H.I. #56: Guns, Germs, and Steel

PriapicFeels · 1ヶ月前

It sounds like Grey isn't really wanting to discuss history, so much as the philosophy of history and historiography.

While plenty of historians either specialize or will have researched these topics, many have not.

Grey is casting too wide of a net if he is approaching historians in general. It is like if you are going to ask a scientist a question about biology, you are better off speaking to a biologist than a geologist. I'm sure most geologists would give you an educated answer, but they will probably steer the conversation towards their speciality.

Vallerius · 1ヶ月前

Grey, at several points you asked for a historian to present a cohesive alternative theory of history if we disagree with Diamond. I am not sure anyone can come out and simply present an alternative theory (If someone can please do). However, to me, it appears that academic history is less interested in developing a complete alternate theory of history that explains all historical phenomena than it is in talking about more particular parts of history to find deeper historical meaning. Currently, I think that the absence of a theory might actually be a beneficial part of historical discourse.

In the podcast you ask that if we viewed Diamond's ideas as geocentrism and conceed that at least it is a starting point that would be more preferable than simply not having a theory. I think you have a case to be argued there, but I disagree.

To give you an example, the study of history is in many ways built of off previous historical analysis. These previous generations of historians introduce ideas and argue concepts through presenting examples from points in our past. Younger generations then work off of that foundation (to either build on or criticize the work of the past).

However, this is not always the best method for discovering how things happened in the historical past, for a variety of reasons. Take the idea of Feudalism for example. To simplify a long story, historians in the past presented this picture of medieval Europe as functioning on a socio-political system called Feudalism and provided examples to support that claim. Historians have found the that idea extremely useful in understanding how political, economic, and social relations occurred in medieval europe. However, in constructing this idea of Feudalism, historians have ended up assuming its existence and with few exceptions it is still the model we use to talk about medieval history.

This is incredibly problematic. Elizabeth A. R. Brown in writing the Tyranny of a Construct demonstrated the immense flaws in how we understand feudalism to have existed and how it colors our view of medieval Europe. Indeed, some would go far enough to say that nothing in medieval Europe really looks like we think it does because all of our work is based off of this idea of Feudalism and our limited source material. Thus, we could be getting things profoundly wrong. Those errors effect not just history but affect how we understand philosophy, theology, social relations, politics, etc...

So you can see how simply taking something as a starting point can be a problematic stance. I am one of those people who would prefer to have no concrete starting point and taking events as they are. However, how does that help create an academic discipline and set of ideas and concepts we can adequately talk about and then teach to others.

I think you can see how all of us are at least somewhat dissatisfied with both options. Either we work off of faulty premises or we always have to work from the ground up and severely limit our conclusions about history.

piwikiwi · 1ヶ月前

What do I hear? It is the sound of geologists, anthropologists and historians all sharpening their pencils:p

signedupforgrey · 1ヶ月前

Alright, finally signed up for thereddit because of Guns Germs and Steel.

I will preface by saying that I am not vehemently anti-GG&S, but there are certainly large-scale arguments to be made here, not just quibbling over historical minutia.

Regarding the issue of geographic determinism, this is an argument which feels and sounds good, but it has serious problems.

The first thing we need to tackle here is the issue of complexity theory (a.k.a. chaos theory). There is little doubt that the on-the-ground mechanisms in human development are highly complex, but without the ability to run a system multiple times with similar inputs, we can't really tell what sort of large-scale patterns this complexity creates. Some complex systems converge upon a very likely scenario while other complex systems are multi-polar or even non-polar in the distribution of outcomes.

These are ideas which Brady was touching on, but seemed to lack the energy to push very hard. One is how sensitive to or resilient against small changes to the scenario the large-scale patterns are. Historians argue about this sort of thing all the time when they ask how important was Franz Ferdinand's assassination to the way that WWI played out or whether WWII would have been substantively different had Hitler been killed in the army. A resilient system would still have had those wars play out in similar ways while a sensitive or divergent system would hinge on the details of the actions of these important people. This is one reason Historians start looking down in the weeds when they get upset at geographic determinism.

