test with so we could do something like this, but we don't.

As a consequence, you're looking at one and only map you have available. Separating what's correlation and what's causation is extremely difficult in those circumstances.

That's not saying that what you're saying isn't true but it's untestable in a statistical sense.

You don't need mass production and iron to make use of domesticated animals. An Ard (a pre-plow) can be made out of wood. Lots of animals can produce food without needing iron.

I'd rather drop this point than continue to argue it further because I don't think it's central to this conversation.

Good. Would you not also agree that certain advantages are in favor of developing Empire-like civilizations? ... If you don't agree, then what do you mean by advantages?

We have numerous examples throughout history and there aren't too many geographical similarities between, say, the Mongol Empire and the Roman Empire. They both qualify as an empire under the definition "multiple peoples ruled over by a single government", and yet there aren't that many geographical similarities.

To your question: I don't know how much environmental factors help you create an empire, and I don't think there's an easy answer to that question. It could be a million different things, from access to sea, ease of transporting goods, availability of resources, ability to trade for resources you lack, etc.

Again, please stop using worlds like 'doomed' that imply inevitability I don't claim.

You said: 'These germs decided the outcome of these battles long before the fighting started'.

Please stop putting the words 'forgone conclusion' in my mouth.

I didn't! See above.

You and me and everyone else agrees that history could have gone differently! All I'm trying to argue for is that some paths are more likely and some paths are less likely.

If that's your argument, how do you know that we're not living in the most unlikely of universes? What conclusions can you make if that's the case?

But again, I think the valuable claim from GG&S opperates only on the grandest historical scale and only until continentally separated civilizations meet.

Europeans came into contact with the New World at a very specific point in time under very specific circumstances for both sides. I find it hard to believe that environmental factors had a decisive effect on the outcome as opposed to cumulative effects of thousands of years of human agency (which you don't think is a thing, I know) and just pure randomness. I'd say there's quite a high burden of proof on anyone making such a claim, and that GGS doesn't deliver.

So I see many historians say that 'Geography has an effect' but then immediately argue that the effect yields zero predicability. Which seems to me like a linguistic trick...

If you want to make statistically valid predictions, you cannot do that with a sample size of one.

You can compare the development of different societies with regards to their environment, and people have done that. For instance, see "Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study" by Bruce G. Trigger.

Why is conquering the world a measure of one's historical success? This point comes up out of the blue so much I'm beginning to think it's a diversionary tactic. This whole discussion is 'who conquered the world' so we are talking about what leads to empires.

It wasn't intended as such, but it does seem that way in retrospect.

I found the whole question baffling; where a certain group of people lived in 10.000 bc might have nothing to do with where they live thousands of years later when complex societies start to appear. Historical success for those groups of people was surviving, empire is not on anyone's agenda for thousands of years.

EDIT: Your original question was whether Inuits would have built a world spanning empire. The crux of my answer was: I don't think it's likely, I'd say it's quite impressive that they adapted and survived, considering. I don't know what general conclusions you can draw from that, though.

Do you agree with, what I view as your counter claim:

I don't claim to know one way or another. I don't know if the outcome we got is the least or most likely of all. In any case, the whole thing about continents seems to be too much of a generalization. I wouldn't, for instance, draw any conclusions about how Egypt developed based that they are on the African continent.

EDIT: I've also noticed that you characterized this discussion as a "flame war" on Twitter. First of all, I don't see it as such, and if you do we shouldn't discuss this any further because this isn't the intention. I've also disabled inbox replies. I'll reply to you if you decide to continue this discussion but I can't argue with 100.000 of your Twitter followers.

[–]rawrgulmuffins 10ポイント11ポイント12ポイント 1ヶ月前 (2子コメント)

[–]HighPriestofShiloh 0ポイント1ポイント2ポイント 1日前 (1子コメント)

I think the difference comes back to the idea of free will. Someone people honestly believe that humans have this non-deterministic form of free will. Historians tend to think this. But when we look at non-humans we don't tend to grant that assumption.

Personally I think free will (other than in the strict compatibility sense) is at best an illusion and using it to describe human behavior is a fruitless endeavor. But historians seem to take it as a given, don't know why.

I know that grey was not making this argument but I really do think that if we rolled back the clock to 10,000 BC and simply pushed play again everything would have played out exactly like that did. However if you changed a single variable you would of course get the butterfly effect and that could/would drastically change things.

