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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

There's some evidence if you read Pinker's stuff that the world is becoming more peaceful so we can keep doing what we're doing.

See also

>The Decline of War - We are experiencing one of the least discussed, yet most remarkable cultural shifts of all time: war, one of our species’ most abiding and defining social practices, is at its lowest ebb ever

https://medium.com/@angushervey/the-decline-of-war-8760f9a5b...

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My worry is that median violence is down but in exchange for a small chance of destroying civilization each year. An average decline in war plus a (say) 1% chance of a global nuclear exchange per year is not a good situation in the long run, but would look great up until you hit that 1%.

The example of the turkey in The Black Swan is appropriate: it's fed every single day, right up until an "unexpected" event occurs on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

The annual chance of a global nuclear exchange has certainly declined since the 60s. I agree it's not zero yet but we're probably ok until skynet kicks in.

Nonetheless, the Doomsday Clock has been recently advanced: https://chomsky.info/06122016/.

More generally, violence at large is declining (although perception of it keeps on increasing, possibly because of easier information sharing, or possibly because of a growing intolerance about it)

https://youtu.be/sjT4HlNJNgI

I've seen a compelling argument (with backing citation) made elsewhere that violence in the first world is actually increasing, but has been masked by advances in trauma medicine. Will edit this post with reference if I can find it.

Perhaps humans, on average, are willing to accept a roughly constant level of perceived global suffering, and that the increasing ease of media documenting suffering is making it increasingly hard for governments to justify inflicting suffering on other countries?

Also obligatory to mention NN Taleb's rebuttal of this thesis, and the back and forth between them that followed.

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