Study: Guns, Germs, and Steel was Wrong

15 years. Metafilter loved that book so hard. So so so so hard. And the book is like what, 800 pages (looked it up, it's 480).

For years it bothered me so much, because I knew from hearing the main thrusts of the book and the reception of it that it had issues, but I had way too much going on to read it, write a treatise on it, and then defend that on Metafilter.

I came across a video on Youtube (not this one) called something like "Why white men conquered the world", clearly titled by what seems like a decent guy, as clickbait to get you to watch. Over 20 minutes, he then distills the major points of Diamond's book.

I had *feelings* about it and some specific points in mind, and then serendipitously those feelings showed up elsewhere today in regard to a different thing and so ultimately I looked for critiques of Diamond's book and found this, which is nice.

The part about why the book was so popular...chef's kiss...cause it says a lot.

It bothers me so much that so many things are completely wrong, but who has time to take someone else's argument it takes months to take in, go through it line by line and explain the issues, then put that out, and try to explain it.

And I say that because not only am I nowhere near the smartest person on this or any other site and definitely not metafilter, but that absolute fact means why cant the smart people see the obvious errors in pieces like this.

Long story short, men suck.

It's been 15 years so I suppose I should keep coming back to this post to discuss this, instead of dropping it here like the matter is finished.