What are the reasons western civilization became the dominant civilization in history?

Right place, right time. Banking had a really big influence on the west's success, and the important parts of Europe were spared from being raped by Mongols, which the Islamic world was not.

>this meme again
Tell me what exactlydid we take over from the Greeks/Romans in terms of thought?
Not saying that thinking in bodies and geometric shapes is outdated, but it was completely absorbed into the Faustian worldview, while loosing its essence.

They industrialised first and so could btfo pretty much every country pretty easily. They used this dominant position to build massive empires. In a more philosophical sense its pretty debateable just what western civilisation is and whether it is the most dominant civilisation thoughout history or whether its just the most dominant for the past few hundred years. Also how much of western civilisation is really actually western or is just a natural product of industrialisation and development. Overall I think its a pretty /pol/ tier question.

I think he's doing a present value analysis, but I agree it should be compounded interest.

But that's what he also says when he talks about the group being targeted being particularly prone to criminality. He shouldn't have done that IMO, but the general historical argument makes sense.

Safe, unexploited, resource-rich lands. The riverlands of the Middle East, India, and China were farmed for thousands of years to exhaustion and under constant threat of steppe and desert raiders. Europe's great northern plain in contrast were only cleared recently and isolated from the steppe. This allowed for incredible population growth and dense industrial development safe from Mongol like invasions. And while climate change favored the nomads in Asia and North Africa, the warm period of the Medieval era favored the Christianized colonists that displaced the pagan tribes of the north.

Western civilization is dead. What we have today is a global behemoth fueled largely by American cultural imperialism.

This + All the natives in the Americas were hilariously vulnerable to European diseases, which ultimately meant that European nations would have two entire continents to exploit, and with no competition from outside powers like Ottoman Turkey, Persia, China and India.

One theory I read a while back is that a people's desire for expansion is determined by how far their distant ancestors had to travel to get food, while average group IQ is determined by how many people their distant ancestors interacted with.

On oke end of the spectrum were the Japanese. They grew mainly rice, a very dense crop. This allowed them to live densely: many people to interact with, but not a lot of travel. This is why the Japanese have such a high average IQ, but had relatively little drive for colonialism and expansion.

On the other end of the spectrum are Africans: pre colonial Africa never had widespread agriculture, which meant a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Large travel diatances, sparse inhabitation, made them very aggressive/expansionist, low average IQ.

Europeans grew a lot of wheat and other hops. These weren't a dense crop, so lots of travelling to harvest and trade, but they are also a complicated crop, they require expensive infrastructure (mills) to process, that not everyone could own, this brought people together (lots of people to interact with). Ot was this balance of both characteristics that made it possible for Europeans to dominate the world, they had both the desire and the intelligence to make it happen.

No, you can't explain complex issues with such a simple "theory". Nations change, cultures change and people change all the time.
Japan in WW2 was completely different than modern Japan. WW2 Japan doesn't fit this model at all.

>alternative hypothesis

Reminder that alt hyp is a shitty neo-nazi blog that outright says they arent academic and nothing is peer reviewed. Go look at the websites QandA section

white, nordic people leading them

>He believes peer-review is a meaningful process

thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/21/peer-review-replication-and-publication-bias/

>peer reviewed doesnt matter because muh neo-nazi blog said so
really made me think

Is there any website that has a similar lay out to Veeky Forums without the rabid anti-intelectualism and general /pol/-ness?

It cites studies and uses data from scientific journals.

The fact that you need someone to decide for you what is an acceptable opinion reflects more on you that that blogger or I.

/leftypol/ and Krautchan

>The fact that you need someone to decide for you what is an acceptable opinion reflects more on you that that blogger or I.
no it doesnt especially when the blog itself admits its not academic, nor is it peer reviewed. trash pseudo-history.

>The academy, not in any abstract sense, but in a particular, physical material sense is always right

This is your position

>always right
No, but it's still much better than a random blog.

No, it's just bad math and worse reasoning.

We have a generation of say, 1 million people in a given locale, halfway broken down between men and women. We execute 1.5% of the men. Then the next generation rolls around, but unbless something catastrophic happens or there's some breakthrough in carrying capacity, the next generation is also going to be about 1 million people. We execute 1.5% of those men too.

At the end of the day, how much of the male population has been executed? 1.5%. Not 45%, or some compound interest model. Each generation is a new set.

