Book: 20220405 to 20220516, "The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond

20220407 - Prologue : at the airport

Why study traditional societies?; States; Types of traditional societies; Approaches, causes, and sources; A small book about a big subject

Unification vs Diversity.

Unification means higher productivity, but more fragile. However, the modern societies are getting more and more similar. Hospital, school, government, supermarket, cinema.......are almost same around the world.

Is this good? Or inevitable? Globlization of manufacturing is a bad idea, as it make human civilization fragile. Then how about the other parts, such as polictical structure?

Maybe the ideal society is highly unified, but offers abundant oppotunities to explore changes.

The analysis of human behavior in bands and tribes helps us to understand our gene. We need to understand oursleve to push civilization forward.

part. 1. Setting the stage by dividing space

20220411 - chapter 1. Friends, enemies, strangers, and traders

Mutually exclusive territories; Non-exclusive land use; Friends, enemies, and strangers; First contacts; Trade and traders; Market economies; Traditional forms of trade; Traditional trade items; Who trades what?; Tiny nation

Why territory was so important in most of the cases? Because people believed that all wealth came from land. Why territory is not that important anymore? Because people realized that real wealth come from creativity, which come from our mind.

Exclusive or non-exclusive, the aim is same: the survival of gene. Sometimes sharing the land increase the probability of gene's survival, sometimes exclusively occupancy is the better choice.

First Contacts - Our perception of the world is so limited. We always invent a story to explain the strange things we meet. This is why the first principle is critical.

Market economies - because the both sides of a deal are not strangers, they are quite happy to accept "credit" from the other side. And, because there is no much wealth, any wealth people have would be used as "luxury juwelry" to show off. Deal is always between users and users. There is no store or merchants. This is similar to the deals between two countries.

Unnecessary trading is more like gift exchange today. It's for relationship, so small scale traditional societies would help each other when disasters (war, drought, etc.) happen.

part. 2. Peace and war

20220420 - chapter 2. Compensation for the death of a child

A ceremony; What if...?; What the state did; New Guinea compensation; Life-long relationships; Other non-state societies; State authority; State civil justice; Defects in state civil justice; State criminal justice; Restorative justice; Advantages and their pride

It's more about feeling than justice, because people are not strangers to each other. They live together in a small area. Justice is not that important.

But for modern society, millions people follow justice to manage their behavior. Feeling of participants in a specific case is not that important, but no one should break the rule, or else people may lose confidence in justice system.

State justice system focuses on what happend in the past, non-state justice system focuses on the effect of the event (the future). Non-state people have to keep good relationship with each other, as they have to live together. Can state justice system learn from non-state justice system?

Lawsuit should always be the last resort. If we think carefully, put ego aside, consider more about the long term future benefit, normally it's not worth to initiate civil lawsuit.

Modern justice system is better than ancient time, but its cost is also much higher. I think the modern laws are too unnecessary complicated, especially about tax.

Disputation/conflict is like disease. We should try to avoid them if possible. We can eat healthy and do exercises to reduce the probability of sickness. What can we do to minimize conflicts? Live in a place with nice people. Stay away from addiction. Work hard and get rich. Read a lot.

20220421 - chapter 3. A short chapter, about a tiny war

The war's time-line; The war's death toll

The scale of war is not important. The important thing is the impact it brings to people.

Hopefully, as land is not the source of wealth anymore, WW3 will never happen.

20220427 - chapter 4. A longer chapter, about many wars

Forms of traditional warfare; Mortality rates; Similarities and differences; Ending warfare; Effects of European contact; Warlike animals, peaceful peoples; Motives for traditional war; Ultimate reasons; Whom do people fight?; Pearl Harbor

The highest-percentage long-term death tolls averaged over a century in modern times have been for 20th-century Germany and Russia, which reached 0.16% and 0.15% per year respectively (i.e., 16 or 15 people killed per year per 10,0000 members of the population) due to the combined horrors of World Wars I and II. p139

It's more fair to think it this way: what percentage of people died from war related causes in a peried of 50 years? There were a lot more wars in the past. Because of food crisis, war is inevitable from time to time.

If we calculate the numbers only for WW2, Russia lost around 27 million lives over 6 years, and their population was around 194 million. That's 27/194/6 = 2.3% per year, and 14% in total. It's much more than modern war such as Vietnam War (58k/205m=0.03%), Gulf War and even Ukraine War (maybe 30k / 440 m = 0.07%).

So, it's civilization evolvement decreased the death toll of war drastically.

