Book Review: The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

Try to understand this Neo-Melanesian advertisement for a department store:

Kam insait long stua bilong mipela stua bilong salim olgeta samting-mipela i-ken helpim yu long kisim wanem samting yu laikim bikpela na liklik long gutpela prais. I-gat gutpela kain kago long baim na igat strap long helpim yu na lukautim yu long taim yu kam insait long dispela stua.

If some of the words look strangely familiar but don't quite make sense, read the ad aloud to yourself, concentrate on the sounds and ignore the strange spelling. 

-------------------------------- 

I was quite intrigued by this snippet found in the book titled The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. It is a 28 year old Jared Diamond classic that followed his Guns, Germs and Steel and is equally satisfying to read. If you have read his GGS and/or Collapse, you'd vividly recall the magnificent scope his books provide, analyzing a vast array of evidence to support his underlying thesis. This one does the same to claim that human beings are biologically so close to two different chimpanzee species (common and bonobo) that they can be considered the third chimpanzee variation. From 98.4% similarity in DNA to what/how we eat, what our social structures are, there is a lot of evidence to show that human beings are just another species in the continuum of animal spectrum. Then how did we come to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom to dominate the planet so profoundly? Initial chapters point out that the extremely crude stone tools that human beings used 2.5 million years ago starts to differentiate us from other animals. Bonobo (also called pygmy) chimpanzees and gorillas don't use tools. While the common chimpanzee occasionally uses some, it doesn't really depend on tools much for survival. Thus, tools usage is an initial differentiator. Over the next 1.5 million years, we slowly spread across warm parts of Africa and Asia but are still less widespread in the planet than many other animals, like lions. We didn't evolve much for another 900,000 years. About 100,000 years back we seem to have started using fire regularly, which is a big improvement but that's about it. An alien flying into earth and seeing Neanderthals, predecessors to human beings, 100K years back, would have considered them as yet another big mammal roaming around the earth. That's it.

Diamond thinks we took a great leap forward about 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the arrival of the anatomically modern Homo Sapiens. He guesses this spectacular jump to be the development of language. Since the 1.6% difference in DNA between us and chimps came in long before 40K years, author argues that this great leap forward cannot be attributed to genetic differences but just variations in the vocal chord construction that allowed us to create different sounds. The snippet at the top is part of the chapter deftly discussing the evolution of language. If we hadn't paid attention, we might think pidgin as a grammar less, poor quality means of communication uneducated people practice in a language they don't know well. Diamond explains nicely as to how pidgin is the first stage of two different language speakers communicating with each other using broken words and very short sentences that then evolves into creole, if and only if a new community of that pidgin language speakers continue to thrive bringing in the need for sophisticated grammar, and expressions of complicated thought. If not, neither side bothers to learn the language of the other side, leaving the pidgin usage where it is. The list of pidgin and creole used around the world, the kind of detective painstaking work linguists do to trace and time languages are all quite fascinating. For example, take a word like gun. Unlike sun or sea, gun didn't exist forever but was invented at a point in time. So, tracing the term for gun in various languages around the world gives fascinating insights into whether a set of languages had a common ancestor or not. Now look at the same two lines given above rewritten using English spelling to see if it makes better sense (another snippet from the book):

------------------------------ 

Come inside long store belong me-fellow-store belong sellim altogether something - me-fellow can helpim you long catchim what-name something you likeim, big-fellow na lik-lik, long good-fellow price. He-got  good-fellow kind cargo long buyim, na he-got staff long helpem you na lookoutim you long time you come inside long this-fellow store.

------------------------------ 

Although scientists and philosophers trying to glorify human beings will claim that we differ from other animals in having innate sense of ethics and other such noble traits, author thinks that human beings actually differ from other animals in two other notorious traits: our capacity to murder each other in really large numbers very efficiently and our capability to destroy the environment extremely quickly than any other species on the planet! He thinks if this capacity for self-destruction is a standard part of the evolution of any advanced civilization, it might explain Fermi's Paradox. About 10K years back we started occupying lot more parts of the planet, killing off many species into extinction around the globe, and invented agriculture. Of course the last 500 or so years have been detailed very well with written records available in many places. He thinks with the advent of modern technology & science, we might fall into a false complacency thinking that we are much more civilized and are all set to live and rule the planet forever. But under closer examination, many things look fragile, there are still genocide going on in different parts of the world, consumption of natural resources has been accelerating without any possibility of replenishment, and so on that may lead us towards a lot of pessimism. But Diamond is optimistic since the problem we face were created by us and so potentially they could be solved by us as well. 

