Is this a good & credible historical book?

Why is geographic determinism bullshit?

It ignores human factors which are equally important. While it may seem overly sentimental to state it, human emotion and the ability of some to manipulate it has had a huge impact on the outcome of historical events

It's not complete bullshit but Jaredo-kun basically thinks it's all that matters and that's why his New Guniean friends are so behind

It ignores systems

Go read Why Nations Fail, to start

This
Diamond sometimes spends entire half-pages trying to say "b-but I'm not racist"

>domesticatedzebra.jpg

also, extremely selective evidence

a joke desu

Just read this it's where he grafted most of his ideas from

Because it is determinism. Determinism is only relevant in mathematics and the hard sciences, and in the hard sciences true determinism generally requres full knowledge about a system - not just its geography.

Everything is deterministic, some systems just get hopelessly complex and impossible to fully analyze in that regard

>everything is deterministic
Not under quantum physics in the abscence of hidden variables.
The biggest problem with determinism as it relates to history though is that it requires perfect knowledge if you want to say something deterministically meaningful, which in and of itself is not meaningful because it basically requires you to know everything so you can know everything.

I want to say, given our current knowledge of physics, there is more to say that the universe is deterministic rather than not. It would take quite a serious, religious, discovery in quantum physics to contradict that.

If we can apply hard physical laws on a microscale and in a vacuum we can extend the logic to say that our macro world, simply a huge and complex amalgamation of micro physical properties, is deterministic as well, just with far more inputs and outputs.

user do you know how uncertainty works? This isn't revolutionary in any way, this has been around for almost a hundred years at this point. The idea of uncertainty is that it is literally completely random, unless there are so-called hidden variables.
Furthermore it remains literally meaningless in almost all cases because under even deterministic physics if you want to know something you need to know everything.
Under mathematics you can avoid this by simply focusing on, say, whether or not an expression in the reals is infinite, but you can't do that in history.

>If we can apply hard physical laws on a microscale and in a vacuum we can extend the logic to say that our macro world
>if we can
Yeah about that...

What I'm saying is, thus far, we have been able to locate variables, their input, and reaction. Given that precedent, what is "uncertain" are simply other variables with the same sequence of action/reaction, input/output physics. At least, that is what you could surmise from the entire body of work we have thus far.

I'm not saying it's impossible that there are truly uncertain factors present on a quantum scale that may remain so, I'm saying that it would be sheer speculation to claim that, as opposed to what would be logically possible according to what we've already observed. To that end, as the foundation of physics is based off of theories that """could""" still be disproved, but essentially exist as law because every form of observation has yet to do so, I would say that the assertion that everything is deterministic has more evidence to support it than the assertion that it is not.

So at this point in time it may be exceedingly difficult to calculate historical determinism in human society, but it isn't impossible. To throw out the potential for it wholesale would be anti-scientific spiritualism. And maybe if the field of sociology wasn't as mired in subjective garbage and propaganda as it is now there could be real, talented and committed professionals working within it to try to compile a rough way of doing it.

To continue, a lot of people think of humans as extraordinarily complex and impredictable beings, but I think that's fallacious and simply rooted in our own bias as humans.

There are simple, basal, creatures, single celled organisms, ants, other insects, that respond and react and behave in very predictable ways. Then there are creatures a level of sentience above this who are a little harder to predict and understand (given what we know and observe in a controlled environment) but can still glean a roughly comprehensive knowledge about, like a rodent.

Humans are much more complex and a few tiers above this but that's it, just added layers of complexity and deterministic inputs and potential outputs given an array of factors. It wouldn't be impossible to compile a comprehensive understanding of our behavior it would just be a monumental task probably out of the scope of our current psychological resources.

>What I'm saying is, thus far, we have been able to locate variables, their input, and reaction
user I'm not sure you know what you're talking about since you already amde a flat out false claim that you can apply 'hard physical laws' on the micro and extend it to the macro. This is simply untrue, and one of the great open questions in physics is 'why the fuck do they not match up'.

>exceedingly difficult
It is literally impossible. You need truly perfect information at one point in time, which is something that QM tells us we don't have and never will, and even given perfect information you'd still need to prove hidden variables exist and then find them.

>""""could"""" still be disproved
user do you know what uncertainty is? I don't mean the everyday version, I mean the physical / mathematical meaning of the term. Under physical and non-statistical mathematics it doesn't mean that 'we don't know'. Uncertainty there means 'we know, that we do not know'. Huge difference.

You really need to try taking physics past high school before talking about things you don't understand.

