That works

oh, by no means can it be a perfect argument, because he's trying to be so broad. i think, though, that he does allow somewhat for 'lower-tech' people taking over 'higher tech' ones. in the chapter, "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy", he awknoledges that there are plenty of times when 'bigger' political units dissolve for various reasons, including the Mongols taking over China and the 'barbarians', Rome.

if you're referring specifically to the Hebrews taking over the previous Canaanites, there might also be reason to believe that the Hebrews, though previously nomadic, had aquired some metal technology through trade with an eastern-lying empire. of course, now i'm only vaguely recalling 5 minutes of a lecture I had 4 or 5 years ago, so my memory's not all that accurate. and i'm leaving work in 15 minutes, so i'm not about to dive into lots of research.

this is totally off topic, but i've really enjoyed talking with the regulars here; it's a great way to pass time at work. i thought it might be nice to get a discussion going on a lighter subject, so i started a thread on beers, wines, cocktails and alcohol in general. it can be found here.

I m thinking more like the towns and cities that became Summer and Babalyon, but the Canaanies may work as well. What it boils down to is more aggresive lower tech peoples takeover less agressive higher tech peoples. His arguments seem to boil down to location location location, of were you start. I say its finding out that you or someone else has a good location and being able to hold or take it. Great leader do believe in luck but they also believe that luck can be created. So it for me sounds like he is saying, "you just got lucky".

Hmmm... well, seeing as how most of what I've heard is a bunch of whining cheating losers blaming everything they do wrong on something else, I'm not sure that applies.

I consider myself a Human, but satanzes have a real hard time managing to hang around me very much. Makes them uncomfortable and edgy ... besides, I kicked the Devil's azz (that wuss) right off the ****** planet! Now it talks in a squeeky voice, clutches a care-bear, and has a new nickname -> "football"  

i think you have a fair point, and Diamond's argument certainly isn't universal. however, if you're talking about one neighboring villiage taking over another, then the location really isn't all that different in his point of view. i mean, for him a different location is defined by a different ecology, first and foremost; and he's also talking about development on the scale of hundreds and thousands of years. the various city-states of mesopotamia, as well as greece, had similar enough climatic conditions, and were all vying for power over such a short duration, that cultural factors probably are, as you suggest, a more useful set of conditions to look at to explain why individual city states rose and fell.

If I remember right the semi-nomadic people who took over up-rooted from hundreds of miles away I d have to check. But you can look at the Hallstatt culture spread over Europe it is simular. It was not very slow and the moved rather quickly.

To ElWhop0 everybody does what they want to do. Just alot of people want to be miserable.

hmm i think i might have either missed your point, or you missed mine. i looked up the Hallstatt culture; it looked like they were the founders of the pre-Roman Celtic populations across central and western Europe.

if they were the first Celts, then they represented part of the much larger Indo-Aryan expansion, which pepper lands from Ireland to India with cousins. (Ireland and Iran actually mean roughly the same thing: "land of the Arya").

at any rate, i think Diamond does awknowldge that a particularly powerful society needn't have all the hallmarks of development. i can't rememeber specific examples, but he points out times when peoples have settled before having food production, or developed food production but remained nomadic.

at any rate, i think you raise valid points, just not sure if we're thinking abou the text in the same way. one thing i have to remind myself is that Diamond's first priority isn't to create a comprehensive theory of history, but to explain why certain societies, the largest majority of which have existed on the same super continent, why Europe colonized the world and not someone else colonizing Europe. i think he tries to keep that in the reader's mind by constantly asking those questions in reserve (why didn't the Aztecs or Inca colonize Europe?). his first priority is to dispel the racist idea that there's something biologically superior about some ethnic groups over others, and i think he does a pretty good job for that. as for a perfect theory of historical change, it's good to make stabs at such theories, but it's bad to think we've actually acheived any.

... so, if there is magic, then those that use magic believe in God, they just don't want anyone to know, so thay can pretend to be cooler than everyone else, and get the dummies to cough up some of their food or treasure as an offering to the sorcerers?

I do magic every day when i go out for a walk ... I try not to step on the ants on the sidewalk. Which btw is something you may find in a Buddhist text as well.

