tommccabe comments on On the Power of Intelligence and Rationality - Less Wrong
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"Against more modern Islamic powers, Late Medieval/Early Modern European track record was more or less even"
Agreed- that's precisely what I said. Except for the Americas (where they had a huge disease advantage), the Europeans did not have overwhelming military power until science and Traditional Rationality were well-developed.
By that time Europeans had some level of control over most of the world, achieved thanks to diseases, politics, and fighting very low tech opponents.
What large victories were left to be done?
That's silly. It's like saying, "In 1945, the US had a huge army, but the Nazis and Japanese were already mostly defeated anyway, so the huge army didn't really have much to do with it".