[–]zapolon2 6ポイント7ポイント8ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

[–]Ricardian-tennisfan 11ポイント12ポイント13ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

Also the argument on the difficulty of predicting future historical events based on current geographical/technological advantages illustrated by the reversal of fortunes puzzles. 1500 years ago surveying society you would have found it very hard to accurately guess the major winners today. And as for substantial rejuvenation'a China's success in developing so fast and lifting so many people out of poverty over 3 decades would have been impossible to predicit as it was not only due to reforms they carried out but also due to other global factors which gave them a greater chance to succeed. The argument that you use Grey against looking at the micro examples and specific conditions and instead looking at the broader 1000yr+ horizon is problematic as it ignores that those large macro change are driven by chaotic idiosyncratic micro brushes of history. And even if you say that Eurasia had a higher conditional probability of succeeding compared to Americas given initial goecraphical factors the central question becomes by how much? Because if the probability differential is not that high and so many other factors(institutions, chance etc) influence who succeeds between those 2 large heterogeneous groups and even more factors explain the differential success of places within those groups then that argument fails to have any meaningful predictive power on the courses of history. And then the whole discussion of a grand theory of history becomes a meaningless exercise. I think history is /slightly/ more predicitable than /mmilosh as I think looking at say institutional factors etc you can make a guess at whether say stagnant growth in real income-in subsets of society which at one time were economically well off- an the higher inequality follwing that will give rise to populism of the Sanders, Trump, Corbyn, a lot of comtemporary LA tyep. But I mean increasing inequality in America has been a trend since the 70s so why the increased feeling of ebing 'left behind' now? No once could have predicted that. So history I think can tell us whether it's very likely something will happen(and even then randomness of civilization can wipe those chances out) but never give us any meaningful answer on when it will happen.

[–]TheMongols_ 5ポイント6ポイント7ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

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[–]baruu_and_me 8ポイント9ポイント10ポイント 1ヶ月前 (2子コメント)

"Eurasia (all of freaking Eurasia) was more likely than other places to develop societies interested in, and able to execute, Empires."

Just going by relative size of the landmasses this is almost a certainty. Quickly grabbing area from wikipedia I get:

Eurasia: 54,759,000 km2 40%

Africa: 30,221,000km2 22%

N. America: 24,709,000 km2 18%

S. America: 17,840,000km2 13%

Australia: 8,600,000 km2 6%

Even combining North and South America into one landmass, Eurasia tops the charts... and if we extend it to Afro-Eurasia, that contiguous piece of land makes up more than 60% of all land on the Earth. So the null hypothesis is Eurasia should conquer the world 40% of the time. Now, limit the area to non-arid land and what happens? All continents lose landmass but which lose the most (as a percent of their area)? Africa and Australia. Take out the Sahara alone and Africa drops from the number two landmass. I haven't run those numbers but at that point I'm willing to place Eurasia at over 50% of the non-arid land. (I could go on excluding tundra or rain-forest or the like but the more you limit by climate, the closer you are to Diamond's theory) Any attempt to "Moneyball history" needs to say that Eurasia is more likely to be the dominant power than it's relative size not just that it is more likely than another continent.

I think this is part of the point that people (myself included) are trying to make when using examples like China or Persia. Is it really fair to take a continent that by itself 40% of all landmass and treat it as one unified area for these purposes? I agree asking why one of several western European countries with similar levels of technology was the strongest at any given time comes down to the vagaries of history. However, asking why countries with clear technological and resource superiority were supplanted by less advanced civilizations originating thousands of miles away is valid.

[–]JacksSmirknRevenge 3ポイント4ポイント5ポイント 1ヶ月前 (1子コメント)

[–]baruu_and_me 3ポイント4ポイント5ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

The point is that a theory of history needs to go beyond population size to be more than trivial. And here I'm using "population size" in a statistical sense not meaning the number of people in a location.

Using an example that has nothing to do with history: I've got a jar with 100 ball bearings, 70 red and 30 blue. I give you a spoon and tell you to take out one. You have a theory that red ones are more likely to be picked because red paint might be magnetic and attract the ball bearings to the spoon, so you run an experiment taking out ball bearings and 70% of the time you get a red one. You can't say my theory is right because I got red ones more often than blue, you need to get red ones 80 or 90 % of the time to prove your theory. It needs to do better than the population size.