The other issue Brady brought up was how our view on the important aspects in history is dependent upon our understanding of how that history unfolded. It isn't at all clear that, had the people of Australia dominated humanity in a way similar to Europe that we would judge it as a fluke where everyone else had so many advantages. We very well could look upon Australia's isolation and relatively harsh environment with a relatively small population as being the key factors in Australian excellence. By maintaining small populations they were able to avoid the destructive conflicts which plagued the rest of the world. A lack of easy crops and animals required greater ingenuity as necessity is the mother of invention. Etc, etc. If human development is less convergent, then any perspective, including the perspective we have, will give us all sorts of non-causal correlations.

This last issue becomes particularly difficult if you try to explain why it was Europe and not India, China, Persia, or the Arabs who found themselves on top when it counted. To say that 'somebody in Eurasia' is most likely to do what Europe did overlooks the vast size, diversity, and complexity of Eurasia and the fact that over a rather short period of time, all sorts of different societies appeared to be culturally and technologically superior to others.

Take the Arabs, for instance. While the cultural stagnation of the European 'dark age' is certainly overblown, the Arab Caliphates was politically dominant and academically superior to their neighbors for generations despite having many disadvantages such as vast regions of low-productivity land for food and lumber production. It is difficult to explain why they achieved what they did and why they failed to sustain it under the rubric provided in GG&S.

This is a common pattern throughout history; a society will enter into a period of cultural and political expansion, sustain it for a bit, and then stagnate and decline. Is it that Europe had it easy, or that they were actually failing and stumbled into one of these expansions at the right moment? In many ways, the Bubonic Plague can be seen as causing a cultural expansion in Europe by causing just enough cultural and political disruption.

I find myself wandering, so I will get to the request. Grey wanted an alternate theory of history.

It isn't that the plants and animals that we have come to depend on for food were particularly plentiful in one place or another, it is that agricultural and pastoral traditions were developed during a surge of creativity in a particular place and radiated out. There is no reason that the agricultural revolution happened where it did, but because it happened to be there, different places were advantaged and disadvantaged.

Agriculture spread where these early domesticated plants would grow well, and since they didn't grow well in Africa, their cultures tended to reject intense agriculture. Where agriculture spread, agriculturalists invested in finding more local organisms to domesticate.

Cultural developments in the agricultural zone happened in fits and starts, but agriculturalists were first and just kept being first. Agriculturalist societies tended to interact with each other more compatibly than with Africa and Oceanea and the Americas were just too disconnected to get the memo in time.

This differs from Diamond's view in many ways. It suggests that there is no real problem to developing in the Americas, just that the population was relatively sparse and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa, similarly, was excluded, not because of some deep geographic problem dooming them to never do it, just that there was a cultural divergence which limited the spread of a crucial technology.

It does have some compatibilities with Diamond's approach, particularly the idea that the latitudinal orientation of Eurasia is what allowed agriculture to spread over that region more than others, but it doesn't require that there be magic crops and animals which are more likely to grow and live in those latitudes.

I find it wholly unconvincing that pre-domesticated work animals were particularly well-suited to domestication. It seems much more likely that domestication of these animals was possible due to relatively chance cultural developments and that these developments happened to occur with animals which we now think of as easier to domesticate. Could the North American bison have been domesticated given similar cultural pressures and time? I have no doubt. If this is the case, then there is no inherent geographic reason there was no sturdy American work animal other than the relative isolation of the Americas from the origins of humanity resulting in such a late settlement.

icoup · 1ヶ月前

Re: Manufacturing a Murder

One of the more convincing theories that was posted online was that it was basically a double frame job. Someone who knew Steven killed her and knew that the police would look at him first, so put her remains/car on his property. Then the police framed him as well by planting more evidence when they found her remains to ensure a conviction.

Here's the thread on /r/MakingaMurderer.

Definitely makes the most sense to me. Thoughts /u/MindOfMetalAndWheels and /u/JeffDujon? This would almost satisfy both of your points of view.

Gnobel · 1ヶ月前

still waiting for the chickflick episode! :D

renweard · 1ヶ月前

I think a better way of reading Diamond's argument in GGS is to think of climate vs. weather.

