Jared Diamond makes many bad arguments and, like Wolliver says, his sources are not real sources. They're sources in a state of quantum uncertainty. "This book might contain the thing I just said, but you won't know until you waste your time and read the whole thing". But the annoying thing is that Diamond's way of analyzing events is everywhere in history. Predicting why things didn't happen, which ends up being circular half the time. "We know that X environment is conducive to Y outcome because population Z lived in X and produced Y outcome". There exists the possibility that Z produced Y outcome because of other reasons, or because of sheer chance. But this makes historians feel small, I guess.
Another big problem with Diamond is lack of sources. He kind of sort of has sources, but they’re “asshole sources” because he just lists a bunch of “recommended reading” with no citations of specific pages or chapters. Just dive into the haystack and maybe you’ll find the needle he was quoting. It’s like what I said the other day with Hochschild; so much of his stuff is just “trust me on this one, bro.”
I too, read this book decades ago and remember thinking that he bungled the whole book in the intro where he talked about his native friend who would later die of some tribal rivalry/dispute with another tribe. He could have stopped there since that is the explanation for why all those shitehole countries are and still continue to be shitehole countries.
Jared Diamond makes many bad arguments and, like Wolliver says, his sources are not real sources. They're sources in a state of quantum uncertainty. "This book might contain the thing I just said, but you won't know until you waste your time and read the whole thing". But the annoying thing is that Diamond's way of analyzing events is everywhere in history. Predicting why things didn't happen, which ends up being circular half the time. "We know that X environment is conducive to Y outcome because population Z lived in X and produced Y outcome". There exists the possibility that Z produced Y outcome because of other reasons, or because of sheer chance. But this makes historians feel small, I guess.
Another big problem with Diamond is lack of sources. He kind of sort of has sources, but they’re “asshole sources” because he just lists a bunch of “recommended reading” with no citations of specific pages or chapters. Just dive into the haystack and maybe you’ll find the needle he was quoting. It’s like what I said the other day with Hochschild; so much of his stuff is just “trust me on this one, bro.”
Wrote about dis in "A Historian's Grievances" I think. Should be posting that one in a few days.
I too, read this book decades ago and remember thinking that he bungled the whole book in the intro where he talked about his native friend who would later die of some tribal rivalry/dispute with another tribe. He could have stopped there since that is the explanation for why all those shitehole countries are and still continue to be shitehole countries.
have you ever read “why nations fail” ? i never read germs and steel but that book is sort of a response to it