To lead us to his conclusions author walks through a wide array of topics ranging from how survival of the fittest evolution could have brought about menopause in women, the science of adultery, Indonesian martial arts experts who drink kerosene once in a while to prove to themselves they remain strong, drug addiction, how perpetrators of genocide practice "blame the victims" to justify their acts (several pages of analysis on how Native Americans were killed of by the European settlers in US), etc. The GGS and Collapse book themes also show up in few pages that may feel a bit repetitive to those who have already read those books. Similarly while detailed slow moving discussion of various species carrying a burden as a display of its strength (e.g. peacock with a long plume) might feel like an argument seen in many other books (e.g. Richard Dawkins), if I had read this book 28 years back, I am sure it might have been new to me. Diamond also seems to have detractors who argue that many is his conclusions can't be proven and his claims are dubious. I am not an anthropologist. But he himself says that in his line of work, speculation is often involved since you can't go back thousands of years to see exactly how, what, when something happened. I wonder some of his critics make the criticism to ride his coat tails, with any publicity is good publicity attitude. To me, his easily accessible prose, varied discussion carrying an underlying directional motive are all nice signature characteristics of this book making it thoroughly enjoyable. 

Regards.

-sundar.

P.S. Have you bought the Thought Experiments book yet? :-)

You can buy the e-book from Google: https://tinyurl.com/TESVGoogle 

or from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/TESVAmazon

P.P.S. If you are wondering what does that Neo-Melanesian advertisement exactly mean, drop me a line. Will send you the precise translation with mapping details. :-)

Book Reviews: Innovation Nation by John Kao and Breakout Nations by Ruchir Sharma

This book titled "Innovation Nation - How America is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why it Matters, and What We Can Do to Get it Back" by John Kao is a little dated, since it was published in 2007, considering its topic/content is not as timeless as say "Origin of the Species". I remember reading it a while back but didn't finish it then thanks to some distraction that popped up to turn me away. Got the second book titled, "Breakout Nations - In Search of the Next Economic Miracle" by Ruchir Sharma published in 2012 as a gift few years back.Started reading promptly and again got distracted. Both books were lot more interesting to read now with dozen additional years of developmental perspective we all have gathered. While both books are focused on nation level innovation, Kao's book is more US focused comparing it to other countries that are keen on overtaking US in their own progress. Kao argues that while we love a national narrative of a good come-from-behind story and are generally confident that US will prevail, we tend to drift along in our current direction, which happens to be sideways! Since there is no national consensus about what US stands for as a country, there is no vital sense of purpose. This sounds all the more appropriate today in 2020 compared to 2007. His solution is to develop a national agenda around innovation that will bring in cohesion and propel the nation forward. But right off the bat he points to microlending as a major recent innovation, that has since been debunked by books like Due Diligence by David Roodman that said while it is useful, microlending is not all that it cracked up to be. I wouldn't have had that insight if I had read this book in 2007. :-)

In the initial chapters, Kao delves into national innovation agendas set forth by countries like China, how much each industrialized country spends on R&D, how they differ or appear more coordinated than what is going on in the US. In this non-fiction book, he has two sections where he had tried to be a story spinner. In the first story he paints a dystopian version of the future US where due to a lack of innovation, US has lost its preeminence and so an average Joe struggles to find work to support a decent family life.. In the second version, with a perfect agenda in place, US is leading the world and so Joe is doing swimmingly well. It is amusing to read these two story lines interspersed in a book rest of which is totally non-fiction. He is all praise for Singapore and Finland, claiming they got the formula right, countering them with Soviet Union's five year plans that didn't work very well. He doesn't think China's efforts & progress will amount to much, which is puzzling to read even with the 2007 mindset. 

