Jared Diamond: The World Until Yesterday

The Horace Albright Lecture in Conservation: Spring 2014

Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, and UCLA professor, talks about his latest book and what we can learn from traditional societies.

[barbaraschumacher]

Jared Diamond is a national treasure!!!

[lovelytongtong]

I'm reading "the world Until Yesterday"by Jared Diamond.I'm indulged by the book.very interesting, very educational.The lecture is perfect as well.

[NatalieD]

OMG.. I just love the way Jared Diamond speaks!

[MrEnergyCzar]

He almost died from a falling tree last year.... one of the great speakers of our time....

[mads]

Diamond got so much swag, it's insaine. 

[SilenzioDiEsistenza]

great book. disagree with him on some conclusions, as an anarchist lol, but the widescope view of the book, with so many anecdotes and historical views and comparisons, as a sort of caledoscopic view, is tremendously interesting.

[TheAnubis]

I saw him on a Japanese tv network recently. His talked about eating habits of Western world vs indigenous tribes was on the spot.
BUT, to eat like that you need to sacrifice time and money to accomplish this. Western industry, lifestyle and mode of transportation would radically (and I mean radically) have to change to enjoy such a lifestyle. Plus you the entire population of northern places would have to move to warmer climates. And how do you take care of mentally handicapped people --I hate to think what primitive tribes do to them.

[ipdavid]

The heavily reliance on western political system, economic structure, governance, foreign diplomacy, moral values can be learned from Asian and Middle east countries...it is great Jared mentions this because the west is too focusing on finding new solutions to counter traditional problems that can be solved easily

[christopherdahl]

The only serious objection would be that exercise itself is a known and powerful specific against dementia. So multi-lingualism in New Guinea should be measured against mono-lingualism with the same physical, traditional lifestyle. Easter Island might be interesting.

[sirxavior]

For a man of his age his brain is remarkably sharp.

[matthewjames]

Jared is an intelligent professor but he's not well rehearsed in statistics & probability. He claims there is a 1/1000 chance of a tree falling on you every night and after 3 years we can expect the tree to fall on you. This is not true, in fact it's worse. If p = 0.001 then the amount of nights you sleep until it becomes more likely than not that a tree will fall on you is = log(0.5)/log(1-0.001) = 693 nights ~ 2 years. He makes similar mistakes with his showering example as well.

I'm not hating on this intelligent guy, I'm just saying that the maths he is using is wrong.

[Alex-yywo]

I wouldn’t have heard of him without Vsauce...

[dickhamilton]

every time he says 'societies' (s'saahh.reece) I come to a screeching perceptual halt.

[davidwilkie]

After the "Court of Justice", we stop speaking to the people who have used the system against us, and are compelled to "forgive", ..give what was taken "willingly" because it's a Democratic Ideal to respect duly elected and appointed officials of the democracy, instead of having the kind of proper discussion with the disputing parties that would preselect more appropriate official practices, ("payment in respect of actual value to participants should preclude the failure by payment in advance for "services" that deliberately disregard those values "by assuming lawful purposes" by Authorities), and give credence to the actual systems directly from personal experience and consensual free will adaptation to circumstances.., such as in small restrictions of tribal localization.

A basis for "Restorative Justice".
If you aren't multi-lingual in spoken/written language, maybe multi-discipline applications of the scientific method/research is better anyway.

[globalvillageidiot]

He confuses correlation for cause in the salt in diet example, and conflate complex factor in nutrition and biochem. Other studies clearly show it is more risky to eat too little salt. Much rather forego sugar and seed oils, first...

[jahalva]

Ironically and hypocritically, i Vann almost guarantee 100% he is for stricter gun laws, while at the same time preaching about the paranoia of terrorists vs. Ladder deaths

[andrewlove]

His arguments are so unbelievably faulty.
Is this guy a creationist?