by James Augustus
My central argument is that Europe benefited by having an evolutionary environment that allowed for a high frequency of cultural, institutional and intellectual iterations, and that truth, sovereignty and natural law produce an existential advantage, so that what survived is what we call Western Civilization and its peoples.
It is easy to look back at what survived and construct a rational narrative, but by doing so we are being fooled by randomness as Taleb is so succinct at pointing out.
Evolutionary arguments are superior inasmuch as they point to what didn’t survive (via negativa) deterministically due to selection pressures.