Comments on: Nobbled Savages

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:18:00 +0000

Clifford Geertz on Jared Diamond:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17850

And i just read the short piece from Reader’s Digest or wherever and was not impressed. You seem to like things neat and tidy but I don’t think that’s the way the world works.
(But 1+1 does equal 2, cars do run on gasoline and planes fly without magic.)

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:40:39 +0000

You might also want to take a look at comment #8 on the new “Cultivating Ignorance” thread, which says more or less what I was trying to convey, only much better.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:30:26 +0000

I think I made a mistake comparing Scientific American to Car and Driver. Live and learn.

However:

“History gives the Japanese and the Koreans ample grounds for mutual distrust and contempt, so any conclusion confirming their close relationship is likely to be unpopular among both peoples. Like Arabs and Jews, Koreans and Japanese are joined by blood yet locked in traditional enmity. But enmity is mutually destructive, in East Asia as in the Middle East. As reluctant as Japanese and Koreans are to admit it, they are like twin brothers who shared their formative years. The political future of East Asia depends in large part on their success in rediscovering those ancient bonds between them.”

That’s not science, and it’s silly.

I’ll put the book on my list. Right now I’m reading Edmund Burke and then I’ve promised myself I’d finish The Charterhouse of Parma. If nothing else comes my way after that I’ll pick it up.

By: eb

eb — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:23:17 +0000

I just want to clarify re: eb’s quote from GGS above: this quote appears in the epilogue of the book, and is not central at all to Diamond’s main argument.

…

Diamond may have committed the authorial sin of engaging in some grandiose and ill-founded speculation in the epilogue of his book, but we should be wary of condemning the book’s central premises based on the epilogue’s relatively tangential musings.

Agreed, although I’d susbtitute “did” for “may have.” Arguments against the points in the epilogue for the most part do not damage the central arguments of the rest of the book. But that doesn’t mean that they should not be engaged with either, simply because of where they appear.

Now, I’m not at all convinced by the critiques at Savage Minds, and like Henry I don’t quite understand why there’s so much focus on examining Diamond’s supposed racism. My point in reproducing that excerpt was to give an example of the kind of language people seem to be responding to. Because like everyone else, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:08:10 +0000

No, compared to whether Diamond is on the right track or not, they’re not important questions, or much less important. Even the decision about cars vs. mass transit needs to be informed by, say, accurate figures for energy usage. One of my favorite environmental examples, indeed, is the use of styrofoam cups vs. washing reusable cups, which as it turns out can easily consume more energy to heat the water than it takes to manfacture the disposable ones. Blathering about values before making sure of one’s facts (Quine be damned) is a waste of breath, or electrons. Read the damn book and see what you think about it.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:02:22 +0000

I’m not arguing with the book, I’m arguing with you as to whether such questions are important. Kerim et al. are discussing the framing of the issues.
It’s not a question about whether cars run on gasoline or prayers, but the implications of the preference for cars over mass transit. I don’t read Car and Driver or Scientific American for discussions of social policy.

And to really appreciate Wagner is to have a taste for a sort of overblown, drunken rhetoric of power, to want to see meaning rather than meaninglessness in absurdity. it’s all very problematic, but even fascism is good for you in moderation: it keeps you on your toes. I drink for the same reason, but I don’t drink and drive and I sing Wagner in the shower not the voting booth.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:33:21 +0000

You’re talking about what IMHO is one the later questions, rather than the first, that one should ask of a book of this kind. Moreover, you’re attempting to do so without even having read it. Do you just like to argue for the sake of being argumentative? You might better use the time to… read the book, for example.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:28:08 +0000

You’re talking about numbers and I’m talking about language. You’re talking about physics and I’m talking policy. Again, there’s a disconnect. I’m aware of it, are you?

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:06:55 +0000

Nice straw man there, seth. Speaking of game over…
Surely you grasp the concept of judging a piece of intellectual work by its quality rather than the motives of its maker. Have we gotten so postmodern that such a thing no longer matters? Solid work can readily be used for purposes remote from those of its maker, shoddy work has no use.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:02:19 +0000

Your’re a scientist, therefore, you’re not interrested in values…

game over

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:58:30 +0000

Well my answer is, I read a book like that by asking how well the author’s facts support his conclusions (suggestive but much additional work needed, would be my answer). I couldn’t care less what “values” prompted him to write it even if I could be persuaded they were objectionable ones, any more than I’ll give up listening to Wagner’s music because I can’t abide his values. I’m an unimaginative old-fashioned old fart of a scientist, what can I say. ;)

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:45:56 +0000

Steve, I’m asking a question to those on either side of the argument. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect, and that’s all I’m trying to resolve. I’m in no position to answer that question myself, and won’t pretend otherwise.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:34:37 +0000

What is the teleology behind GGS? What are the values that it seems to hold? What are the values Diamond claims for it?

Sensible people might prefer to read the book themselves and see what they think about that rather than discussing it without having read it…

By: Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:33:16 +0000

Re: “You seem to think the Scandinavian model is one of freely chosen reciprocal altruism.”

No I don’t.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:05:41 +0000

You seem to think the Scandinavian model is one of freely chosen reciprocal altruism. I don’t think such a thing exists, in Sweden of New Guinea.

Anthropologists don’t think anyone is ever ‘free’ of culture.
There is no such thing as context free value and numbers are not a value. The teleological fantasies of scientists are not science. Steven Weinberg’s defense of supercolliders is not science. And from what little I’ve read of Diamond, he seems naive as regards culture, ours or anyone’s, and policy.

I’m sounding a bit like like Larry King talking about books I haven’t read but I’m talking more about the argument over the book than the book itself.

There’s a difference between a correct observation and the meanings that are applied to color it. What is the teleology behind GGS? What are the values that it seems to hold? What are the values Diamond claims for it?

Maybe some of the people at savage minds got a little impatient. I sympathize.