Cog,
JD starts with the question of How is it that Europe came to dominate – it’s the whole quest for ultimate origins thing in the rumination about why he chose to write the book. If the book doesn’t really answer that question (but merely speculates at the end), then what was the point of it? The whole thing is a boondoggle.

I’m about to order GGS but I’d like an opposing text so I can better understand why it is so controversial.

Diamond’s book actually has very little to say about why Europe, as opposed to other Eurasian civilizations, came to dominate the modern world. After hundreds of pages of discussion of human prehistory and history up to roughly 1400, Diamond appends a tentative hypothesis, with many qualifications, about why Europe rather than China might have come to dominate the modern world. According to you, for daring to make such a guess, Diamond’s entire book can be dismissed as “bad” and therefore comparable to Intelligent Design.

I don’t know whether your misrepresentation of Diamond’s text stems from dishonesty or simple ignorance; but either way you’re scarcely going to convince anybody who’s actually read the book.

Another nomination for a good “Big History” book that explains these issues “The World that Trade Created” py Topik and Pomeranz.
GGS is the Intelligent Design of history. Nobody wants to take on the details of the argument because they are so absurd.

The post that kicked off this discussion was trying to explain an observed fact, namely that Jared Diamond’s ideas are popular today among educated Westerners. Over the course of the discussion, two causal factors have been suggested for this fact:

A. Diamond’s thesis is interesting, carefully reasoned, and backed by enough evidence to be worthy of investigation.

B. Diamond’s thesis is psychologically appealing.

The posts of Ozma, Kerim, and others at Savage Minds appear to think that (A) is simply beyond the pale, and hence unworthy of consideration. This leads them to spin out a series of rather elaborate speculations about (B). They additionally seem to think that the truth or falsehood of (A) is irrelevant to whether people accept speculations about (B).

But this is nonsense. If (A) is true, then it weakens one’s confidence in the truth of any speculations about (B) (in Bayesian terms, let C be the observed popularity of Diamond’s ideas; if A and B are causal variables related to C, then observation of A “explains away” B). So various people—- from Brad DeLong, to Henry, to numerous commenters at all these blogs—- have been trying to argue for (A).

Meanwhile, Ozma et al. have merely continued spinning elaborate explanations for (B), and ignored or dismissed (A).

Hence, these two groups have been talking past each other.

Now, elsewhere, by way of explaining why (A) should be ignored, Diamond’s critics have compared his ideas to creationism, witch-hunting, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Ozma, especially has hit the “I’m an authority with professional training, and I think it’s absurd!” note pretty hard. If Diamond’s ideas really were akin to creationism, witch-hunting, and the Protocols, then she would be justified in doing so.

But this is plainly not the case. Consider, for example, why we believe creationism to be worthy of ridicule, rather than debate. First, creationism has been carefully and comprehensively debunked: there’s even a thorough set of FAQs about creationism. Diamond’s ideas have not been rebutted with anything remotely approaching this level of comprehensiveness. Second, there’s universal agreement among relevant experts that creationism is fundamentally unworthy of consideration. No such consensus exists for Diamond. Many people in biology, history, and the various social sciences find Diamond’s ideas plausible. And at least one anthropology grad student blogger, who doesn’t look like a kook to me, seems to find it plausible too.

Lastly, and most importantly for laypeople, the experts who find creationism absurd can, when pressed, come up with succinct and crystal-clear explanations for why it’s a load of bull. In doing so, they evince a rock-solid grasp of evolutionary theory, the biological literature, and creationism itself.

Ozma et al., by contrast, have cited an anthropology article that’s irrelevant, at best, displayed various gross misunderstandings of Diamond’s ideas and text, and otherwise clouded the waters by squirting copious octopus ink. Now, when you have experts who are unable even to properly cite into their own discipline’s literature, that doesn’t give you a great deal of confidence in their expertise. And when those experts flippantly deride the motives of those who disagree with them, and are terrible writers to boot, one isn’t inclined to take them very seriously as intellectuals either.