Similarly, Diamond can't just make a statement like "Eurasia is more likely to dominate the world than other continents" when it is already so much larger than the other continents. For his theory to be non-trivial it needs to be something like 2/3 of the time Eurasia would dominate the world (if we could re-run history repeatedly) despite Eurasia having only 40% of the landmass.

[–]AshuraSpeakman 2ポイント3ポイント4ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

[–]OCogS 2ポイント3ポイント4ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

I think the heart of the matter - and the reason the GG&S detractors want to seemingly 'nit-pick' - is that they consider the human-element to be a strong driver, even when taking into account the environmental element. The point of the nit picking is to highlight the importance of the human element. The GG&S elements are maybe a 60% predictive and the human elements are 40% (un)predictive. So you could have a theory of history based on the GG&S elements, but it's going to be a fairly weak theory.

So it's entirely possible that an Australian Aboriginal in 10,000BC says "hang on a second, rather than hunting these mega-fauna why don't we use them as farm animals..." and then the entire course of history ends up looking different. There certainly are large regions of Australia that are as useful as agriculture as the UK etc.

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[–]mmilosh 8ポイント9ポイント10ポイント 1ヶ月前 (4子コメント)

This is all micro-scale stuff, comparatively. We're talking continent and civilization-level scale stuff here. Sure, the Mongol invasions would have disrupted Japan severely for generations if successful, but would it have destroyed technological and societal progress completely in all of Asian civilization? It wouldn't, and didn't do that.

If you want to talk about the effects of their invasions, look at siege of Bagdhad which was one of the intellectual capitals of the world at that time. They destroyed the entire city, killed most inhabitants, destroyed all the accumulated books and documents from its library, and destroyed the canal system which might have led to the agricultural decline of the region.

You tell me you're looking at it from such a larger scale where these types of things don't matter for the history of the world, and I'll tell you you're way out of the solar system.

[–]eggswithcheese 3ポイント4ポイント5ポイント 1ヶ月前 (3子コメント)

The area was devastated, sure. Baghdad never recovered, sure. It was a huge setback for the people of the area, sure. But it's not like Mespotamian civilization was dealt a mortal blow. They didn't forget how to farm or build walls or forge weapons or write things down. Even Baghdad doesn't matter on the long scale of human history. No single city matters. No single event matters

You want to talk about loss of life, look at the An Lushan rebellion. It is believed it killed a bigger percentage of the world population than any other conflict in history. (~15 percent of the world population died) Or look at the Taiping rebellion, which is the third deadliest war ever. They both devastated China. But China didn't stop existing. Chinese civilization didn't end. Their dominance in Asia lessened, but didn't disappear in either case. And if you look at Eurasia? Over the course of all of history? Neither war makes a lick of difference.

[–]mmilosh 12ポイント13ポイント14ポイント 1ヶ月前 (2子コメント)

[–]eggswithcheese -1ポイント0ポイント1ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

On that note... we agree! Thousands of specific incidents. Many of them very interesting, with far-reaching effects. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of incidents. The outcome of any one of them is irrelevant. The outcome of a great numbers of them add together into something we can observe from a big-picture, statistical view.

Can you honestly say that if a comet fell on Athens, that Hellenistic civilization as a whole wouldn't recover? That the Persians would dominate the world? Or might the Thebans and the Corinthians and the Spartans and the Macedonians just pick up the pieces? The same things that made Athens and the Atticans successful might have made the Boetians or Peloponnesians the rulers of all they surveyed instead. With the wealth they gained, might their men of leisure not produce an alt-Socrates or pseudo-Plato? Thousands of years later, would there be that much difference?

If you roll a collection of dice a thousand thousand times, you will get many interesting results, but the average will inexorably trend towards a mean over time.

There's two philosophies arguing here. One is saying things like "this river flowed this way over the course of time because of the composition of the rocks, and the climate of the area. Individual raindrops are irrelevant." And the other philosophy just keeps bringing up different raindrops that were especially big, or beautiful, or fell right at the right place.

And that's why Athens alone doesn't matter. Baghdad alone doesn't matter. Tianjin doesn't matter, Tokyo doesn't matter, Genghis Khan doesn't matter, and Tamerlane doesn't matter. Individual events, even large ones, are blips in patterns that take centuries or millennia to play out. That's what the big-picture philosophy is saying.

No single raindrop matters. The pattern of thousands of raindrops matters.

(A personal note: I'm finding this a very interesting discussion, and I don't necessarily agree with either philosophy. I hope I'm arguing the big-picture one properly though.)

