Guns, Germs, and Steel
An epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer this question.
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214recommend
633mentions
510people
2007–2026years
38% recommend49% neutral13% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Guns Germs and Steel is a great book that explores geographic determinism.
I am trying to find links but can't right now. There are many cross cultural studies they have found the effects of social class systems and family economic advantages persist over centuries. A millennia isn't unbelievable to me.
I imagine it's a mix of both with strong geographic determinism tilting the scales for certain regions.
- Fascinating read. I also found the stuff about PNG very interesting in Jared Diamond's 'Guns Germs and Steel'. IIRC he said you could trade and marry with the the tribes in the next valley. But if you want 2 valleys away, they would likely kill you.
- I read Guns, Germs and Steel recently and loved it. After finishing it, I was wondering how well the theses had held up in the time since it was published and did some research, and seems like most (though not all) of the major points have held up pretty well or even been strengthened by recent evidence. However, the book seems to have attracted a surprising amount of hate, which this reminds me of! It feels to me like an instinctive hateful backlash to a remarkable achievement, like "crabs in a bucket syndrome" or the Einstein quote -
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
- I think author's point is that wealth drives investment which drives economic growth. In the case of lavish funerals - warranted in kinship societies - the wealth is spent on relatively unproductive investments bearing high opportunity cost. The corollary and author's secondary point is the ineffective resource allocation e.g. through nepotism.
My main (oversimplified!) takeaway from the article is that kinship societies prioritize inherently local processes that inhibit global processes. For example, they prefer keeping internal cohesion through ritual celebration rather than maximizing economic upside through education and specialization. This makes sense - the latter requires a higher degree of trust and stability. Increasing the degree of trust and stability seems to be an evolutionary process. I found Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel [1] to give some amazing insights about this.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1842.Guns_Germs_and_Stee...
- Indeed, dogs are useful. IIRC humans domesticated dogs before plants and other mammals.
I read that in “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. It’s a good read if anyone is interested in how Eurasia got so dominant.
- I've enjoyed Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond recently. If you have read it, how does it compare?
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