Weather is unpredictable in a similar way that political regimes and policies are unpredictable. There are too many interactions and unknown mechanisms to make precise measurements of future events.

Climate, however, is the emergent property of environmental factors flowing through known mechanisms over large expanses. Likewise, GGS should not be interpreted as a weather-level Farmer's Almanac, but a study in what makes up the "climate" of human history.

NorwegianWood28 · 1ヶ月前

Do you two talk differently in podcasts than you do in real life?

Zagorath · 1ヶ月前

Okay, to all those that are doubtless going to come and criticise Grey, including some who probably won't have listened to it, here is the crux of Grey's argument. Try to keep on topic rather than arguing about the book more generally.

The thing that I find interesting and valuable in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that I almost never see the critics argue against, is the theory that the book presents. Guns, Germs, and Steel gives to me gives a very simple but very basic theory of history. It's a theory that only operates on very long time scales, and over continent-sized human divisions, but it is still nonetheless a theory. Because I think it makes if not a testable prediction, a question that you can ask about the world where you can say look, if we were to rewind the clock and play history again, what would you expect would happen? 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.

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. That to me is the value of this book, and I think that is very interesting. But then this then trips in historians into an idea that you can not say geography is destiny. Historians are very, very, strongly against this idea, for reasons that I find difficult to understand. And every time that I get into an argument, or I see arguments that take place over the book, what usually happens is, just as so many of these things, different sides are arguing different things. Like, I want to have a conversation about what is the current state of the theory of history? Like, has much progress been made about the theory of history? 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.

Fwiw, I say this as someone who has neither read the book nor its criticism. I don't have a personal opinion on the matter. I'm just presenting this to make a clear frame of reference to make sure people are arguing the right thing and not going on about irrelevant details. That bit about "different sides are arguing different things" is the main thing I'm trying to help us avoid this time around.

3rik1sbit · 1ヶ月前

Is this the real Hello Internet? With no follow up?

jeffbarrington · 1ヶ月前

I think a lot of Grey's frustration about historians and their 'theory of history' is due to the fact that he is talking to the wrong people - the idea of a 'big picture' of history is more a question of Geography than anything else, whilst history is almost by definition about the 'atoms'.

sparkplug49 · 1ヶ月前

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned crash course's big history mini series. My big takeaway from that was that the history of humanity could be summed up in our ability to harness energy more efficiently. That to me was a way of thinking about a "theory of history" that I'd not encountered before. Thats not at all to suggest its incongruent with Grey's portrayal of Diamond's theory, just getting at it from another angle perhaps.

paradocent · 1ヶ月前

I very much sympathize with Grey's frustration at, essentially, "I'm trying to engage you in a debate about X, but you keep wanting to talk about Y, and I don't know if you it's because you're stupid and you conflate those issues or because you don't want to talk about X and you think I'm stupid enough to conflate them." I have that problem all the time—this isn't the discussion you're looking for.

MatthieuG7 · 1ヶ月前

It's almost a shame that the Manufacturing a Murder discussion was in this podcast, it was really interesting, but there isn't much comments about it, because it's eclipsed by GGS.

yolandaunzueta · 1ヶ月前

At 6:55 is that a glitch in editing or am I hearing things?

Gavel_with_Nails · 1ヶ月前

The correct response to "What would you like us to do" = "Sorry, I don't negotiate against myself." www.possiblycorrect.com

csccosecant · 1ヶ月前

The effect you were talking about at the end of the episode—when something you've recently learned about seems to pop up again and again—is called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (also known as the frequency illusion).

IWantToBeAProducer · 1ヶ月前

BRADY! Don't abuse antibiotics!

paradocent · 1ヶ月前

I find it stunning that a doctor would say "you've only got ten minutes and I'm already running late." Like she's doing you a favor by being there or something. And maybe that's predictable given a nationalized medical system, which I grew up with in Britain, but I've lived in America for a decade now and I suppose that the NHS has faded from memory; if my doctor ever said that to me, he wouldn't be my doctor for much longer.