And a good old fashion Hug is one of the most magical things out there.

well, fair enough. though one thing to realize is that a big part of 'evolution' is the emergence of traits. the emergence of drastically different phenotypes most often occurs on a much larger time table, and you're further correct that no one's developed anything like a full chart of evolutionary changes supported by fossil evidence. a particularly stricking example that seems to support your observation including the cambrian explosion in which lots of new species seem to appear out of nowhere.

with regard to your challenge, to show you a fruit fly turned into a butterfly, all i can say is i can't. science requires at least as much abstract thought as religion. however, i would pose a question in response: at what point does the accumulation of different traits constitute something qualitatively different? is it that difficult to imagine a land mammal, over the course of many generations, becomming a dophin or whale? while there are reasons to view them as such, there's no a priori reason not to view the cells in our body effectively as colonies of highly-specialized single-celled organisms. can you imagine that at some point single-celled organisism developed traits that encouraged them to cluster into groups (something we've observed), and over time become highly specialized (muscle vs. nerve cells), and possibly even develop a sort of operating system (consciousness)? in an extreme form of this view, the only real traits are Guanine, Cytocine, Adenine, and Thymine, as well as how many and in what combination.

don't get me wrong: when it put it like that, it does sound kind of far fetched. but no more than gods and all that, IMHO. i think the healthiest mentality is one of scepticism. as i've stated before, i trust science a little more because "science", or more strictly speaking the culture of science, is open to change. religion typically is not.

on a side note, i think the history of this "conflict" is amusing. modern scientific rationality emerged from a love for god: to understand his plan and his creation. that understanding has brought doubts of god and contradictions to scripture, and science is to blame. it's certainly not human beings who've screwed up the Word; it's just that science is the Devil's work.

i do trust something, though. i trust human beings to get it wrong most of the time. the only miracle i can see in all of recorded history is the fact that we're still alive as a species. but i guess California drivers can serve as a miniature representation of the whole human species: usually very good as avoiding total disaster at the last possible second.

one last thing: GLOWING BUNNIES!!!

Indeed, but unless you believe in a creator or magic, they just don't appear out of nowhere. The current hypothesis for the emergence of new traits is, AFAIK, mutations. Unfortunately, mutations often cause a greater loss of information than gain, so it's a questionable explanation at best.



Can we even say traits are "accumulating" at all?



Unfortunately, imagination is not testable - while it's a good mind exercise, I would hesitate to call it science. Just looking at phenotypes and ignoring the genotypes behind the phenotypes is IMHO a bad idea.



This is, unfortunately a double edged sword: Because it changes so much, one can never have the ability to claim they absolutely know what is the truth and which is not. The reliability and trustworthiness can be questioned, pretty much by definition.



I disagree: Science has not bought these conflicts up - naturalism (which I define as the belief that nature is all there is) has. Rocks don't have little tags telling what age they are - the age is based off of the interpretation of the evidence based upon core principles. If the core principles are different, then different ages can result even with the same evidence.



And yet you continue to trust us.



I didn't say it was gonna be easy

Which leads to an interesting question:

How difficult and complex must something be before it's considered unfeasible and unlikely? At what point do we say "ok, maybe it didn't really happen this way?" If there were an opposite to Occam's razor, it would be the idea that we originated from simpler species.

Hmph, I go away for two days and we end up in a creationism vs evolution debate.



Depends on the mutations. Also, define 'information loss'. If anything, biology shows the opposite to be true. You only need look at the appendix or the construction of the eye in the body to see a gradual alteration and either recession or development. This would suggest that random mutation is not the sole factor, if indeed it plays any part.
Another problem is that I carry genetic information which is unique to me, not shared by either my parents, siblings or indeed any other human alive or dead. How would this be possible if DNA was restricted to selecting from existing information? Mutation is the likely answer, however since I'm a fully formed human it rather argues against the fact that most mutations result in information loss.

Not without defining traits, and then defining accumulation. Several amphibians can breathe both water and air, are these two seperate traits which they have accumulated, or something else?

I disagree. One of the main advantages of science is that it has mechanisms by which we can test the truth and reliability (to a given level) of almost any scientific law or theory. Religion generally lacks these mechanisms. Finding a flaw in the theory of gravity merely results in a refinement and reapplication of the theory as a whole (as has happened many times since Newton). With a religion, finding a flaw in the doctrine tends to necessitate the formation of a new religion. If Christianity could prove that Jesus was the son of God, where would it leave Islam and Judaism who both make claims to the contrary?

Has it? Is it science to blame for encouraging belief in that it knows the answers, or is it religion to blame for encouraging belief that it is the answer?

At the same time, universes don't have a makers stamp, and even the same universe can result in different makers, cf Isis & Osiris, Mithras, Jehova, Ameratsu, Zeus et al.


Depends on whether you view the concept of God as complicated or not. I mean, an all knowing, all seeing benevolent being which exists both within and without our universe at the same time is hardly a simple explanation for anything...