Krautchan is the single worst imageboard in existence. I spent 5 years there and I still wonder why I haven't left much earlier.

>a shitty neo-nazi blog that outright says its not peer reviewed or academic is always right
this is your position.

You're conflating the 1.5% as a proportion of all people with the 45% most criminal genes, its a present value analysis. Tactical context denial.

Why?
I said I think one of his arguments was formed poorly, it would have been better if he did an actual present value analysis instead of dumbing down the maths. Regardless, both of you are engaging in logical fallacies. Appeal to authority is not an argument.

>Regardless, both of you are engaging in logical fallacies. Appeal to authority is not an argument.
so are you, look up what the fallacy fallacy is user. Again, althyp is a stupid neo-nazi blog interested in promoting psuedo-science and psuedo-historic propaganda.

>Why
Because. Seriously, stop being retarded.

>Appeal to authority is not an argument.
You don't know what this term means.

>Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument. As the audience, allowing an irrelevant authority to add credibility to the claim being made.
People who publish in peer-reviewed journals are an authority. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's still better than a random blog.

You're not presenting an argument besides a fallacy so it doesn't apply.
>Again, althyp is a stupid neo-nazi blog interested in promoting psuedo-science and psuedo-historic propaganda.
Where's the refutation of anything he has to say?

Doesn't matter anyways. In 20 years we will have definitive proof, either from honest Western academics or from Chinese academics that genetics is significantly more determinant of behavioral predispositions than the amount of money spent on schools or stereotype threat or whatever rationalization the status quo comes up with to justify universal human rights dogma.

>People who publish in peer-reviewed journals are an authority. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's still better than a random blog.
People can randomly generate text and academic journals will accept them as valid papers. How can that type of system be a valid authority on anything but how much a failure it is?

>You're not presenting an argument besides a fallacy so it doesn't apply.
what is the fallacy fallacy user?

>Doesn't matter anyways. In 20 years we will have definitive proof,
oh, definitive proof, as in, what you have now isnt proof at all! Good job admitting its all baseless bullshit user.

>SOMETIMES PEER REVIEWED PAPERS ARENT THAT GOOD SO THIS MEANS MY NON PEER REVIEWED NEO-NAZI BLOG IS TOTALLY CORRECT!

No, as in we will have the mechanistic bio-chemical, hard-science descriptions of it.

Right now twin studies show a heritability of intelligence equal to the heritability of height - something commonly accepted to be primarily genetically determined.

/thread

No, it means that peer-review confers onto a paper no meaningful credentials.

The standard of being an attempt to study something isn't even met.

what is the fallacy fallacy user? Why do you conveniently use peer reviewed research when it benefits your your propaganda point you are trying to push, and then also disregard peer reviewed research as shitty when you have no evidence to back up your other claims?

I certainly acknowledge problems with this theory, it's incomplete and there are holes, but while I have no academic background in anthropology, I don't think it should be completely disregarded.

If you shorten the hypothesised timeframe necessary for changes in group IQ or attitude towards expansion to a few generations, it better fits Japan for example, also note growing attitude for expansion for centuries prior to WWII in Japan.

This could also explain why urban areas tend to be more liberal than rural areas and have a slightly higher IQ, denser population, less distance to travel.

It's also not the only factor, things like geopolitics obviously have an affect as well, which could cause short term changes that disregard long term trends.

Thoughts?

>No, it means that peer-review confers onto a paper no meaningful credentials.
thats wrong though

I don't claim peer-review confers onto a study any extra legitimacy.

No, if we can provide consistent examples of peer-review processes failing to filter out things that are obvious gibberish that means peer-review means fails to meet the standard of being an actual statement.

It cannot filter out truth-value propositions from randomly generated text.

>I don't claim peer-review confers onto a study any extra legitimacy.
yes you do based on the fact that you just mentioned peer reviewed research to give credibility to your political and social views. You conveniently do so when it beneifits your argument, then suddenly change course and claim peer reviewed doesnt matter when something else you claim has no evidence or proof to back it up.

>No, if we can provide consistent examples of peer-review processes failing to filter out things that are obvious gibberish that means peer-review means fails to meet the standard of being an actual statement.
but that is retard logic user. So everything that is peer reviewed is wrong?

>yes you do based on the fact that you just mentioned peer reviewed research to give credibility to your political and social views
Where did I say my studies are peer-reviewed therefore they're correct?

No, it means that peer-review doesn't provide any quality standard.