>There are simple, basal, creatures, single celled organisms, ants, other insects, that respond and react and behave in very predictable ways.
Predictable is not the same as deterministic. In fact they are not even related. To be predictable is to say, "they almost always do this so it's safe to assume next time I poke them they'll act the same way".
Sentience is not special. At all. You're the one who's rooted in his bias as humans. Sentience from a physical point of view is simply a result of mechanical, and possibly quantum mechanical, operation, spiritualists and philosophers aside.

>monumental task
From a mathematical point of view it may well be impossible, because there is a hard mathematical limit on computational power by the nature of what consitutes information.

The only time I've ever seen this book is in America. People getting triggered by it is giving it way more publicity than it would normally get.

Why the hate ? What is it about?

STOP POSTING THIS FUCKING BOOK

THIS IS THE BIGGEST BAIT FOR Veeky Forums I SWEAR TO ALLAH

>user I'm not sure you know what you're talking about since you already amde a flat out false claim that you can apply 'hard physical laws' on the micro and extend it to the macro. This is simply untrue, and one of the great open questions in physics is 'why the fuck do they not match up'.

How is it flat out false? It hasn't been disproven, it just can't be proven as it stands. I thought that was the point of this argument.

>It is literally impossible. You need truly perfect information at one point in time, which is something that QM tells us we don't have and never will, and even given perfect information you'd still need to prove hidden variables exist and then find them.

QM is still in its infancy. Are you really trying to say that just because something isn't scientifically possible at this point in time, that it always won't be?

>user do you know what uncertainty is? I don't mean the everyday version, I mean the physical / mathematical meaning of the term. Under physical and non-statistical mathematics it doesn't mean that 'we don't know'. Uncertainty there means 'we know, that we do not know'. Huge difference.

As our knowledge stands.

>Predictable is not the same as deterministic. In fact they are not even related. To be predictable is to say, "they almost always do this so it's safe to assume next time I poke them they'll act the same way".
Sentience is not special. At all. You're the one who's rooted in his bias as humans. Sentience from a physical point of view is simply a result of mechanical, and possibly quantum mechanical, operation, spiritualists and philosophers aside.

I never said they were equivalent. And predictability is still indicative of determinism, even if it doesn't prove it. If you can establish total predictability you have a deterministic relationship.

What I'm getting from this is that you're the kind of guy who thinks all we know is what we'll always know

If my assertion that the universe is entirely deterministic is flat out false, feel free to disprove it mathematically by the way

if you can't then I am free to argue for it hypothetically

being an expert in mathematics and physics I'm sure you understand that process

>How is it flat out false?
Do you not know the 'relativity and QM are incompatible what the fuck do we do' open question? It is literally the point of shit like superstring theory, trying to make them compatible when everything we know right now says they are completely incompatible and mathematically don't work together.

>QM is still in its infancy. Are you really trying to say that just because something isn't scientifically possible at this point in time, that it always won't be?
>QM in its infancy
QM started almost 100 years ago user. Classical E&M was finished within a hundred years (not that QM is actually finished), but something as basic as uncertainty is generally not going to be up for debate, it's one of the basic foundations.
user it's not a problem of measurement, it's a problem of mathematical definitions. And even if it is true that maybe this will be proved false (very unlikely, as the uncertainty principle is well grounded and we even have a value for the minimum uncertainty), you cannot make the positive claim that determinism works by assuming that it will be overturned.

>as our knowledge stands
>hurr I'm going to make positive statements directly opposed to what all knowledge says because hey it MIGHT be overturned
Are you serious? I'm telling you what our knowledge tells us. If you shove it aside because it's not convinient for your preferences, you're the one insulting science with your anti-scientific speculative drivel, not me.

>And predictability is still indicative of determinism
No it is not. Predictability is extrapolation. Determinism means if you know one you know everything. One is trying to fit a distribution to x^2. The other is saying "the world literally is x^2 this is what it will be at all points in time".

>What I'm getting from this is that
You're the kind of person who just refuses to fucking listen to things he doesn't like to hear while being uneducated and truly fucking ignorant about what he's talking about.

>feel free to disprove it mathematically by the way
First of all you've also made positive statements that "Everything is deterministic" and that "It would take quite a serious, religious, discovery in quantum physics to contradict that" so don't fucking try to shove the burden of proof on me alone
Second of all, look up what the uncertainty principle is and its various proofs. As long as it holds perfect information cannot be possible. We can get very close, close enough for almost everything on the micro and macro scale, but 'close' is not the same as 'exact'.
Then look at all the shit like the observer efect and all the shit that QM spouts that basically says everything is up to chance. The position of any one object is actually a statistical distribution according to QM. A baseball can phase through itself and turn into a hammer in midair for literally no reason and due to what amounts to an actual true random number generator, but it doesn't because Planck's constant is absolutely miniscule and the possibility is vanishingly small at all normal physical values - much like relativity, it isn't relevant most of the time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Given the true random nature and the true uncertain nature of QM, unless it is completely fucking overturned, physical reality is not deterministic.
Sorry for your boner, I miss determinism too - it's a great mechanic for a metadivine or ontological being in a story.

