> Some people have better things to do (sometimes in the middle of the end of
> a semester) than outline books of multiple hundreds of pages in too limited
> a manner not to expose them to unnecessarily long and off-base
> disagreement... and have a tendency to take "oh, come on, spend more time
> telling me the whole story because I couldn't be bothered to look any
> further than wikipedia on my own" kinds of posts as trolling. But, I guess,
> it's OK.
I'm sure a paragraph or link or two would have sufficed, at least for me (thank you, Charles). What you've linked to (Alan) is helpful, even if the authors don't seem to feel quite as... threatened?
WRT Charles's comment about germs: All the blankets in the world wouldn't explain the asymmetry of the spread of virulent infectious diseases. So there's a biological question in there, like it or not, one that Diamond might actually have the background (in zoology) to address.
I mean no general defense of GG&S. I get the annoyance with an outsider blundering into a question seemingly unread and unschooled. What I find intriguing is the fury that any suggestion of material influence seems to invariably provoke. I always wondered if the phrase "material determinism" (always used as an accusation) is meant to exclude every other factor. Apparently in Alan's case it does. But I'm left wondering who even argues in favor of that view.
-- Andy