[Edit: fixed erroneous conjunction.]

alpha__lyrae · 1ヶ月前

I have some major gripes with Grey's arguments about his version of the theory (I have not read GG&S and I am commenting only about the arguments Grey made in the podcast).

Arguing about how Eurasian continent is better geographically to Australia or America or Africa is not really 'to the scale'. Europe and Asia have to be considered separate entities, because geographically they are very different. (Mind you, Indo-China is as big in scale as European continent, if not bigger). Let me explain. The Gangetic Plain and the Chinese river systems are the best places to live with very suitable climate, great river systems to support large agrarian societies and land filled with several resources. In comparison with Indo-China, Europe as a whole is a much poorer in all these aspects, it's not good in terms of climate (esp north-western Europe), its winters and not suitable for great agrarian societies, and it's not particularly rich in pre-modern resources. That is why till the Europeans started colonising the rest of the world, they were very poor compared to their Indo-Chinese counterparts. That is why until late 17-18th century, world GDP was dominated by Indo-China, and not by Europe. That is where world's majority population used to live, and still lives. That is why world's economics Center of Mass was somewhere in central Asia, not anywhere close to Europe.

The question then a theory has to answer is why did Europeans colonise the world and not the Indo-Chinese, and the answer is simple. The Indo-Chinese region was self-sufficient in most aspects of a pre-modern society in ways Europe wasn't. The Indo-Chinese were mainly exporting societies while Europe was mainly importing society, even in the Greco-Roman times.

As Grey mentions, many of us never asked the question, why was there never an Americapox. Have you asked yourself, why were the Spanish, the Portuguese looking for a sea-route to India & Indo-China when they eventually discovered America? Because once you answer that question that question, you also answer the question as to why it was the Europeans who ended up being the colonizers and not the Indo-Chinese.

CJ_Jones · 1ヶ月前

/r/badhistory on Guns, Germans, and Steel.

I haven't had my coffee yet.

yolandaunzueta · 1ヶ月前

1:19:25 "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" #speak

lalaland4711 · 1ヶ月前

Very sloppy editing this time. Full of half words and abrupt momentum changes.

colorcafe · 1ヶ月前

This comment section had taught me that people comment without actually listening

j0nthegreat · 1ヶ月前

Nerd Stats

Kastnerd · 1ヶ月前

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZ6Pj-hWwAUHJOh.jpg

rose_des_vents · 1ヶ月前

Came for discussions of ethnology, stayed for Brady's husky voice.

spacepaulZ · 1ヶ月前

I think Brady's version of Guns, Germs, and Steel is best.
Chapter 1: Because someone had to be first! The End

thechamois · 1ヶ月前

It seems like the heart of the book and the theory that Grey finds compelling is a scale analysis that is often used in the sciences.

When using Navier-Stokes and fundamental thermodynamic equations in Atmospheric science, one must constantly analyzes "forces" (used generally for anything that has a tendency to push a process in one direction or another) and their total possible effects in a process. For example the Coriolis force can have a visible effect, a small effect, almost zero effect, completely zero effect or anywhere in between depending on the process being looked at.

These analyses are used to disregard variables and simplify equations used in weather prediction models (in order to lessen computer power needed). This is the same thought process people use when talking about sport.

Person A: "I think they'll win because of the home field advantage and crowd."

Person B: "Home field advantage doesn't matter when you star player _________ on your team. He's too good to beat."

This scale analysis can also be used when looking in the past at what most likely caused an event which is exactly what is being done in the book and podcast. I would argue the same analysis and principles for understand the causes of progress and more specifically growth can still be done past 1492 of whenever Grey said the theory might not apply any longer.

Time X: Way Back Geography and Climate = large effect Ease of dealing with animals = large effect Individual intelligence exceeding several SD= small effect

Time X + Y: Renaissance Geography and Climate = moderate Ease of dealing with animals = Moderate Individual intelligence exceeding several SD= large effect (due to leisure and population density)

Time X + Y + Z : Now Geography and Climate = small (transportation and shelter advances) Ease of dealing with animals = small effect (transportation and shelter advances) Individual intelligence exceeding several SD= moderate effect (knowledge is now more easily accessible, efforts aren't as focused on growth except for space)

HIDannikJerriko · 1ヶ月前

I really thoguht Brady was gonna say that something happened.