[–]TacSponge -2ポイント-1ポイント0ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

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[–]infinitepairofducks 15ポイント16ポイント17ポイント 1ヶ月前* (2子コメント)

Affected by the environment - yes, determined by it - no. People living in the desert can't just decide to become an agrarian society, but it's not like this is the only way. This is an example I keep bringing up all the time, but Palmyra built a prosperous society with distinct art and architecture, and all the things that in Western imagination are typically associated with civilization - wealth, monuments, colonies. They were in the middle of the desert... There is no one path of technological development nor a 'tech tree'. Tenochtitlan was one of the biggest cities of the world at the time when the Spanish arrived, and they also had an empire of their own.

The argument was, in Grey's words, constrained by the environment. This to me is the crux of his probabilistic argument. The probability of an event, say developing technology, is the number of possible routes to technology divided by all routes to technology. If there is no tech tree, then this model is moot. If there is a tech tree in some sense, then people who are constrained by the environment reduce the number of routes possible (i.e. the numerator), and so the probability of developing tech is reduced. Therefore, ceteris paribus, people in resource rich environments are more likely to develop technology in some period of time. That's my understanding of Grey's point at least.

This does not mean that a society in a resource rich environment will create tech quicker, nor that resource poor people won't. Think of it as the resource rich folks are rolling a die with 5/6 tech faces and 1/6 non-tech while the resource poor are the reverse. Since so few developed civilizations started in resource poor areas when compared to resource rich areas, the probabilistic argument is consistent with this evidence. History is not testable, so this doesn't leave much room for falsification unfortunately...

I don't have a dog in this fight, so I'll put up my counter-argument: Grey's probabilistic argument is biased. I'd imagine people settle more in resource rich areas than not. So more groups that produce tech will be in resource rich areas and hence it will appear that resource rich areas are the cause. But it is really putting the cart before the horse!

About the tech-tree: there might actually be one, in a probabilistic sense. Check out (when you have the time, it's long-ish) The Atlas of Economic Complexity out of MIT.

Anyways it seems reasonable that there is a tech tree in some sense. Between two groups, one with a river and a horse & the other with just a horse, who is more likely to produce a mill? Group one, they have two options. This is super simplistic for sure, but clearly shows environment can inhibit growth by limiting options for technological advancement, hence making it more difficult (therefore less likely) to advance a society in general.

EDIT: grammar

EDIT 2: last paragraph

[–]Sungolf 3ポイント4ポイント5ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

Well, I don't know what Grey's argument is but Jared Diamond's argument is that technological development is dependent upon

Individual innovator birth rate. I.E. The population.
The society's acceptance of innovation.. Which can be reduced to a random variable given a fair diversity of cultures in a region.
The degree to which the region allows societies to be connected with a large number of other societies that can preserve knowledge when one society abandons a technology.

The last part is particularly important given that societies in isolation tend to relinquish technologies one by one if they aren't under any competitive pressure to retain them. The example of the aborigines of Tasmania is used which had regressed to the most primitive state imaginable as a result of their long isolation. (I don't recall specifics.. Sorry)

Diamond argues that societies tend to abandon technogies over time because of fashion and taboos that randomly crop up.

[–]TheMongols_ 4ポイント5ポイント6ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

[–]redworm 2ポイント3ポイント4ポイント 1ヶ月前 (6子コメント)

[–]mmilosh 6ポイント7ポイント8ポイント 1ヶ月前 (5子コメント)

[–]redworm 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 1ヶ月前 (4子コメント)

What's wrong with asking about the empires? I'm not necessarily interested in how they adapted to their environment. Certainly not as interested in discussing the history that resulted in a world in which we have a robot taking selfies on another planet.

Would adapting well to your environment get me Martian robots? Because if not then I'd rather discuss the empires. The ones that shaped the world I live in today, one that I'd like to understand better. The Inuit had far less effect on my life than the Spaniards.

So what's wrong with wanting to focus the discussion on this aspect? The whole book was poised on the question "how the fuck did all these white people get their hands in everything?"

No one's passing a value judgment on the Inuit but they are objectively less influential to the rest of the species than the empire building folks.

[–]mmilosh 7ポイント8ポイント9ポイント 1ヶ月前 (3子コメント)

Do you think that technological progress would have been impossible if it wasn't for a few nations in Europe making overseas empires? There's a lot of presumption there, including seeing imperialism as something that has had a positive effect on human history. While this imperialism is what allowed Europe to catch up to Indo-China in GDP in the 17th and 18th century, it's not like the world would have stood still if it wasn't for that. It's not like Spain and Portugal have their own space program thanks to the overseas empire they had. Their contribution to the ESA combined is half that of Switzerland.