As to debating creationism as a popular belief – whole different set of questions. My sense is that tactically it is past time to attack intelligent design directly and unambiguously. But this is purely a tactical judgement.

Is there a dfference in law between acts committed for the purpose of having a specific outcome and acts committed that merely have the same result? Isn’t this question part of current constitutional debate?

And quoting Ozma at S. M. in the context of her refernce to the Protocals of the Elders of Zion:

“Many people believe that the way to take on “creation science” is to show why it is factually wrong. I don’t agree. The motor of creation science is not in the world of facts. Whack the mole of creation science and what pops up? Intelligent design. One has to go after the surrounding framework.”

That was my point in the link to Pharyngula.
How do we respond the creationism as a popular belief?

(And this discussion gets referred to s po-mo bullshit?
Some great politics here, really.)

Not in any of the posts I’ve seen. You’ve said you disagree with it, but you haven’t given any substantive criticism of any of the main points of the GG&S argument.

“JD of course can’t re-write history to fit my present day political concerns—but I take your implication with that statement to be, history happened how it happened, tough beans, deal with it. that cultivation of that mindset is part of why JD-style accounts disturb me, but anyhoo.”

Obviously that would be a naive viewpoint: but there are some indisputable facts – Europe did dominate other cultures – and JD has produced a coherent account which seems to fit the known facts quite well. If you don’t like the political implications, what is needed is a similarly coherent alternative account, not just “I don’t like it”. Indeed, GG&S is itself a response to the racist “Europeans dominated because they’re smarter” account.

You haven’t as far as I can see, come up with anything that even begins to approximate an argument that might persuade someone who wasn’t already in agreement with you. Instead, you’ve articulated a set of vague dislikes and rather disconnected criticisms. You’ve certainly repeatedly avoided addressing my request for clarification. You don’t seem to want to be pinned down as making a clear set of claims, backed up by arguments and facts, which people can then agree with or disagree with.

Shorter version: what Tim says.

RC —well, I do think his account is wrong and I have gone ahead and criticized it. JD of course can’t re-write history to fit my present day political concerns—but I take your implication with that statement to be, history happened how it happened, tough beans, deal with it. that cultivation of that mindset is part of why JD-style accounts disturb me, but anyhoo.

finally, the “write the book you’d like better yourself” does make rather a resounding sign-off, doesn’t it? But the implications are not so sensible. Most authors hope for discussion of their books—most authors would kill for the volume of discussion JD has gotten, in fact. And the way to get that is controversy—some people like your book, some people don’t. Not “some people like your book, everyone else shuts up and goes home and writes their own book.”

is the second reading going to win out?”

Well maybe not, but that’s absolutely not Diamond’s fault: he’s doing his best to tell the big story of cultural/technological history as it is, not as it ought to be. If you think his account is wrong, go ahead and criticize it. But don’t ask him to rewrite history to fit with your own present-day political concerns. If that’s the book you want, write it yourself.

But look—I know that’s not what you meant. You meant something about distributive justice, equality of outcomes despite inequality of inputs, that kind of thing. How did you get so sanguine about people’s interest in that? If Diamond (if correct) can be read one of two ways:

1) whopeee! you’re off the hook!
2) you really have some (god-given, destiny-awarded) unfair advantages and should give some back—god and destiny probably didn’t really mean for it to turn out that way…

is the second reading going to win out?

Some people are strong, some are weak. Some are good, some are bad. They’re separate qualities. Saying “X is strong because …” has no bearing on the question “Is X good or bad”. So you’re criticizing something that is no part of Diamond’s argument (and I strongly suspect it’s something he wouldn’t even agree with).

Let’s try your logic on a more specific case. It was inevitable that the British would win the Battle of Omdurman because “we had got/the Maxim gun, and they had not”; were they to blame for killing 20000 people ? Hell yes, of course they were.

If anything, I think Diamond’s argument should lead us to place more responsibility/blame on Europeans for the course of history: if you believe Europeans had most of the advantages in dealing with other cultures, then it’s clear they should bear most of the responsibility for the outcomes.