"Life was better since the government had come because a man could now eat without looking over his shoulder and could leave his house in the morning to urinate without fear of being shot. All men admitted that they were afraid when they fought. In fact, they usually looked at me as thought I were a mental defective for even asking. men admitted having nightmares in which they became isolated from others in their group during a fight and could see no way back." p 149

Thus, the long-term effect of European, Tswana, or other outside contact with states or chiefdoms has almost always been to suppress tribal warfare. The short-term effect has variously been either an immediate suppression as well or else an initial flare-up and then suppression. It cannot be said that traditional warfare is an artifact of European contact. p152

Traditional violence is more about justice (such as resource shortage, emotions, etc.), and modern violence is more about order. That's why we only allow state to apply violence now, no matter it's between individuals or nations.

Nowadays, violence is rarely triggerred by needs. We only need to resolve the conflicts between emotion and order. Ideal mechanism make emotion and order consistent.

There is no justice. Justice is our wishful illusion.

Traditional wars are mainly caused by resource shortage or revenge. Modern wars, if it's not caused by resource shortage, I think they are caused by incorrect perception.

part. 3. Young and old

20220430 - chapter 5. Bringing up children

Childbirth; Infanticide; Weaning and birth interval; On-demand nursing; Infant-adult contact; Fathers and allo-parents; Responses to crying infants; Physical punishment; Child autonomy; Multi-age playgroups; Child play and education; Their kids and our kids

Jared Diamond's books and "The Nurture Assumption" tried to do Black Box testing, while "The Selfish Gene" focus on While Box testing.

People try everything possible to survive and grow. But once the MEME/tradition is formed, people stop trying new things.

The freedom that children get mainly dependent on the conditions of their environment. In harsh environment, children are more likely to be killed by accidents, so they get less autonomy.

Then how about the children in modern societies? Should they get more autonomy? Definitely. They should be allowed to explore the environment at their will, except a few traps, such as car accidents, drown in pool, electricial shock, etc.

How should adults treat children? The brain of child is not based on direct logic, but big data analysis training. For example, if a baby crys for long time, which world is safer? No response for long time, or immediate comfort? Our mind is the result of years of training of big data analysis.

Traditional societies are much simplier than modern societies. So we need to use time more efficiently to understand the world. Do we have to sacrifice something to achieve that efficiency? We can try to minimize that.

There are more and more knowledge waiting for young generation to learn. The one who can do it efficiently win in the natural selection game.

20220502 - chapter 6. The treatment of old people : cherish, abandon, or kill?

Expectations about eldercare; Why abandon or kill?; Usefulness of old people; Society's values; Society's rules; Better or worse today?; What to do with older people

Patriarchal family is in survival mode. More secure, and members support each other to cut living cost. It means less diverse from social point of view.

Neolocal family is in creative mode. Less secure, and members can easily focus on creating value to make better lives, and it's easier for them to waste time. It means more diverse from social point of view.

To get respect and social relationship, the elder people need to be useful. To be useful, we need to help others, we need to devote or contribute time and energy to others. We (as eld people) can help our children or relatives, or do something suits our capabilities.

In modern society, elder people get more freedom. That also means it's their responsibility to look after themselves. If they don't make wise choices/actions, their lives are not so delightful. No matter what age we are, the challange is same: how to fulfil our time? How to utilize the compound effects?

part. 4. Danger and response

20220504 - chapter 7. Constructive paranoia

A night visit; A boat accident; Just a stick in the ground; Taking risks; Risks and talkativeness

The world is full of dangers and opportunities. To modern people, the dangers and opportunities are subtle. We cannot easily tell where they are.

Wasting time, avoid failure and being lazy could be the major risks/dangers. Reading could be the largest opportunity. 

Just a stick in the ground. p261

I believe there was one local person around the hills. He noticed Jared and other staffs, but didn't want to take the risk to attack so many people. As the hills is too far away from his village, he could not get much support from his people.

We have to take risks from time to time, or we cannot achive anything.

20220506 - chapter 8. Lions and other dangers

Accidents; Vigilance; Human violence; Diseases; Responses to diseases; Starvation; Unpredictable food shortages; Scatter your land; Seasonality and food storage; Diet broadening; Aggregation and dispersal; Responses to danger

People in traditional society are happy to abandom their freedom (and land) to settle on reservation. The short explanation: "Rice to eat, and no more mosquitoes!" p280

Life of hunter-gatherers is really hard.

Why do we get sick? If there is no convincing explanation, we resort to mystery. It's still same today. Why do people age? Why do we get cancer?

But if you depend on your investment earnings to pay current expenses, your strategy should be that of the peasants: make sure that your annual earnings always remain above the level necessary for your maintenance, even if that means having to settle for a lower time-averaged yield. p306

Should we sacrifice some potential profit to avoid being forced to sell shares at the lowest point? Cash flow is critical. If possible, we need plan B to generate cash flow. Then, we can "maximizing time-averaged yields".

