A hypothetical social experiment: Blacks V. Whites

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werepossum

Elite Member
Jul 10, 2006
29,873
463
126
SNIP

That's an outdated anthropological theory to explain the supposed laziness of people in the tropics. It doesn't have any basis in reality.

2000 years ago, the most advanced civilizations were in mild areas-- Persia, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Eastern Asia. Survival in the tropics and high latitudes is harder than in those places.
But in mild areas, as in the tropics, there is less incentive to innovate. Consider these two scenarios:
1) We should build a stronger hut, because the rainy season is coming and if the hut collapses, we'll have to build a new shelter in the rain.

2) We should build a stronger hut, because the cold season is coming and if the hut collapses, we'll freeze to death in a matter of hours.

People are lazy in the tropics because they can be.

Well, that certainly sums up the entire vaunted history of human progress in a nutshell, doesn't it?


- wolf

Yes. Yes it does. I should have a grant. Progress - is it REALLY more than fear of giant snakes? Would Leonardo Da Vinci have invented anything had he been getting laid often and well? Would the man who invented the mill (let's call him Joe Miller) have invented anything if someone else had milled his grain for him? How about if hand-grinding grain caused orgasms? There's a burning need for some stimulus funding in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

Perhaps people could manufacture bobble head figures of Alvin Greene and me . . .
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
All inventions are caused by laziness or because people are stupid

I don't feel like shifting gears --> automatic transmission
fucking math --> calculator
I don't know how to use a coat hanger --> birth control pills
I don't feel like jacking off --> central heating
I don't feel like parenting my kids --> television
 

Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
16,829
3
0
But in mild areas, as in the tropics, there is less incentive to innovate. Consider these two scenarios:
1) We should build a stronger hut, because the rainy season is coming and if the hut collapses, we'll have to build a new shelter in the rain.

2) We should build a stronger hut, because the cold season is coming and if the hut collapses, we'll freeze to death in a matter of hours.

People are lazy in the tropics because they can be.

I don't think you have any clue what life in the tropics entails. Here's a hint-- whether we're talking about rainforest, desert, or savanna, it's not the Garden of Eden.
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
I don't think you have any clue what life in the tropics entails. Here's a hint-- whether we're talking about rainforest, desert, or savanna, it's not the Garden of Eden.
His point is that it's not an immediate problem. Standing outside when it's raining sucks, but you'll be fine. Your biggest problems in the jungle are insects and snakes, and technology doesn't really help you avoid those.
 

Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
16,829
3
0
His point is that it's not an immediate problem. Standing outside when it's raining sucks, but you'll be fine. Your biggest problems in the jungle are insects and snakes, and technology doesn't really help you avoid those.

Staying dry in a jungle is just as important as staying warm in the snow. So is finding water in the desert, and finding food in the savanna.
 

Double Trouble

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,270
103
106
I suspect that the answer really has very little to do with the skin color of each group, and more with the culture of each group. I doubt there's much of a significant difference between the groups, the real question is the culture and the drive for innovation.
 

hellotyler

Senior member
Jul 19, 2010
214
0
0
It would all depend on the knowledge of the groups coming into the equation, not their race.
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
I suspect that the answer really has very little to do with the skin color of each group, and more with the culture of each group. I doubt there's much of a significant difference between the groups, the real question is the culture and the drive for innovation.

So basically it depends where yo black people comes from. The people I've met who are actually from Africa are interesting people. They also seem to appreciate what freedom is all about. One time one of my engineering instructors said something to the effect that his class is not a dictatorship and we don't even know the meaning of the word dictatorship. The one black guy in the class said "I come from dictatorship. I do not want to go back there"
 

HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
36,494
28,523
136
Amen to that. I worked in a printing plant once and we had blacks there from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya and the Carribean and they are like a completely different race of people from American and European blacks. I can get along with blacks from other parts of the world. It's only the locally grown variety that I ever have problems with.

So exactly where do you want to grow your blacks? Please remember to water them once a day. Isn't it easy to say those blacks in other parts of the world are ok when you live here? What happens if we import a black from Somalia, you do know they are all pirates, more troublemakers!
 

cwjerome

Diamond Member
Sep 30, 2004
4,346
26
81
It would all depend on the knowledge of the groups coming into the equation, not their race.

I'll go with this and what DoubleTrouble said.

I am suspicious of theoretical questions like the OP because it sounds like a "If all other thing are equal, what race is smarter/better?" type question.
 

Nnyan

Senior member
May 30, 2003
239
1
76
Your scenario already happened. Look where the black civilizations in Africa advanced to and where the European civilizations advanced prior to European contact with Africa for your answer, and actually, the blacks had the advantage of having a bigger continent with more resources than the Europeans had and the Europeans still won.

What resources are you speaking about exactly? I would suggest you read Guns, Germs and Steel.

"In our earliest societies, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals. Agricultural production leads to food surpluses, which supports sedentary societies, specialization of craft, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor. Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which leads in turn to the organization of empires.

Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, the Middle East had by far the best collection of plants and animals suitable for domestication – barley, two varieties of wheat and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; goats, sheep and cattle provided meat, leather, glue (by boiling the hooves and bones) and, in the case of sheep, wool. As early Middle Eastern civilizations began to trade, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, most notably horses and donkeys for use in transport.

In contrast, Native American farmers had to struggle to develop maize as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte. Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals (over 100lb / 44 kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all. Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. For example, horses are easily domesticated, but their biological relatives zebras and onagers are untameable; and although Asian elephants are tameable, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity.

Eurasia's large landmass and long east-west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided it with more plant and animal species suitable for domestication, and allowed its people to exchange both innovations and diseases. Its East-West orientation allowed breeds domesticated in one part of the continent to be used elsewhere through similarities in climate and the cycle of seasons. In contrast, Australia suffered from a lack of useful animals due to extinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of the Pleistocene. The Americas had difficulty adapting crops domesticated at one latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other). Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from North to South: plants and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's East-West orientation: in the first millennium BC, the Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted the Middle East's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the first millennium AD, the rest of Europe followed suit.

The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made division of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and scribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using the "Guns" and "Steel" of the book's title.

Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans. Natural selection forced Eurasians to develop immunity to a wide range of pathogens. When Europeans made contact with America, European diseases (to which they had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around (the "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia: endemic malaria and yellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave"; and syphilis may have spread in the opposite direction. The European diseases – the "Germs" of the book's title – decimated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain their dominance."
 
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