Wow. I read that book in college. No idea a backlash like that developed... That is crazy if that is how skewed university's have become. Guns, Germs, and Steel is an incredible academic work. Dang.
It may be satisfying and entertaining to read, but human history is much more complex than just a few rules.
The charge of reductivism can be made against anyone who attempts to explain big patterns in comprehensible ways.
In fact, isn't it reductionist to claim that a historian's entire view on a topic can be reduced to theories they developed in a single book?
There is a video on the internet of him trying to shoot an old style gun... pretty funny... needless to say it's not his greatest skill.
Jared Diamond Funny video: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxm-OUN3XNSdXmZ_fkXs1zZUQziwjaLZN...
Universities and academics have shifted so far left that they are increasingly eating their own, the entire point of the book was to try and say that race and Western culture wasn't a factor. It's a pretty obvious argument against most right wing talking points, but apparently that isn't enough anymore in academia
Meanwhile, Asia's geography lent itself to unifying monopolization, which begat immense totalitarian states which were more complacent.
Both geographies fostered dense cities with draft animals, creating plagues and immunity to those plagues, which let the Old World dominate the New in numbers, technology, and immunology (nevermind that they had a few thousand years' head start in technology since they didn't have to switch continents).
Is there any evidence that any actual 'eating' is happening here? I can't find any instances of it being banned or removed from curriculum. Jared Diamond continues to teach at UCLA.
Is the 'eating' the fact that people critiqued a pop anthropology? The author of the article is creating strawmen and then defeating them.
I was left with, who actually is the author of the article referencing and what is their actual argument.
that argument only holds up if the group with the "proper background" is NOT a giant echo chamber where non-conformity is ruthlessly punished.
we're already talking about a specific field.
It's a wonderful mental trick to convince yourself you're right without fact-checking yourself, not to mention dismiss any field of expertise that you disagree with, but it doesn't actually prove anything.
Which is, as you said, "a wonderful mental trick to convince yourself you're right without fact-checking yourself." They're not in our club, so they don't count.