TableLampOttoman · 1ヶ月前

/u/JeffDujon

Supposedly, the term for learning a new word and seeing it everywhere is sometimes called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and sometimes called frequency illusion.

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/

PM_ME_UR_HOTSTOPPERS · 1ヶ月前

Dammmit late again...

danperegrine · 1ヶ月前

Re: 'What if the Black Death had killed many more / most of the people in Europe?'

"The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson is an alternate history that follows this premise from the time of the black death through the modern age.

jonhydude · 1ヶ月前

Posh as cushions is an expression I hadn't heard of yet.

Kitworks · 1ヶ月前

The thing that most drove me up a wall about Making a Murderer was not how appalling the interrogations were (though they were terrible), but that the victim's family would say 100% the confession was valid... without every watching it. Don't they care about actually finding their sister's murderer?

Simon_the_Cannibal · 1ヶ月前

I suppose it's been a while since I made a shameless plug...

More information about the New Zealand Flag Referendum on the latest Vexillogicast Episode. Though, to put it in perspective, you should listen to Changing Canada's Flag first.

I look forward to hearing Grey & Brady's opinions!

razies · 1ヶ月前

It feels like Grey is looking at history more like a physics simulation and is asking:
What parameters influence the success a race/society might have on a very huge scale (in terms of time and space)?

I think most of us agree, that how history plays out isn't predetermined, but things like the environment (heavily) influence the probability distribution of this "simulation". This is not arguing against the "traditional" way of looking at history, as chains of events leading up to our present times. More like an extension, that acknowledges the unpredictability of this chain, but tries to find the probability of this chain taking another route.

I really disagree, that there is nothing to "learn" by looking at history from this - for the lack of a better word - STEM-esque point of view.

For example: While its quite a futuristic perspective, it might help us understand how we can improve these parameters, when populating other planets. The question will be: How can an independent society on a different planet be created, so that it will be stable and able rule the planet, while creating its own history.

Or it can help us understand be circumstances under which alien life is not just possible exist, but also able advance as a race and reach a certain level of importance to us. (This all seems very closely related to things like the Fermi paradox and the "Great Filter")

b_k_ · 1ヶ月前

Baader-Meinhof - At the very end of the episode Brady wondered if there was a name for the effect of never hearing a word before and then you start noticing it in other places

draw_it_now · 1ヶ月前

Hey Grey! You said in this podcast that you were interested to hear alternate theories of history, so there's this - some anthropologists threw a bunch of algorithms into a computer and managed to calculate the spread of settled civilisation to an accuracy of 65%. Not perfect by far, but definitely impressive.

The data they used and abused can be found here.
I'm currently using it to build my own simulation program for a worldbuilding project. From this, I've gleaned that the core of the theory is that every culture gets a "score" based on their "ultrasocial traits" (unified cultural structures, such as language, religion, or state hierarchies) and horse-based technology (domestication of the horse, the saddle, the chariot etc.).
Steppe nomads were also usually the first to invent these technologies, which they passed onto the settled peoples through trade and conquest. This means that settled cultures are most likely to spring up and evolve fastest in Temperate areas bordering Steppes.

bhbr · 1ヶ月前

The effect of repeatedly encountering a newly learned word is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

siprus · 1ヶ月前

One thing about this idea that europe dominating the world scene. It's seems to be forgotten that Arabs used to be pretty advanced and strong. (they also did a lot of trading) And china has always been very strong and advanced civilization. The europe hasn't always been the power house of industry and technology like was 100-200 years ago.

Also I don't think many of the domesticated animals in Europe actually were from Europe. For example horses and cow, sheep, chiken and goats definitely weren't unique to Europe. (most of them were originally domesticated somewhere in Asia)

simplebricks · 1ヶ月前

When discussing what was worse, letting a guilty man free vs sending an innocent to jail I think it was framed incorrectly. If you think about it whenever an innocent man is "caught" a guilty man is implicitly let go. Political arrests are another thing (being charged of a non-existing crime, one without perpetrator or demonizing a way of thinking). A system built to keep people off the streets, where everyone starts off innocent, as it should be, is the better way to run a juicial system.

techczech · 1ヶ月前

People seem not to be giving the critique of Diamond a fair shake. It comes from CGPG not being able to answer BH's question - what's the point (other than a few hints).

