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Comment by pastProlog | Hacker News Reader

Pinker is not a great example as a popularizer of science. He writes scientific books in layman's terms like The Language Instinct (which itself sometimes drifts off scientific canon into one explanation he favors over another in disputed areas). He also writes books like The Better Angels of Our Nature which are much more loosely connected to science in which he gives his opinion on human nature, politics, society etc.

I agree with the Language Instinct since it sticks with our current scientific understanding of how the brain scientifically and mathematically creates grammar. I disagree with much of The Better Angels book since it contradicts many anthropological and archaeological studies of human societies.

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Genuinely curious: in what ways does Better Angels contradict studies of human societies?

You can read Marshall Sahlins, Lewis H. Morgan, Eleanor Leacock or others.

One thing they say is the hunter-gatherer bands of 10,000 years ago (or the small handful which remain in the world's remaining wilderness today) are not as bad as they say.

One thing is - the men in some of these bands work less than 40 hours a week. So in some respects, they are better off than a lot of people here (in some respects worse off).

The basic idea is against the Panglossian idea that Voltaire talks about in Candide - that we're currently living in the best possible economic/political/etc. system. One counterpoint to that is every political system since the dawn of time has held up people like Pinker who say we're living in the best of all possible systems and the other ones are awful, people need a strong government to keep them in check, and so forth.

People didn't need a strong government to keep them in check 10,000 years ago, 20,000, 30,000 when they were painting buffalos in caves and so forth.

>One counterpoint to that is every political system since the dawn of time has held up people like Pinker who say we're living in the best of all possible systems and the other ones are awful, people need a strong government to keep them in check, and so forth.

Pinker never says anything like this I can remember and it doesn't even sound like something like something he talks about. Could you point out something that lead you to this interpretation?

>I agree with the Language Instinct since it sticks with our current scientific understanding of how the brain scientifically and mathematically creates grammar. I disagree with much of The Better Angels book since it contradicts many anthropological and archaeological studies of human societies.

So you agree with "The Language Instinct" because it supports the prevailing view and you disagree with "The Better Angels..." because it doesn't. Why the appeal to authority? Why not judge the books on their arguments and evidence?

> because it supports the prevailing view and you disagree with "The Better Angels..." because it doesn't.

No, I said the Language Instinct talked about science and the brain, and Better Angels talked about political questions. One is scientific, one is polemic.

Pinker refers to Noam Chomsky in his scientific books, and he is an author of similar note. Chomsky writes mathematical formulas to describe human and computer languages, which are widely used - so there is no argument to their validity (unless you have some logical proof that Chomsky normal form can not describe context-free grammars). Chomsky also writes in other books about what he thinks about Israeli foreign policy - which is political and polemic.

I don't know how much more I can explain how there is a difference between an error-free mathematical proof and a controversial political opinion. They are apples and oranges.

You're misrepresenting what Pinker is saying in "Better Angels". His claim is that violence globally has declined and he backs that up with quantified data and argument. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not disagree that there probably are some remote cultures that are less violent but it doesn't detract from his larger point.

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