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Jared Diamond talk at UNH
I went to hear Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, talk at UNH last night. The talk was about his new book, Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed.
Since I'll almost certainly review Collapse here after I'm done dealing with Perfectly Legal, I'll just mention briefly two factors that he cited as affecting a society's ability to avoid a collapse. The first is the degree to which a society's elites are insulated from the effects of their decisions. The more insulated they are, the less likely they are to modify their behavior when they make bad decisions. The second factor is the society's willingness to re-evaluate deeply held beliefs. In other words, if a deeply held belief is causing bad decisions, will the society modify that belief when the results of the decisions are known.
I should probably mention that the talk has forced me to re-evaluate a long held prejudice. I didn't think it was possible for someone with a comb-over to win a Pulitzer prize. I was clearly wrong about that.
Since I'll almost certainly review Collapse here after I'm done dealing with Perfectly Legal, I'll just mention briefly two factors that he cited as affecting a society's ability to avoid a collapse. The first is the degree to which a society's elites are insulated from the effects of their decisions. The more insulated they are, the less likely they are to modify their behavior when they make bad decisions. The second factor is the society's willingness to re-evaluate deeply held beliefs. In other words, if a deeply held belief is causing bad decisions, will the society modify that belief when the results of the decisions are known.
I should probably mention that the talk has forced me to re-evaluate a long held prejudice. I didn't think it was possible for someone with a comb-over to win a Pulitzer prize. I was clearly wrong about that.
no subject
::snork::
Also, this sounds fascinating. Is the book less repetitive than GGaS?
Not sure
He did say that he had originally planned to cover 18 failed societies, but realized that would make for a very depressing book. Instead, he covers failures and successes. Some of the later sections in the book look very useful. There's a section that covers one-liner objections to ecological concerns and points out the deficiencies in the objects. There's a section titled Reasons for Hope and another section on what individuals can do about environmental problems. It's buried in the further readings chapter.