Diamond's argument is important because it undermines the essentialist determinism which most people operate under. They think there was something special about Europeans themselves (their essence) and therefore they think Europeans have deserved all they got and the rest of the world can only get the handme downs. This is pretty much the 'white man's' burden argument that is still what many people believe (although they are loath to say it in public for fear of sounding 'racist'). But the current policies of global power elites (e.g. World Bank) reflect much of that belief. So Diamond giving a plausible alternative is a force to the good. It can give you more ammunition to fight the essentialist determinists.

However, the vociferous critique of Diamond comes from people who still see his 'geographic determinism' as far too crude and allowing too many people to wash their hands of actual responsibilities for the current unequal state. It also completely whitewashes the actual involvement of the peoples without the guns, steel and the right germs. Guns didn't matter a whole lot until about the 17th-18th century. Most coastal African kingdoms were completely sovereign and didn't let the Portuguese, Spanish and later English get away with much. Cortez did not defeat the Aztecs on his own but in collaboration with many allied tribes (the Aztecs were relatively recent invaders themselves), etc. Sure, the diseases and accidents of geography played a role but Cortez and his like didn't have to be genocidal maniacs. When you look at enough data points, Diamond's argument starts to break down. All his ideas are incredibly relevant and many can even be explanatory but he is far too deterministic.

His treatment of China is a great example. He compares it to Europe for its supposed lack of diversity. But China was the clear economic leader for longer than Europe has been since the industrial revolution. Their decisions to stop exploration (which was possibly what propelled Europe) was perfectly sensible and led to 300 years of peace and flourishing (with a few bloody downturns) while Europe was in a constant state of war. It then makes it seem as if history somehow stopped now (paging Fukuyama) but it's entirely possible that we're simply experiencing one of China's periodic downswings and in a 100 years, they will be the ones wondering why the Europeans are so backward. Or maybe the Arabs. Or maybe things will remain stable for 100 years and we're just experiencing the start of a period of great flourishing like the Rome did around AD1 and the Arab world did at the start of the Abbasid period. But many of these periods were based on growth based on extraction (killing lots of people, stealing their resources and overtaxing those left). So maybe we're in for a lot of war - because there are fewer places to do that to now. Or maybe something entirely different. Diamond's way of looking at things can be very helpful - we should not ignore the exigencies of geography and things like that. But it could too easily be used to justify very dangerous policies, as well (it was interesting to see him describe the Rwandan genocide in Collapse).

Unfortunately, the critique of Diamond can read as so much nitpicking, but it is very important in understanding people's part in all that has happened. Because this is our part. We are (simply by silent support or explicit vote) creating environments which may produce people like Cortez and his like (are producing them if you look around the world) and looking away simply because it was all preordained by geography should not be our go to option.

tjohn24 · 1ヶ月前

Ok so as someone who is a currently working historian, let me try to answer Grey's question.

I think Grey's issue is that he has a fundamentally different view of the world than a historian. He is approaching the field like a scientist, and with the lack of time machines history cannot be done as a scientist. History as a field is about rising to the challenge of finding things out without experimentation. There has been attempts to make grand theories of history but they have been met with controversy.

The most famous one is that Marx set out to explain history as human relationships with the means of production, or how we get the things we need. Another was the rise and fall of civilizations having discrete steps.

Because of these attempts, and other developments, Historians tend to be very VERY wary of reductionism (attempting to reduce complexity in order to make theoretical models) and have moved to what we'd call 'Thick Description'

Now, this was the field in about the 90s, but there was a historical transition called the cultural turn, where historians have been including theory from disciplines such as sociology, political science, gender studies, race studies, literary theory, etc. It has been a long and hard back and forth, with many historians still holding out against theory. But even those who use theory in their work tend to be very careful about scope, and the field is still in general suspicious when someone tries to make one theory to apply to all of humanity, or at the scale of continents and centuries. The Humanities in general is a very competitive, nit picky, and argumentative field, so that doesn't help either.

