Talk:Jared Diamond

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Capitalist?

I just read collapse, and am curious to Diamond's economic views...The books seems like an excellent source to cite for defending capitalism as not the source of societal destruction.

Evolutionary biologist

I tried to post the link in the article history but it truncated. I will link to the Scientific American article, instead. In the article, Michael Shermer refers to Diamond as an evolutionary biolgist. According to the Edge Foundation, Diamond's field work includes "...17 expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands, to study ecology and evolution of birds; rediscovery of New Guinea's long-lost goldenfronted bowerbird; other field projects in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia." [1] --Viriditas | Talk 23:11, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

---Diamond isn't an opponet of 'genetic arguments to account for racial differences'. He's an opponent of explaing the relative sophisication achieved by the races via arguments of genetic racial superiority. The previous wording suggested that Diamond's didn't think genes played any difference in racial varaiance at all. Clearly, Diamond is aware that skin color and other racial-specific features (nose shape, type of hair, general body size) are caused by genes. I may have made a run-on sentence, however. 69.250.25.213

---Regarding "Ethnic differences: Variation in human testis size": Diamond's 1986 commentary in Nature was not an "early work"-- he has papers going back to at least 1966 (Science 151:1102-1104). The only trait for which there was a trend from high to low in frequency among Africans, Caucasians, and East Asians was dizygotic twinning rate. Diamond speculated that dizygotic twinning rate might be correlated with testis size and female hormone levels, but noted that data were insufficient to address the question. It doesn't seem to me that Diamond's commentary is in the least contradictory to his later work, nor does it have an important bearing on his more recent books. The whole sentence would not survive a proper rewrite of the article. 131.210.4.95 28 xi.2005

Photograph

Is it acceptable to scan a photo from my copy of a book?

Racists

I think every hick member of the National Alliance should read Guns, Germs and Steel. Then, white supremacy would cease to exist. Seriously. Bookmastaflex 21:18, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They'd have to be taught how to read. 202.47.247.156 18:47, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right on. Bookmastaflex 02:10, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Guns, Germs and Steel

The description is far too truncated and does damage to the sense of his arguments. For one, nowhere does he say advanced civilization which overtook simpler ones only arose in Eurasia. That would be an absurd claim. The article leaves out any of the major mechanics he describes which gave certain regions developmental advantages over others.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dutchsatyr (talk • contribs) 19:01, 4 July 2006.

There is a separate article on Guns, Germs, and Steel, so the description here should not be very lengthy. -- bcasterline • talk 22:10, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]