Broke: Examining history as a multifaceted and messy tapestry of
human lives and struggles and in doing so accept that the breadth of
human development is bigger than your big boy brain pet ideology.
Woke: Examining history as a pat just so story that validates your
reductive theories that are rooted in crypto racism and rationalizations
for colonialism.
And then all the Redskins died because they weren’t evolved enough to
eventually create Bitcoin. And it was for the greater good so
enlightened Europeans could build society.
I was reading Hegel’s theory on history, earlier, in his master opus
” A damn thing after another” and i have to agree with Jared: it’s very
confusing.
The first two chapters, aptly named “first, some shit happen” and
“then, that other thing” are very clear.
But by the time i reached chapter 7, entitled ” wait, now we have to
deal with this shit??” which is later expanded upon on chapter 13 “Come
on! Not this shit again!” i was starting to get lost.
I feel like the author has no sense of what histiography really is,
and that’s made painfully clear by the fact that the middle section of
the book is a simple list of kings of France in order, interrupted by
the author writing BOOORING in all caps every two lines with way more
o’s than i showed here.
> I feel like the author has no sense of what histiography really is, and that's made painfully clear by the fact that the middle section of the book is a simple list of kings of France in order
I found this line unreasonably funny
I always hate these discussions because on the one hand I think that
more historians should adopt more standardized procedures of causal
inference and engage in more explicitly model-based thinking, but on the
other hand I think that when non-historians talk about that stuff its
usually insanely cringey. This being a case in point
idk much about this, so i'm probably wrong, but from what i'm reading it seems to be trying to shape our understanding of all of human history around the ways modern Western societies function? kinda like a sociobiological account of *homo economicus*?
Not necessarily. As far as I know, "cliometrics" just refers to applications of advanced econometric and statistical techniques to historical topics. It's also been used to describe some strains of quantitative price history and historical demography, such as that of Braudel or Labrousse, or the second wave of the Annales School in general. Both were heavily model-based, but the American strain (such as Robert Fogel) was more influenced by economic theory, and explicit about formulating [counterfactuals](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causal-models/#Coun) and cost-benefit analyses. I think the whole focus on quantification or "big history" is a bit weird, seeing as history can still be "model-based" or frame things in terms of a social-scientific approach, even with highly small-scale, qualitative topics.
The "homo economicus" thing is a really valid point, but it's worth noting that with the rise of stuff like cultural psychology, or behavioural and institutional economics, there's a lot more formal theory available that can deal with situations like reciprocity or economies with different norms, cf. Elinor Ostrom or David Axelrod. [Walter Scheidel](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/wondery/tides-of-history/e/64006103), and [Herbert S. Klein](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3790301?seq=1) probably sum up my own thoughts about this, to be honest.
I thought one of Guns, Germs and Steel’s main points was that humans
are basically the same and that geography and ecology caused the main
differences, not human evolution.
Diamond's always been kinda tragic to me because I really do think GG&S's geographic determinism argument is an good-faith attempt to counterbalance the traditional "Europeans strong and smart, indigenous Americans weak and dumb" thing... but his lazy historiography is built on assumptions that *further reinforce* those traditional views. For example, he relies on primary texts from conquistadors, which like no shit if you only read Cortés' letters you're gonna massively underestimate how complex the Aztec Empire's political situation was and leave with the impression that Cortés victory was inevitable.
That said, any faint sympathy I might have had went out the window when he kept pumping out pop determinism books. From what I gather from skimming reviews, his most recent one is riddled with obvious factual errors and makes Thomas Friedman columns look rigorous.
Yeah like, geographic determinism sounds not fucked up in *theory*. In practice bad actors can easily boil it down to more *'advanced'* cultures winning and less *'advanced'* cultures losing and has an air of *'this result \*cough\*genocide\*cough\* was the inevitable and unavoidable result of how history just works'.* Which isn't quite a justification, but still functions as a rationalization to not question western supremacy because that's *just how it is*. You don't criticize the lion for eating the gazelle after all, it's just nature.
>bad actors can easily boil it down to more 'advanced' cultures winning and less 'advanced' cultures losing
For this sentence, you could plug any explanatory ideology into "it," no?
Broke: Examining history as a multifaceted and messy tapestry of human lives and struggles and in doing so accept that the breadth of human development is bigger than your big boy brain pet ideology.
Woke: Examining history as a pat just so story that validates your reductive theories that are rooted in crypto racism and rationalizations for colonialism.
And then all the Redskins died because they weren’t evolved enough to eventually create Bitcoin. And it was for the greater good so enlightened Europeans could build society.
I was reading Hegel’s theory on history, earlier, in his master opus ” A damn thing after another” and i have to agree with Jared: it’s very confusing.
The first two chapters, aptly named “first, some shit happen” and “then, that other thing” are very clear.
But by the time i reached chapter 7, entitled ” wait, now we have to deal with this shit??” which is later expanded upon on chapter 13 “Come on! Not this shit again!” i was starting to get lost.
I feel like the author has no sense of what histiography really is, and that’s made painfully clear by the fact that the middle section of the book is a simple list of kings of France in order, interrupted by the author writing BOOORING in all caps every two lines with way more o’s than i showed here.
I will give this Jared Diamond a chance
I always hate these discussions because on the one hand I think that more historians should adopt more standardized procedures of causal inference and engage in more explicitly model-based thinking, but on the other hand I think that when non-historians talk about that stuff its usually insanely cringey. This being a case in point
I thought one of Guns, Germs and Steel’s main points was that humans are basically the same and that geography and ecology caused the main differences, not human evolution.
Don’t drag Jared down with your shit Pinker!