TL;DR: Grey is trying to approach a field like a scientist, when history is not a science, and historians like most disciplines do not like when someone from another field shows up and tells them they have everything figured out without any deference to the discipline.

gophergun · 1ヶ月前

I honestly think Grey is looking for a theory where there can't be one. There can be no tests and no repetition, no isolation of circumstances, nothing that could possibly get us any closer to the truth of the matter. We can have conjecture all we want for the fun of it, but I think making assumptions of the world based on any of these hypotheses is a folly.

Rainbow-dandelion · 1ヶ月前

If somehow the Australians took over the world in an alternate timeline he would argue that due the limited resources, humans were forced to be more creative and use them efficiently and Europe was ultimately doomed because of the abundance of materials in turn making the people lazy.

Andrew_Anthony · 1ヶ月前

I think a good physics analogy for what Grey wants is provided by cosmology. I also think by making a comparison to cosmology we can see some fundamental roadblocks to getting a 'theory of history' type understanding.

The goal of cosmology is to provide a broad strokes history of the universe. This is achieved through Standard FLRW cosmology+ inflation (aka the Big Bang Theory).

Now there are many many details that cosmology cannot account for. For example, it's useless to try to predict the exact arrangements of galaxies that we observe today. There are too many historical accidents that it's just not worth modelling (and are probably too complicated to get right even if we wanted to).

But, there are broad statistical patterns. A great example of this is the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. There is no theory about why we see * that specific * pattern of seemingly random splotches. But there is a very well tested theory of the * statistical distribution * of splotches we see, and what we observe (mostly) fits with what one expects from a 'typical' realization drawn from that distribution.

So to me it seems like the question is, can we have a 'cosmology for human history?' In other words can there be a theory of human history that predicts broad strokes of what we observe--maybe in a statistical sense--but might not reproduce every single detail of history that rely on special, small scale accidents as opposed to the broad underlying statistical, universal trends.

Well, I'm an expert on cosmology not on human history, but since it's the internet I'll give my two cents anyway. There's a few problems I see to building a cosmology-like theory of history.

Problem # 1: To me it seems like a main advantage we have in cosmology that we lack in human history is that in cosmology we can build on a very good understanding of the basic science. For example, we know the processes involved in forming the CMB because we know a lot about atomic physics and thermodynamics. Even inflation--which is very speculative but meant to provide a theory of the initial conditions, similar to what Grey wants for history--is built on a well understood structure of quantum field theory. This rigorous understanding is crucial for understanding what processes are the most important, and for showing which effects are small and can be ignored.

In building a cosmology-like theory for history it seems like a major problem is that we don't have such a rigorous understanding of 'the basic processes of history' (whatever that means) that we can cleanly separate the driving, fundamental forces from accidental details of our particular realization of human history. This seems to be reflected in the comments I've read from history buffs about GG&S where it is emphasized, for example, that geography may be a factor in determining how history played out but it is not the only factor. It sounds like Grey would say that the basic large scale trends of human history should be determined by the geography and local wildlife. OK, those sounds like big factors. But how do we make the split between what's important and what's a detail when calculating the probability a given culture will succeed? Let's say we want to calculate (or at least estimate) the percentage of the time that Europe will 'dominate the world'. Well what goes into that percentage? Let's just consider diseases as one small example of this (so we can ignore questions about free will, although I think the human factors like Brady was mentioning open up a whole other can of worms). When calculating the probabilities of success, do we want to allow for every possible disease mutation that could have happened? Or do we want to assume that diseases will 'look like' the ones we observed? Or something in the middle? Or is the probability of success insensitive to our model of disease? Does history change if the Black Death happened 100 years earlier or later? Do we want to include the timing of events like that in our probability, or do we want to hold certain events fixed? You might say that these details of things shouldn't affect the probabilities of success of a society by that much in the end, but how do we know that? In cosmology there are plenty of examples where seemingly trivial facts--such as the fact that there no stable nuclei with 5 nucleons--actually has an enormous impact on the distribution of nuclei in our current universe, and there's no way to know in advance how big an effect that kind of thing will have without being able to do a detailed calculation.

