Jared Diamond on risk

I couldn't ask for a better video on the topic of this month's theme to appear on my YouTube feed.

The author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Professor Jared Diamond discusses the differences of risk evaluation between modern and traditional cultures.

I was expecting Diamond to say he survived driving, but I can accept that taking a shower might be riskier at his age.

Follow over the jump for more from Diamond about the lessons modern societies can learn from traditional ones.

The Commonwealth Club posted another video about the differences in machismo between young men in the U.S. and those in New Guinea, again tied into how the different societies experience risk and danger.

The author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Professor Jared Diamond talks about how young males in New Guinea have less machismo than young men in Western Societies.

Both videos shared this blurb about Diamond in their descriptions.

Professor of Geography, UCLA; Author, Guns, Germs, and Steel and The World Until Yesterday Pulitzer Prize-winning author Diamond examines how Amazonian Indians, Inuit and other traditional societies have adapted and evolved for nearly 6 million years. He explains what we can still learn from these traditional societies regarding universal human problems like elder care, child rearing, physical fitness and conflict resolution.

Here's one more item from Diamond that I originally included in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Fiscal Bluff Bungee Jumping) on Daily Kos and have been saving for an opportune time to use ever since I alluded to it in the conclusion of Science in the Fiscal Bluff Bungee Jump, "I have more to say about the science of the Fiscal Bluff when I have more energy."

NBC News: 'Collapse' in Congress: Lawmakers should learn from tribal elders By Alan Boyle

In the wake of a high-wire "fiscal cliff" performance that wasn't exactly their finest hour, members of Congress would do well to learn a lesson from the tribes of New Guinea and the Amazon: Listen to your elders. At least that's the lesson passed along by UCLA Professor Jared Diamond, the author of "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?"

Diamond documented the reasons why European invaders overwhelmed less technologically advanced cultures in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies." He laid out cautionary tales of social breakdown in the follow-up book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." In his newly published book, Diamond draws upon his decades of research in far-flung locales to lay out lessons for us less traditional types.

"Tribes constitute thousands of natural experiments in how to run a human society," he told a capacity crowd Thursday night during the kickoff of his international book tour at Town Hall Seattle.

That's it about Diamond from me. For more, read what EscapefromWisconsin at The Hipcrime Vocab has to say about him in four entries: Jared's Diamond's World of Yesterday, The Guardian Reviews Diamond, Diamond On The Hotseat, and Anthropologipalooza. One doesn't have to go back to tribal societies to learn lessons modern ones have forgotten; one can learn from pre-industrial civilizations as well.