Should we stay in urban or rural area during famine period? Urban area is safer. Higher social productivity is critical to generate more resources. However, this doesn't suit contagious disease and war.

British explorer A.F.R. Wollaston found the whole tribe, around 50 people died out in a few days because of starvation. It's very rare event, but it did happen.

part. 5. Religion, language, and health.

20220511 - chapter 9. What electric eels tell us about the evolution of religion

Definitions of religion; Functions and electric eels; The search for causal explanations; Supernatural beliefs; Religion's function of explanation; Defusing anxiety; Providing comfort; Organization and obedience; Codes of behavior towards strangers; Justifying war; Badges of commitment; Measures of religious success; Changes in religion's functions

To the farmers and hunters themselves, there isn't a distinction between valid science and religious superstition. p339

Scienticfically valid method works well to some extent. But if we scale up the timeline, they are not that reliable. However, if people don't fully understand the problem, or if they cannot do the research cross dozens of or even hundreds of years, there is no way to tell whether it's religious superstition. So, we need to stick with the First Principle to see through illusions.

But everybody in the past, and still most people today, want their demand for "meaning" answered. p340

Jared Diamond hints here that there is no meaning of many important things. They happen randomly. Then how about the place of bliss (Elysium) that Budda mentioned?

Their powers surpassing human powers are projections of our own personal power fantasies; they can do what we wish we could do ourselves. p344

So, Gods don't have the supernatural power that we don't want. Funny.

Start from agriculture age, people worked for longer and longer time, but no obvious life quality improvement until recent 200 years. This is beneficial to human gene (with much more population), but bad to individuals. What's going to happen next? We work less and less now, and our longevity is getting longer. However, birth rate is dropping drastically. What if UBI is deployed, robots work everywhere, and our population keeps shrinking?

Religion is MEME. Its 7 functions evolve, and religions compete with each other.

What's the meaning of life? The scientific answer is align with ZEN. The meaning of life is NOW.

20220512 - chapter 10. Speaking in many tongues

The world's language total; How languages evolve; Geography of language diversity; Traditional multilingualism; Benefits of bilingualism; Alzheimer's Disease; Vanishing languages; How languages disappear; Are minority languages harmful?; Why preserve language?; How can we protect languages?

The more diverse the natural environment is, the higher language density.

Unification means efficiency. Diversity means creativity. Combine them means the explosion of civilization.

Higher diversity alone doesn't mean faster social envolvement. Population is also critical. Europe has huge land, sufficient population and great social/natural diversity. That's why modern civilization started there.

Why "crib bilingual" can protect us from Alzheimer's Disease? Why context switching is so important? Is there other way to practice context switching? Why context switching is so hard?

No matter what we do, we do it in our mind first. We assume something is going to happen, then follow the assumption. To some extent, live in the moment means no assumption. So, we think and do things at the same time? Is that the key to keep our brain healthy and strong?

Welfare payments don't aim at long-term solutions. p406

I am not convinced about the benefit of keeping minor languages. 100 languages in the world is more than enough to me. Less languages means higher social efficiency. With the impact from Internet, it's getting harder and harder to protect those minor languages anyway.

20220515 - chapter 11. Salt, sugar, far, and sloth

Our salt intake; Salt and blood pressure; Causes of hypertension; Dietary sources of salt; Diabetes; Types of diabetes; Genes, environment, and diabetes; Pima Indians and Nauru Islanders; Diabetes in India; Benefits of genes for diabetes; Why is diabetes low in Europeans?; The future of non-communicable diseases

Should we take less salt? I am not convinced. There is no enough evidence. The links below explain the details.

It's Time to End the War on Salt

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/

The Health ABC study concluded that in older adults, sodium intake was not associated with mortality, CVD, or HF.

https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2016/02/11/15/19/the-hazy-relationship-between-dietary-sodium-intake-and-cardiovascular-mortality

The bottomline: we lose sodium everyday by urine and sweat. That means, if we drink a lot of water and exercise a lot, then we need more salt.

Most of the processed food (can food, food in restaurant, etc.) are with either high salt or high sugar. I need to keep this in mind.

One of the direct benefit that Europe got from the New World is potato and corn. Not gold.

From 1600s to 1900s, there is almost no famine in Europe, except the Ireland famine. This obviously helped a lot with the technology explosion there.

20220516 - Epilogue : at another airport

Advantages of the modern world; Advantages of the traditional world; What can we learn?

Monkeys don't notice the warning alert when they see the trail of python. That's one of the major differences between monkey and human.

About two-thirds of traditional Faya children died in childhood. p455

We can utilize the advantages of modern societies, and avoid most of its disadvantages. It depends on our perceptions and habits.