Civilization

What Hacker News says

1. markdog12Aug 2017
   I read Our Kind over a decade ago, and thought it was a very good book at the time, but its central thesis, that culture dominates biology, is overstated. I haven't read Why the West Rules for Now, but just looking at its wiki page, it looks to be a complete rehash of Guns, Germs and Steel? The title made me think of The West and the Rest, excellent book: https://www.amazon.ca/Civilization-West-Rest-Niall-Ferguson/...
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2. jsmcgdFeb 2014
   The differences between the successes of north and south America has been explored by economists. One significant factor was the lack of property rights of south Americans. Basically traditional serfdom was exported to south America, whereas the people in the north were able to buy and own their land allowing them to become independently wealthy. Those in the south had to pass nearly all their wealth to the landlords.

   There are also other factors like the dominant protestant work ethic in the north (i.e. that working hard is the best way to get close to God, as opposed to focusing on observing dogmatic traditions).

   There was also a more established rule of law in the north and there are other differences. So although the potential for similar outcomes was there at the start when the Americas was being founded, they set off on wildly different trajectories.

   Edit: I'd recommend reading Civilization by Niall Ferguson.

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3. pajopOct 2013
   I'm trying to think now what would be the opposite of this? Books that are completely counter-intuitive, that forces you to rethink your original Weltanschaunng in the first place - Niall Ferguson's "Civilization: The West and the Rest" and Nassim Taleb's "AntiFragile: Things that Gain from Disorder" comes to mind. Even rereading Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" can give you this counter-intuitive insight.
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4. patrickkOct 2012
   > I don't see how mathematical contributions hundreds of years ago have any relevance to the modern world.

   Math is timeless unless it's mistaken.

   ...there’s an alternative math metaphor we might use: calculus. The calculus metaphor asks whether and how we can figure out exactly what’s going to happen. Take NASA and the Apollo missions, for instance. You have to figure out where the moon is going to be, exactly. You have to plan whether a rocket has enough fuel to reach it. And so on. The point is that no one would want to ride in a statistically, probabilistically-informed spaceship.

   http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/20400301508/cs183class1

   The origins of calculus can be traced to ancient times. Moon rockets. Let that sink in.

   Elon Musk and anyone else who pushes that envelope must stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before him, including Arabic mathematicians (indirectly).

   What about mathematics that are thousands of years old, i.e. geometry from the ancient Greeks? Buildings with architecture based on the golden ratio[1] are aesthetically very pleasing, e.g. Georgian architecture[2]. Far nicer and better proportioned than most of the shit that's hastily thrown up all over the world today.

   Every time you fire up your computer, you're taking advantage of boolean algebra[3], first laid down in the 1850s by George Boole, which is critical to modern computer science.

   Mathematical contributions from hundreds of years ago has an incredible amount of relevance to the modern world, in countless different ways.

   I wish I knew more about the history of mathematics to counter you more forcefully.

   I would also urge you to read this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Civilization-Killer-Apps-Western-Pow...

   It shows how that in the 15th century, Europe was a shithole backwater, plagued by diseases and wars, and other civilisations like the Chinese and Arabic ones were far more advanced. By various accidents of history, the western world dominated the rest over the next 500 years. Some would argue that the wests' power is currently on the wane, and China is rising again.

   [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

   [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_architecture

   [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_algebra

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5. golergkaSep 2020
   I'll try, although I don't think I'm qualified enough.

   First of all, what he's talking about is usually described as different stages of _civilisations_ in english literature. However, he goes into much length to explain why he talks about ethnoses instead: in sub sense, it's a different definition, and a group which is smaller than what you usually call a "civilisation", so this distinction is important. It's derived from the word "ethnic", but again, he's very particular that it's not exactly the same as ethnical group in a genetical sense, although one usually correlates to another.

   In general, it's very hard to summarise his work, because he goes into a lot of details that are really important to understand his ideas correctly. Unfortunately, it's very easy to misunderstand them, and sometimes in some very awful ways, if you just assume that the words he uses have meanings that you usually ascribe to them.

   Then, he describes different stages of lifecycle of ethnos. Once again, there are stages that you would expect, from birth to death, but he adds a lot of detail, describing how an ethnos can be both in a dynamic arc going from beginning to an end, but also in a static, balanced state that can continue, without outside interference, for an eternity. He's a historian with a deep knowledge of very wide array of different human eras and places, and draws a lot of examples to make his point from all over the human history.

   After that, he tries to describe the underlying forces that influence this process. He goes through all possible theories and finally arrives at his concept of "passionarnost" (derived from passion) to describe the cultural energy that drives these transformations.

   After reading other contemporary books on the matter, such as Guns, Germs and Steel, and Neil Ferguson's Civilization, as well as dozens of articles and blog posts discussing these things, I think that his analysis and thoughts are one of the most interesting and engaging ideas about it.

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6. adaisadaisApr 2020
   Recently finished “Civilization: The West and the Rest” by Niall Ferguson. Ferguson argues that competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and western-Protestant work ethic allowed the West to make “advancements” while others “stagnated”. (1)

   In the section on consumerism he talks about how the USSR in many ways was equal or stronger than US or other western countries but couldn’t seem to make a single decent pair of blue jeans.

   The Chinese government has made some incredible strides and has taken note of the many things that the west did right and the west did wrong. I believe TikTok is one of the best ways China has been able to study western culture. It won’t be long before it will be the East and the rest. And the west gave most of it away for free.

   (1) https://archive.org/details/civilizationwest00ferg

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