Problem # 2: Another question that seems very tricky to me is, how do we determine what trends are significant? We want to calculate the probability that Europe will successfully invade America, say. But how do we know that that event is actually significant and not itself just an accidental transient phenomena, that a full 'theory of history' should more or less ignore? In other words, how do we know we want to compute the probability that Europe invaded America? What if in 1000 years Europeans are totally wiped out, would we still find it significant that Europeans invaded America? Maybe in 1000 years if there are many more cultural revolutions and rises/falls of empires the fact that Europeans invaded America will seem like an inconsequential historical accident.

Problem # 3: There's also a major observational problem that we only get to observe one copy of human history. In cosmology this effect is called cosmic variance. When we observe the CMB on small angular scales we can see many independent repetitions of the same pattern over the whole sky and make statistical statements about how likely those patterns are given a particular cosmological model. But when we observe the CMB on large angular scales (ie, if we try to look for patterns that are only defined on a patch of sky that is say the size of a whole hemisphere) then we may be able to say something like 'this half of the sky is warmer than that half of the sky,' but with only 2 data points it's hard to do statistics to determine if this is notably unusual or just an expected fluke (people try to make sense of questions like this anyway and there's interesting work but it is hard). I think the broad, large scale history Grey is interested in has a similar 'historical variance' problem. When talking about historical trends that are only defined over entire continents or over the entire course of pre colonial history, we are sadly limited in what we can say because we only ever get to see how one copy of human history played out.

Having said all of that I am definitely being negative. I think it's worth trying to answer questions like this and it's worth seeing what progress we can make. But, I do think that Grey is being a bit too glib that such a theory is possible and that historians are simply 'missing the point' by focusing on details he claims are irrelevant.

Tl;dr: Constructing a 'cosmology for human history' is very hard because humans are much messier than atoms, and it is not as easy to separate out underlying fundamental processes from accidental features of our particular state of the universe.

BigKev47 · 1ヶ月前

People who have ascribed to a comprehensive self-consistent "Theory of History":

-Marxists

-Nazis

-Neoconservatives

-Grey?

There's no goddamn Tech Tree for humanity. We're far too complicated and interesting for such reductive STEM-kid analysis.

Ressha · 1ヶ月前

The Hello Internet Podcast.

Grey: I have a point that I already made that I want to expand upon.

Brady: Okay, but I have a point I haven't said before I'd like to say.

Grey: I'll give you half a sentence to do so.

PossibilityZero · 1ヶ月前

Grey, 1:02:47

Such brilliant trolling.

K5cents · 1ヶ月前

National baseball league lol

MatthieuG7 · 1ヶ月前

The problem with your video is not that you discuss the general theory of GGS, but that you present the facts in GGS as right, tricking a lot of people into believing all plagues really only come from animal, which, you admitted, is not really that right. And I don't think the trolling was worth spreading false facts. The video would have been a 100 time better and less controversial if it just discussed that interesting idea of the influence of starting conditions.

Offence_But · 1ヶ月前

Oh, thanks Grey! Just in time for my birthday!!

impossible4 · 1ヶ月前

And it was freezing cold.

Looks up record low in bristol for January.
looks up record low for hometown of Winnipeg, Ca in January.
Not even cold, /u/jeffdujon not even cold...

dr_volberg · 1ヶ月前

So according to Grey's summary the actual game Civilization 5 is accurate, in terms of your starting location determining the course of your game in a big way.

4Spinor · 1ヶ月前

Finally, since that YouTube teaser I've been updating podcasts in my app every two minutes

1nsaneMfB · 1ヶ月前

Grey, i've seen you use a plethora of gifs in your interaction with the internet. Do you have a personal collection of these gifs and if you do, how do you manage it?

Omni314 · 1ヶ月前

So I'm having to wait until my monday commute to listen to this, but do you find that releasing on a friday/weekend draws a bigger crowd? Or is it just released when it's done?

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