{"id":99589,"date":"2026-03-13T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=99589"},"modified":"2026-03-12T10:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T14:14:15","slug":"qotd-i-was-one-shotted-in-my-teens-by-guns-germs-and-steel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/03\/13\/qotd-i-was-one-shotted-in-my-teens-by-guns-germs-and-steel\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;I was one-shotted in my teens by <em>Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/em>&#8220;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>I was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepsmiths.com\/p\/review-road-belong-cargo-by-peter\" target=\"_blank\">one-shotted in my teens<\/a> by the way <em>Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/em> \u2728explained everything\u2728 and I&#8217;ve been chasing that dragon ever since. At this point honestly half the books I&#8217;ve reviewed could probably be described as arguments against Jared Diamond. But that&#8217;s okay. I can stop any time. Just one more sweeping transdisciplinary exploration of global history. Just let me see a map of British coalfields next to a chart of GDP per capita and I promise I&#8217;ll go back to that book about esoteric writing. C&#8217;mon, bro, I won&#8217;t ever talk about the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Western_European_marriage_pattern\" target=\"_blank\">Hajnal Line<\/a> again, I swear. Just let me have one more study of an under-appreciated causal factor for the differing trajectories of human societies and I&#8217;m done. <em>I have this under control<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Jane Psmith, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepsmiths.com\/p\/briefly-noted-further-arguments-against\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;BRIEFLY NOTED: Further Arguments Against Jared Diamond&#8221;, <em>Mr. and Mrs. Psmith&#8217;s Bookshelf<\/em><\/a>, 2025-11-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was one-shotted in my teens by the way Guns, Germs, and Steel \u2728explained everything\u2728 and I&#8217;ve been chasing that dragon ever since. At this point honestly half the books I&#8217;ve reviewed could probably be described as arguments against Jared Diamond. But that&#8217;s okay. I can stop any time. Just one more sweeping transdisciplinary exploration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,41],"tags":[86,1533],"class_list":["post-99589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-quotations","tag-criticism","tag-psmithreviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pUh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101330,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99589\/revisions\/101330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}