It keeps as much garbage as it does gold.

Pretty much every group of people was expansionist in their history. Some achieved more success than the others.

a lot of things
I guess Greek and Roman civilisations, dense population, perfect climate, fertile lands, lots of ressources
and even better since 2 centuries because of the industrial revolution they got first

>Right now twin studies show a heritability of intelligence equal to the heritability of height - something commonly accepted to be primarily genetically determined.
its ogre user. you already fucked up your argument by evoking peer reviewed research to give legitimacy to some of your claims, while claiming peer reviewed doesnt matter to other aspects of your argument that has no proof. Youre neo-nazi blog is a shit source and literally no one takes it seriously.

No. There are better peer-reviewed journals and worse. A controversial article published in a peer-reviewed journal with a high impact factor will achieve a lot of publicity. Other scientists will try to replicate the result or dispute its findings.
No one cares about non peer-reviewed journals.

>its ogre user. you already fucked up your argument by evoking peer reviewed research to give legitimacy to some of your claims, while claiming peer reviewed doesnt matter to other aspects of your argument that has no proof. Youre neo-nazi blog is a shit source and literally no one takes it seriously.
The actual study is the source of legitimacy and truth, not the peer-review process.

Are you that much of a brainlet that you can't distinguish between the two?

I'm not arguing a contrapositive, I'm arguing a negation. Or are you trying to conflate both of them purposefully?

>The actual study is the source of legitimacy and truth, not the peer-review process.
do you not know what peer reviewed means user? Its just when other experts fact check an argument. Now, remember how you said " something commonly accepted" Who were you referring to other than other experts in that field?

So why not say a particular journal is authoritative rather than peer-review generally, which you have just acknowledged has gradations of quality.

If you two weren't so concerned about defending the academy's shitty practices, you could look at the website and see that there's substantial evidence that a lot of academic journals have basically zero quality control.

thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/21/peer-review-replication-and-publication-bias/

>do you not know what peer reviewed means user? Its just when other experts fact check an argument.
No, its when journals approve or deny a paper - usually on the say-so of a post-doc with no accomplishments of his own. People that actually contribute to the development of knowledge don't sit down and review papers for academic journals.

>Now, remember how you said " something commonly accepted" Who were you referring to other than other experts in that field?
I was referring to them. The argument is that they accept the heritability of height as primarily genetic because there's no strong political content to that finding. But when we look at intelligence there is and that's when the acceptance (in the west) retreats.

If you look at Chinese academics and Chinese textbooks, they take a racialist and in some cases biological determinist position.

>No, its when journals approve or deny a paper - usually on the say-so of a post-doc with no accomplishments of his own. People that actually contribute to the development of knowledge don't sit down and review papers for academic journals.
peer reviewed means that something was look over (reviewed) by other in that field (peers) user. And you already exposed yourself as using peer reviewed research to push your political ideology when it suited you, and then argued that peer reviewed is not only unnecessary, but highly flawed system when it comes to other points of your worldview which have no evidence to back them up. You are basically pissing in the wind at this point in your pathetic attempt to save face after your neo-nazi blog got called out and you ended up proving your own point wrong

Okay guy, when you're ready to have a discussion, I'll be waiting for you. But you're either lying thinking that I won't pick up on it or are actually a brainlet.

No, I'm going off of what he said, which I will again quote.

>>What Henry Harpending and Peter Frost argued in their paper Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification was that from around 1000 AD to 1750 AD, about 1.5% of the male population was executed for some sort of crime, either by court of by mob.OVER 30 GENERATRIONS THIS ADDS UP TO 45% OF THE MALES or just 22.5% of the population. But the effect on whatever genotypic correlates with criminality will be greater than this.

Capitalization mine.He then goes on to assert that the genotypics are BIGGER. The guy is a fucktard.

But if all groups have the same desire for expansion, then success expanding would have to depend on another parameter, say group IQ. Since Japan and China have a slightly higher average IQ than Europe, you'd expect they wouĺd have the most success expanding followed by Europe, which is not the case. For centuries prior to WWII while Europe had touched every corner of the planet, Japan did not expand to easily accessible places such as Eastern Russia, Pacific Islands, East Indies, Australia, etc... So why not? So either group desire for expansion differs between groups, or there are other characteristics at play, or more likely both.

But back to the earlier argument, if you acknowledge average IQ and desire for expansion differs between groups, then that begs the question, why?