Geopolitical Determinism

I think it's because geographical determinism isn't always approached with pure intentions. I know JD isn't really pure either since a lot of the claims he makes are dubious at best and seem to support an ulterior agenda. I agree that it's an overlooked idea though. I mean most people know that cities tend to pop up next to rivers so it isn't a stretch to go further with it. However, I think one other thing people dislike about it is the fact that it's a determinist view in the first place.

philosophers try to understand and define the nature of thinking based on all sorts of abstract and metaphysical definitions.

Before long, neuroscience will make that redundant

You do know that Diamond's book is considered to be racist in many aspects?

I'm not who you responded to but really? I've only heard from people who say the book lies in order to discredit racists. But you seem to be saying the opposite.

Do you know that white people merely existing is considered to be racist in many aspects?

I've never heard that, but his books are full of a lot of pretty sketchy claims. They're also some of the worst for what I call the "one book syndrome" -- where somebody reads exactly one book on a topic and suddenly thinks they're an expert, a la an undergrad who took Psych 101 for his general requirements and suddenly thinks he's qualified to diagnose people. They're not terrible books, but for some reason millions of people have read them and thought they learned more than they did, which isn't Diamond's fault, but I think that's part of why people hate him.

Diamond argues that environmental/geographical elements are the reason why the West conquered the rest. By saying this he makes Europeans conquering the world seem (literally) natural and thus exempting Europeans from all the horrible things they did.

J.M Blaut wrote a book about eurocentricism that includes Diamond's book, called "Eight Eurocentric Historians". Most historians disagree with Diamond because his argument does not hold up. It is only enjoyed and revered by people who enjoy simplicity and want easy answers for hard questions.

I fail to see how it exempts the Europeans for any horrible acts carried out during the colonial period, unless you somehow imply that other nations didn't colonize for moral reasons.

Which would be absurd, since practically every people ever have engaged in colonialism on some scale.

>I fail to see how it exempts the Europeans for any horrible acts carried out during the colonial period,
Why wouldn't it? After all, there was no ideological reasoning behind it, Europeans were just playing the role geography set up for them :) It was inevitable.

I want /int/ to leave.
/pol/ is less cancer than /int/

Because those specific immoral acts were carried out by individuals with individual agency.

Nobody forced anyone to hand out smallpox infected blankets or enslave people

I think the implication of geographical determinism is that there is no free will.

I fail to see how you come to that conclusion.

Just because the outcome of our actions is largely determined by forces outside our control, that doesn't mean we don't decide on our actions in the first place.

OK man Jared Diamond isn't the best writer but to say that he is racist for his book is laughable honestly. Explaining why you believe something happened doesn't condone it. I can say that men rape women because they are bigger and more aggressive. Does that mean I condone rape because men where "fated" to be stronger and more agressive? I don't believe so.

It's a good explanation but it doesn't account for everything. It is good at painting broad strokes, but will fail often when dealing shorter time frames. Like geographical determinism cannot describe the rise rome in any satisfactorial manor.

>Just because the outcome of our actions is largely determined by forces outside our control
>largely
exclusively*

That's all there is to this concept, if it was tagged onto other stuff you'd be right. Which is why this thing is so controversial

Jared Diamond certainly doesn't imply that his is the only answer, so I don't really know who you are referring to

Rome had a lot of valuable salt deposits. It had also a relatively large population.

The mediterranean region has top tier climate and it is a melting pot of resources and ideas from Egypt, Greece, Anatolia, Arabia and Iberia.

Rome had a very advantageous position.

If you're looking for a nation whose success is hard to explain with GeDet I would ask how the fuck Mongolia or Russia came about.

It helps to explain but it doesn't explain everything. I'm sure rome wasn't the only city with a hood hinterland and salt deposits.
It's like the great man theory, or more specifically why it is frowned upon. Great man theory puts all of history in the hands of strong willful men. While geographical determinism places it all in geography. Saying you don't follow geographical determinism doesn't mean you don't believe geography effects history.

Yes it was in an advantageous position but that isn't the only factor.
Russia has the advantage of many states throughout history. It is on the frinew of an advanced society so it is has many of the advantages of that advancement whole having much easier land to expand into.
Mongolia is another common trope of steppe empire. Because their horsemanship made theme so efficient at war. So when they could unuse they were very difficult to stop.
Explained in more detail here

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so the explanation for why a bunch of backwards nomads in the middle of nowhere ended up conquering almost the entire known world is "horses, lol"?

No, obviously not there is alot more factors that go into it but part of theirrational advantage was there were on horses than anyone else. Ignoring that is impossible.

Because most representatives practically end up with a geographical reductionism that only works when you presume muh human nature, as in geography determines society because all people always react the same to it. And because of that they fail to account for different social development in areas that have similar if not the same geography. It's idealism.

I don't think anyone on this board really opposes environmental determinism in questions of social evolution. But the environment cannot be reduced to geography alone.

>Mongolia

Genghis Khan was not an unknown bolt from the blue. Steppe Peoples had been hassling the "Civilised" world for over a thousand years at that point. Occasionally boiling out of the Steppes and burning everything, occasionally forming vast continent spanning tribal confederacies or Khanates (Goturks are the best pre-Genghis example) or busting into China and being assimilated into their culture as the ruling class (like the Xinbei of Northern Wei).

Mongols of the C12/13 just went further.

>scientifically verifiable theory
Consensus is not scientific and his idea, not theory, has had no testing done whatsoever and certainly nothing that was duplicated.

Your standards for what constitutes science and scientific are laughable. Read up on the scientific method sometime and ask yourself if he even got halfway down the list.

>philosophers try to understand and define the nature of thinking based on all sorts of abstract and metaphysical definitions.

Do you think philosophy ended with Greek metaphysics?

Smart people move to good lands, so geographical determinism is still genetic determinism

>Mongols of the C12/13 just went further.

Yes, but why? If anything nomad societies seemed on the decline in the period before the Mongolians.

>outdated
Steward, White, Sahlins, Service, and plenty of other social scientists were talking about similar ideas way before Diamond thought he invented them. Environmental determinism was basically the most popular anthropological theory in use during the 1950s and 60s. Diamond only thought he was saying something new because he isn't an anthropologist and didn't realize he was just repeating outdated ideas in a field he doesn't know much about.

>It is only enjoyed and revered by people who enjoy simplicity and want easy answers for hard questions.
This. His ideas are pop history/science and aren't taken seriously by respected academics. And it's not because they're jealous, or scared, it's because Diamond is a person who makes overly simplistic arguments, partially because when he's talking about anthropology and history, he's obviously out of his depth.

>Diamond only thought he was saying something new because he isn't an anthropologist and didn't realize he was just repeating outdated ideas in a field he doesn't know much about
So how come he made such a big splash? (not contesting you) Nice presentation of the theory, plus some marketing (the opposite suggested here ), current liberal PC climate?

>scientifically verifiable
Yeah, nah.