His prescription for ailing US is to put together a Government initiated agenda to drive innovation with 20 innovation hubs spread across the country each designed to tackle one big, wicked problem, with a billion dollar funding for each hub. He asks those who may roll their eyes about another big bureaucratic government initiative to go back and evaluate how successful  were the Manhattan project that created the atomic bomb during the second world war and the mission to the moon that put the first man on the moon in the late 60's. Both are huge government initiated projects that brought the nation together with a large cohesive vision and drove the country forward in multiple fronts. If $20B funding sounds too big to you, he counters pointing out the $800B US spends on military alone. Thus, $20B funding may not be a big deal and is needed to kick start the process. I am with him on these points since politicians who cry wolf on deficit spending are willing to push it up considerably when they want, with the recent $2T stimulus package being a good example. He does conclude the book saying we need to get out of the what is good for America is good for the world cockiness and get into the mindset of what is good for the world is good for America so that we can learn from other countries. 

While Kao is an academic, Ruchir Sharma is an investment manager. He claims that he spends a month or so each year in a different country to get a good view of how things work there. The Breakout Nations book is his attempt to talk about a dozen or so such countries he has spent time on. When I started reading the initial chapters that focused on China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and so on with one chapter dedicated to each country, I thought that the whole book may turn out to be a collection disconnected reports on various nations. I was getting ready to feel a bit disappointed. Still since the writing was lucid, kept going thinking that I'd imbibe ideas similar to the ones mutual funds prospects may provide on whether to invest in and travel to that country. :-) But I was pleasantly surprised to see Sharma tie them all together in the last couple of chapters providing a coherent narrative. 

In discussing each country, he throws around a lot of interesting nuggets based on his time there. For example with the roads so congested and traffic so chaotic, Brazilian cities like Sao Paulo, have a helicopter network used by corporate CEOs that jump from one roof top to another to get to their next appointment on time. In a totally different domain, China that wants to encourage capitalism, lets multi billionaires pop-up one by one. But it doesn't want anyone becoming way too rich as it may lead to social unrest brought in by income inequalities. So, once someone's net worth crosses ten billion, they are on the government's cross hair and are either forced to keep their net worth well below the $10B mark or be charged with some crime and thrown behind bars! Of course this is not true anymore since there are very notable exceptions now like Jack Ma, who is worth $45B.

I loved many lines of Sharma's second-order analysis that look at details beyond the first order factors like a countries GDP. There are several examples including the following few:

- Churn rate of the wealthiest people in a country (more churn indicates dynamism in the country's economy that allows newer individuals to come to the top, while no change for decades may indicate corruption, entrenched privileges for a few)

- Shifts in commodity prices yielding highly lopsided and skewed valuations projecting incorrect pictures (e.g. Brazilian oil giant Petrobas alone reaching a valuation of $300B, while the entire stock market of Turkey amounting only to $200B)

- South Africa having come out of apartheid thanks to ANC, not being in any hurry to improve the economy resulting in high income inequalities, since ANC can't be challenged 

- Which country in the world is the biggest market for armored cars, as it indicates lack of systemic security despite individuals being rich.

Each one of these bullets run into few pages of intriguing discussions. 

In Sharma's analysis Indonesia is rated high as one of the best run commodity economies. He is iffy on China. With my advantage of additional eight years of hindsight, neither one appears accurate. He does a nice comparison of Taiwan and South Korea, two tiger economies, saying Taiwan actually has the recommended set of ingredients, like welcoming immigrants, open corporate books, no family run conglomerates but is not doing as well as S. Korea which is on the opposite end of the spectrum but is thriving. He finds it counter-intuitive but accepts that the S. Korea model could work since it has been on the raise for decades now, establishing brands that are well recognized all over the world.

In the end he looks at countries that are potentially going to increase the per-capita income range substantially over the next decade (i.e. current decade coming to an end since the book is almost a decade old) as a mark of overall growth that points to a breakout nation. In the $20K to $25K range, he lists Czech Republic and South Korea. He places Turkey and Poland in the $10K to $15K range, and Thailand in the $5K to $10K range. Below that range, he places China hesitantly and lists India, Sri Lanka and Nigeria as other potential break outs. He places many of the countries where the data available are unreliable combined with a level of opaqueness due to corruption that makes objective analysis difficult in the "Fourth World" bucket. His assessment is that as they straighten out their act, any of them may suddenly turn out to be a great break out nation. Makes sense. 

It was nice to read two different books more or less simultaneously as they both covered overlapping domains by happenstance. Neither one is a difficult read. Material being a bit dated, instead of making them feel less useful, gave me the feeling of having an advantage over the authors that made the read more enjoyable. :-)

Regards.

-sundar.