# Ode to Jared Diamond, best world building resource



## tantric (Aug 29, 2015)

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies  





> The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.


  Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive  





> This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.


  Am I alone in considering this critical?


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## acapes (Aug 29, 2015)

I liked _Collapse_, definitely had some useful stuff in there for world-building, yeah


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## skip.knox (Aug 29, 2015)

As a historian I very much dislike the notion of collapse. Or of progress, rise and fall, all those metaphors, because they are all reductionist. Societies change. Period. 

I also resist universalist interpretations. To me, trying to come up with an explanation for why all societies change (rise, fall, your verb of choice) is rather like trying to explain why all humans do this or that. Societies, like humans, are different. One can find commonalities, but one cannot from that deduce any general rules about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Unless it's satire, of course!


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## tantric (Aug 30, 2015)

skip.knox said:


> As a historian I very much dislike the notion of collapse. Or of progress, rise and fall, all those metaphors, because they are all reductionist. Societies change. Period.
> I also resist universalist interpretations. To me, trying to come up with an explanation for why all societies change (rise, fall, your verb of choice) is rather like trying to explain why all humans do this or that. Societies, like humans, are different. *One can find commonalities, but one cannot from that deduce any general rules about Life, the Universe, and Everything.* Unless it's satire, of course!



You're going to have to support that. Pandemics are fairly easy to model and they work across a wide range of situations. Evolution can be modeled. Why can't you deduce general rules, or at least trends in human social development? For instance, beyond the tribal nation state, based on ethnic identity and often having a figurehead divine ruler, multi-ethnic empires co-opt exoteric religious traditions as a societal binder, often fusing the religion with the government and heavily altering its former principles.


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## skip.knox (Aug 30, 2015)

Is 'tantric' the handle for Harry Seldon, by any chance? ;-)


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## tantric (Aug 30, 2015)

Nope, no relation. Bored to tears by those books. 'tantric' comes from my buddhism and predilection for 'edging',  having to find a screen name for stupid gay chat rooms (tantric4hrs) and, of course, the BareNakedLadies..."like Sting, I'm tantric"


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## Feo Takahari (Aug 30, 2015)

The standard argument against societal models is that they lead to biased value judgments. For instance, if you claim that polytheistic cultures tend to become monotheistic, that's often framed as polytheism being outdated superstition and monotheism being the truth that deserves to replace it. Conversely, right up until the Holocaust, Germany was considered the most civilized nation in the world, so people didn't think atrocities could happen there like they might in "barbaric" countries. But misuse of models doesn't mean models are bad or shouldn't be used.


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## tantric (Aug 30, 2015)

More to the point, reading GG&S really gives you the background to create believable but completely fantastic cultures. You know to care about their crops and animals, the climate they live in, how their religion limits their options at adaptation.


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## DeathtoTrite (Aug 31, 2015)

Feo Takahari said:


> The standard argument against societal models is that they lead to biased value judgments. For instance, if you claim that polytheistic cultures tend to become monotheistic, that's often framed as polytheism being outdated superstition and monotheism being the truth that deserves to replace it. Conversely, right up until the Holocaust, Germany was considered the most civilized nation in the world, so people didn't think atrocities could happen there like they might in "barbaric" countries. But misuse of models doesn't mean models are bad or shouldn't be used.



With polytheism vs. monotheism, I would argue it had more to do with the content of monotheistic religions and the comparative structure of them than any innate superiority in monotheism.


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## Miskatonic (Aug 31, 2015)

skip.knox said:


> As a historian I very much dislike the notion of collapse. Or of progress, rise and fall, all those metaphors, because they are all reductionist. Societies change. Period.
> 
> I also resist universalist interpretations. To me, trying to come up with an explanation for why all societies change (rise, fall, your verb of choice) is rather like trying to explain why all humans do this or that. Societies, like humans, are different. One can find commonalities, but one cannot from that deduce any general rules about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Unless it's satire, of course!



It's all a cycle. The golden age on one end and the Kali Yuga on the other.


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## Incanus (Sep 1, 2015)

I read both books and found them useful.  Are they perfect?  Certainly not.  The author himself basically says that this is the beginning of the conversation, not the conclusion.  Much interdisciplinary work still needs to be done on this stuff.  No matter your opinion, its pretty fascinating.


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## Russ (Sep 2, 2015)

tantric said:


> Evolution can be modeled.



Stephen Jay Gould and many other great evolutionary thinkers would disagree with you.  Especially if you believe random mutation is the creative core of evolution.

Diamond is an okay thinker and okay researcher.  But if his over arching revelation is "environment matters", readers centuries ago would not have been surprised by that conclusion.


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