I don't have this book but i read a little of it.
What's super controversial about it, can someone give me a rundown?

First of all I'm not the one who has been needlessly tossing in an ad hominem every other line in order to superficially lend credence to my own argument. In my experience, the smartest and most knowledgeable people regarding a subject have always been the most patient and cool-headed and this simply indicates to me that you are operating off of the same kind of cursory and biased basis that you accuse me of (which I don't totally deny, I'm making a large and absolute claim).

The current consensus in QM may be uncertainty but it is not law. There is no assertion that we have reached our limit in what we can observe and determine. A consensus has been turned on its head in the past.

I guess the problem here is that it may be impossible to establish a complete and deterministic system. It is impossible to say that it is impossible to establish a deterministic system. So if I were to say that the universe is deterministic it would be a matter of faith.

I have more faith in the concept of determinism than I do in the concept of a higher power, being, free will, or supernaturality and randomness. Maybe it's fallacious but then I again I think the idea of impossibility is as well.

It's not "controversial", but here's a collection of reddit posts that give a rundown of why people hate it
reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22

Short version:
- it makes factually incorrect claims
- it refuses to address exceptions to the rule
- it is a 'just so' story that ignores the story of how it came to be (for example it doesn't address the Indian, Persian, and Chinese empires that lead the world but somehow fell behind Europe despite having the same or better geographical conditions but earlier
- it uses a poor and unscientific method of research. Diamond seeks facts to fit his narrative, he does not seek a narrative to fit the observed facts. This ties into the previous two points.
- Jared's argument does not fit the grand narrative. Why have places like North Africa, Asia and the Mideast succumbed and fallen behind? What about when Europe was basically just dudes in mudhuts despite the better geographic conditions? In the end his narrative doesn't conform to history at all, simplistic or not.

>A consensus has been turned on its head in the past.
Your entire fucking argument is completely and UTTERLY based in 'what if it's overturned'. We have mathematically proven that uncertainty is a fundamental part of the physical world and there's just no way around it as far as we know. Yes, it may be overturned but to tie this to history it is as if you claim the Roman Empire were entirely populated by spacefaring Africans who had already colonized Rigel and the LMC despite all evidence to the contrary because 'what if' we found evidence tomorrow that proves this. It simply doesn't work that way.

>higher power etc.
Where the actual fuck are you pulling this bullshit from?

>randomness
I don't care what your feelings are. Science is cold and hard. You are not. You claim I was being anti-scientific but here you are literally denying science.

The uncertainty principle is not a law, it hasn't been mathematically proven as such. I don't know how you could say, without a doubt, that there exists an upper limit on our ability to observe and understand, when we have never reached it. That position will continue to be challenged. I don't think it's "if" I think precedent shows that it is "when". A total belief in uncertainty is an admission of defeat and you may as well scrap the field of QM as a whole.

>The uncertainty principle is not a law,
In which case neither is gravity. Nothing in science in infalliable.

>it hasn't been mathematically proven as such
...yes it has? What the hell are you on about? Are you saying that all of QM is just random speculation thought up in the minds of dreamers with no basis? Why do you think someone would even come up with this uncertainty principle, flying in the face of all physics up until that point, unless he had derived it and couldn't find a way around his results?

>I don't think it's "if" I think precedent shows that it is "when".
And I think that your bullshit needs to stop. You are arguing off what-ifs. You think things have been overturned? But they haven't - the laws of classical mechanics have never ben overturned (they've been EXPANDED under Einstein, not overturned). Hamilton's equations continue to work. The observation that water flows downhill has never been refuted. Winter is colder than summer and this coincides with shorter days, the cause-and-effect nature of this has been known since literally prehistory. The E&M field equations continue to apply. Many things have never been overturned and likely never will.

>A total belief in uncertainty is an admission of defeat and you may as well scrap the field of QM as a whole.
Wew fucking lad, how the fuck are you getting this shit? Uncertainty in mathematics, once again, doesn't mean 'we don't know', it is 'we know that we cannot know'. It is an ACCOMPLISHMENT, and not one that kill future progress either - did you think it's literally all there is to QM?

As I said you literally don't know what you're talking about. This isn't ad homenim at this point or even the first time I said it, you've demonstrated your ignorance repeatedly. Imagine someone who's never written Assembly or even looked at memory but only written some AP-level Java talking about Assembly. This is what you're doing.