There's nothing wrong with discussing empires, which is what I've been doing throughout this thread, but if you ask the question 'if we rewind the clock would the Inuit build an overseas empire?' the only answer I can give is 'why do you think they would want or need one?'

[–]redworm 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 1ヶ月前 (2子コメント)

[–]mmilosh 3ポイント4ポイント5ポイント 1ヶ月前 (1子コメント)

And yeah, I think a large, global civilization is necessary for a space program. So what if the conclusion is that there's a positive to imperialism? Sometimes humans do shitty things with positive outcomes long after it happens.

The question was whether imperialism is necessary for technological progress, and my view is that it isn't. I'm not arguing that there weren't long term positives for some countries that were engaged in it at the expense of the conquered and exploited peoples.

If you don't care why the Inuit didn't expand like the europeans, fine. But stop disparaging others for asking the question as if we're being insensitive to other cultures.

I didn't. I stated that I don't look at history as a race for success in creating a colonial empire. You were the one that read into that.

[–]redworm 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

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[–]CaptainSideBeard 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 7日前 (0子コメント)

This whole discussion ties in really well with a class I am currently taking. It is labeled "History of the Material World" which sounds like a very broad endeavor. The first meeting of the class was spent trying to further discuss the real topic at play, that is: attempting to understand how humans interact with commodities throughout history and answer questions such as "where did the modern consumer society come from? Where does value come from? Do individuals have any freedom in our current marketplace to 'unsubscribe' from the meanings items carry with them?"
Currently, we are discussing the notion of identity within the confines of what you you bring up- the notion of autonomy. The conversation, in a history class, has dipped many times in to Michael Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. This notion of ontology and what does it mean to "be" has forced us to widen our perspective on the topic and start constructing a sort of Meta-History.

This is, at least I think, what you were asking for in the podcast when you asked people to supply their notions of the Theory of History- where your journey takes a distracting detour, I think, is your desire to rewind history and let it run again in hopes of producing slightly different, or all-together varied results.

History is not as much about understanding the past in hopes of better understand present times or even with hopes of prediction or preventing future atrocities. Those things can all be achieved, but only because of the fundamental service that History provides. History offers us an opportunity to delve deep into what makes us human. I believe that this Theory of History you search for is better understood as a search for the underlying assumptions about our own existence we must make in order to get from Meta-History back into these details of weather, geography and human interactions with crappy pieces of plastic. You have already done this in the above, assuming that humans have no free agency due to what I can only assume is your own assumption. Jared Diamond (inconsistently) assumes that all humans are of similar capability and intelligence- despite writing an entire book about the things in which they differ. Likewise in our class we have come to the conclusion that humanity exists in relation to and our existence is qualified by a higher being which exists independent from the rest of humanity. Only then can we start laying foundations and espousing notions of "society", "individual identity" and the rest.
To put it all more plainly... Theory of History= Basic Assumptions about Humanity.

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I haven't read GG&S yet, but I know a little bit about the book based on talking with other people and some summaries on it that I've read. I'd like to chime in with some ideas from Sapiens by Yuval Harari about similar topics. From what I gather, Sapiens is more or less GG&S part two, yet a bit more abridged. In it, the author argues that a huge factor in the Western European dominance of the world is largely because of economic factors - the development of advanced forms of capitalism and credit, especially. He notes that, until roughly the 15th Century, Western Europe was essentially a footnote in history. There were no major empires there, with the exception of the Roman Empire, and most of the world's population and economic activity was centered around the modern Middle East, India, and China.

I'm not sure if that fully addresses the ideas in Ameripox, but it is an interesting assertion of why Europeans came to be so powerful. I think its also a bit of an argument in support of historical nondeterminism - I can imagine that if we rewind history 600 years over and over again, the chances of Queen Isabella giving Columbus a loan for ships would probably come out as fairly even. And who knows what could have happened if the Chinese or Japanese decided to venture out East to the Americas? (I think there has been some research into Pre-Columbian contact between Chinese and American civilizations, but I'm spotty on that.)

[–]mikejsm 1ポイント2ポイント3ポイント 1ヶ月前 (1子コメント)

[–]mmilosh 7ポイント8ポイント9ポイント 1ヶ月前 (0子コメント)

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