[yafetn]

I had a professor who hated Jared Diamond for being reductionist, and I’ve been skeptical of him ever since. However, I see the immense appeal of his theories (and the one linked here) because they’re so simple to understand. They make for good History Channel documentaries, and tidbits you can repeat at a cocktail party to make yourself sound smart.

[adamc]

Former anthropologist (through to PhD, anyhow) here. I think there is benefit in having simpler theories, because they are easier to test. There are so many limitations in getting adequate data to test historical theories anyway... I am always skeptical that what we have is a "just so" story that of course fits the data, since people knew the general shape of the data before proposing the theory.

[RajT88]

Indeed, it's interesting to think about how rice production might have influenced the culture.

But to do so without mentioning Buddhism or Confucian thought at least in passing is weird. I assume his take would be that these philosophies were emergent from the culture of rice farming.

[candiddevmike]

Any book recommendations?

[adamc]

Not offhand.

[gmuslera]

I don't see this kind of single factors deterministic, just that things are not perfectly random anymore, a bias is introduced, on similar circumstances the dice may have more probabilities to fall in a particular direction. At least that is how I see complex systems in general and it may apply for this.

[tivert]

> However, I see the immense appeal of his theories (and the one linked here) because they’re so simple to understand.

Theories like that also make excellent propaganda. Take a messy subject (like the economy), drain that away with some oversimple theory that supports your political goals, then push that onto the citizenry in books and articles, and watch the converted start to vote your way. Personally, I think that's the mechanism for how so many laborers have come to believe in rather extreme forms of free market capitalism.

[rufus_foreman]

I think to some people it seems fairly simple to pass Jared Diamond off as a reductionist, and I guess it appeals to people to do that in order to seem intelligent at some social affair, but I think the reality is a little more difficult to understand than him just being a reductionist.

[shermantanktop]

Wow, the cocktail parties in this thread must be fantastic. A bunch of people accusing each other of intellectual groupthink, only to get accusations in return.

[wisty]

I don't think Diamond was a reductionist, he often considers multiple factors, as many as most academics IMO.

Did the professor have a single factor who they tried to reduce anything to (and was mad that Diamond didn't share the same favourite hobby horse), or consider multiple factors (like Diamond, but maybe with a different set of factors), was the only way to solve a problem "study it lots and trust the expert", or is the solution "not everything can be solved, sometimes Donald Trump's guess is as good as mine" (but with more fancy words I'm assuming).