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djcb comments on Book Recommendations - Less Wrong
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I highly recommend Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. From a rationalist perspective, it is enlightening for its strong scientific approach to history -- a refreshing change from school history textbooks which are written like an exceptionally dry novel, with a single canonical narrative.
Collapse is good as well, yes. The only small issue I had with GG&S is how it goes a bit too eagerly from a plausible cause for differences in the world to ruling out any other, say ethnic or cultural influences. The writer may or may not be right about that, but it seemed he was a bit too committed to what he wanted to show. Anyway, only a small thing, the book is great still.
For a lot of examples, have a look at the Wikipedia article on Easter Island. Though the evidence he gave seemed incredibly strong, apparently it's quite disputed that they suffered a pre-colonization collapse at all.
link
I agree.
GG&S has crossed the line from "exploring possibility" to "fanatical propaganda."
I realize he just wanted to rebut The Global Bell Curve, but it's poorly done.
Collapse, on the other hand is great, especially if you read it in conjunction with its clear inspiration, Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons"
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
With regards to Collapse: Err, really? A fair number of Diamond's points are outright false; for example, his timing of the colonization or (and therefore the arrival of rats to) Easter Island is completely wrong- and, if I recall correctly (it's been a few years since I read Collapse), Diamond explicitly pointed out that the age of the (single, unique) site he was relying on to date the arrival was in question, before dismissing the critics without an argument.