Interview with Jared Diamond [video]

"fear greatly"? A little hyperbole maybe? Wiser to at least listen, and then perhaps dismiss, or improve on ideas, no?

I have many mixed feelings about Diamond. GG&S basically inspired me to study what I do (history of globalization), but the more I do original research and talk to experts in the field, the less I think he actually got it right. Relatedly, I found this to be one of the better articles on the topic of what evidence Diamond's super big picture vantage point tends to miss, although it comes at it from the perspective of an anthropologist rather than an historian:

http://theappendix.net/issues/2013/4/anthropology-footnoted-...

"Jared Diamond....a terrible scientist".

What? No. I completely disagree, as would many others, and I've frankly never read a more balanced work than GGS.

But perhaps you could go ahead and educate us scientifically on what is more important than access to resources in determining the histories of peoples.

He is the author of multiple, well-reviewed scholarly books, and hundreds of peer-reviewed papers published in journals like PNAS, Nature, and Science[1]. Other scholars have cited him thousands of times[4]. He is completely well-respected within the scientific fields he works in.

National Geographic[2] notes: "Jared Diamond is professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, which won him a Pulitzer Prize as well as Britain's 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.

Diamond is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (Genius Award); research prizes and grants from the American Physiological Society, National Geographic Society, and Zoological Society of San Diego; and many teaching awards and endowed public lectureships. In addition, he has been elected a member of all three of the leading national scientific/academic honorary societies—National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Philosophical Society.

Diamond's field experience includes 22 expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands to study ecology and evolution of birds; the rediscovery of New Guinea's long-lost golden fronted bowerbird; and other field projects in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. As a conservationist, he devised a comprehensive plan, almost all of which was implemented, for Indonesian New Guinea's national park system. He has also taken part in numerous field projects for the Indonesian government and World Wildlife Fund. He is a founding member of the board of the Society of Conservation Biology and a member of the board of directors of World Wildlife Fund/USA and Conservation International."

Awards and honors [3]

1975 Distinguished Achievement Award, American Gastroenterological Association

1985 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant

1989 Archie F. Carr Medal

1992 Tanner Lecturer, University of Utah

1992 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books for The Third Chimpanzee

1992 Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize

1993 Zoological Society of San Diego Conservation Medal

1997 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Prize for Guns, Germs and Steel

1998 Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs and Steel

1998 California Book Awards, Gold Medal in nonfiction for Guns, Germs and Steel

1998 Aventis Prize for Science Books for Guns, Germs and Steel

1998 International Cosmos Prize

1998 Elliott Coues Award, American Ornithologists Union

1999 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction

1999 National Medal of Science

2001 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement

2002 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science

2005 Elected Honorary Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge, England

2006 Royal Society Prize for Science Books for Collapse (shortlisted]

2006 Dickson Prize in Science

2008 PhD Honoris Causa at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

2013 Wolf Prize in Agriculture

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond_bibliography

[2] http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/jared-diamo...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Awards_and_honor...

[4] http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/2759556

Well, his hypotheses about the present are pretty banal: if we continue on present trends, we're in for some tough times. He cites over-fishing as an example.

But of course we aren't strictly following those trends (interview is from mid-2013) particularly with respect to oil. Anybody remember "Peak Oil" and how we were supposed to be on a straight downward slope for supplies? Now the received wisdom is that we'll have a glut of supply stretching into the far future.

This isn't meant as a knock on either Dr. Diamond or on duaneb, just that his conclusions are pretty general and roundish. I find them provocative and appreciate the perspective.

Somebody who makes a few hundred thousand people think differently about history is a great scientist.

> He seems to have drawn very far fetched conclusions from vague anthropological and archeological signals.

That's what Darwin had to do too.

At the present I can't even see the embedded video.

Here's the URL for the video itself

https://vimeo.com/72741207

I think many publications are "BuzzFeed for (x)". For example, here are two articles about sandwiches:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/dining/field-g...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/kaylayandoli/all-anyone-really-wants...

I like 'em a lot, they're generally fairly high quality and well presented.