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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward)

There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinion is objectively wrong. There is a wealth of evidence about how bad things have been over the past 200 years or so, and every metric shows that things are getting better. The only way to make the numbers look like things are getting worse is to cherry pick a short window - for example, you can show violent crime rose in the first decade of the 21st century, but it fell for the previous 5 decades to that, so things are still better now.

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> It's based on information. As such, your opinion is objectively wrong.

Hang on, I'm not making the claim you think I'm making. Pinker observes that the level of violence in society is at an all-time low- that is, as you say, an objective fact beyond dispute (modulo measurement error). But there is a clear implied claim there that this fact means pessimism for the future is unwarranted. That is what I am disputing, because I think trends and incentives are more important than current numbers (think about how a company's share price can fall even if they have a great quarter, if investors don't think its future prospects are great)

I also dispute your claim that _every_ metric shows things are getting better. Some are, especially in areas like health and lifespan, but others (income inequality, social cohesion, faith in democracy, etc.) are not. There are legitimate grounds for disagreement as to which metrics are more important to the question of "should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the future", and maybe your opinion differs from mine, but that does not make me objectively wrong.

We'll always be able to say "But what if things get worse again?!" just as we'll always be able to say "What if things carry on getting better?". Any answer to the question is useless. We should guard against doing things to make the world worse, obviously, but I don't see much value in pessimism, especially if it requires ignoring a long term trend.

That said, speculation about the future beyond a few years away is largely pointless anyway. We get things wrong far more that we get things right, and when we are right it's mostly because we were either lucky, we've only looked at the predictions we want to look at and ignored the wrong ones, or we were so vague we couldn't have been wrong. Predicting the future is hard.

You explicitly said that in your opinion things are getting worse and you don't expect them to get better, didn't you? Or did you mean the opposite?

Sorry but this is arrogant (and condescending) hubris and is wilfully misintepreting the gp comment.

Firstly there is no single bias free set of figures. Information has been thrown away and distorted to produce a single line, without error bars. (Even error bars themselves suffer from the same issue)

Then what you describe sounds like overfitting. You cannot just discard a change in a trend out of hand. It may be a blip or it may not be.

Worst of all though is that graphs of complex systems do not contain all the information (obviously) about the future direction of that particular graph. It may be better to distrust other information sometimes, but thoughtful and cautious thinkers should be encouraged to be skeptical.

"There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society"

Yes, there is.

Imagine a society without justice/police in which people must fend for themselves. It would quickly deteriorate to the point wherein there would be a fair bit of violence.

Imagine you - the same person you are now - in that situation.

It would be a completely different dynamic of 'violence' and represent a completely different situation - and yet it could very well have little or nothing to do with our moral position (i.e. 'better angels').

Second - I think that 'war' is a completely different kind of violence than regular violent crime.

One could argue that the only thing that has made modern countries less apt for war is MAD, i.e. the fact that there's no real possibility for gain or winning outcomes, with nuclear weapons, the borders are largely frozen. Point being: a weapon, of all things, could have such geostrategic importance that it quashes violence, irrespective of anything else ('better angels') etc..

"There is a wealth of evidence about how bad things have been over the past 200 years or so, and every metric shows that things are getting better. "

This is also false.

From 1960 to 1992 crime in the Western world grew by 800%.

That's almost a 50 year period out of 200 and is not 'cherry picking'.

Violent crime today is still about 600% greater than it was in 1950.

It's a paradox few want to face: that the 'liberation' of the 1960's was also coincident with a massive increase in crime, which peaked in 1992 and has come down somewhat, but still quite high compared to the 1950's.

Anyhow - I don't think it makes any sense to look at violence outside the big contextual things.

While I generally agree with your points, the statement "* i.e. the fact that there's no real possibility for gain or winning outcomes, with nuclear weapons*" assumes facts that are simply not available.

Some day, nuclear weapons will again be used in anger, and there most certainly will be survivors (it's actually not very hard to survive one unless and until you run out of food), and who knows what they'll conclude about "winning" vs. losing outcomes.

> Imagine a society without justice/police in which people must fend for themselves. It would quickly deteriorate to the point wherein there would be a fair bit of violence.

that conclusion is not warranted by the premise. How about this as an alternative outcome: "Imagine a society in which people actively defend community values for themselves and in cooperation with a community of similarly concerned citizens. It would quickly stabilize into a mostly non-violent community."

What are police, but a group of people specifically dedicated by the community to a specific task? Just because there is no dedicated, professional person filling a role, does not mean the role will not be filled.

> Just because there is no dedicated, professional person filling a role, does not mean the role will not be filled

And thats how you get Somalia. Police was invented for a reason i suppose .

Violence happens when there arent enough resources

The problem is, there is no upper limit on "enough". Wars have been started on grounds of vital resources like food, water, etc. it's not common nowadays, as technology helped us to produce food more efficiently, and it's enough for the current population of the planet. Maybe it will not be enough for 15 billion people, which is not happening in the near future.

But then there are wars started on grouds of religion (ISIS), or territorial agression for the future generation (WWII), and none of these has to do with current resource limitations. These are based on ideologies that are made up and controlled by few and distributed via media.

Technology has made it possible to spread these kinds of ideologies more efficient than ever. It's everywhere, in news, facebook, even in Hollywood. And it is slowly transforming people to accept a greater level of violence.

Greater level than what?

You mean like WW2?

Would it have happened if Germany's economy wasn't devastated by the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression didn't affect economies worldwide and the German currency was completely devalued? Would the national socialist party get such control?

> From 1960 to 1992 crime in the Western world grew by 800%

citation? Also, same question for your 600% number?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/427758/careful-panic-vi...

Those measurements aren't as accurate as you might think. E.g. many local police forces in the US are under pressure to under report crimes of all sorts, and/or too busy to record petty crimes that are unlikely to be closed, and this can even extend to the hardest of them all to do that, murder. E.g. Chicago as of late redefining boundaries so murders that happen in places that used to be counted aren't any more (like in the highway to the airport as I recall).

Or, of course, it can be done at the medical examiner level, as I've heard in one case in the U.K. Fortunately for both those countries, we've got independent and apparently uncorrupted victimization surveys as a double check against what the authorities report.

And I should note that if you go beyond the US to e.g. the U.K., you won't find such a copacetic result, for a steady reduction in interpersonal violence rates since the 13th Century has been reversed in just half a century....

When I was learning piano in college, I reached a point where I hit a major wall, and where I actually got worse over a period of time. My playing got clunkier and less expressive, and I was unable to communicate as well as I had before. Extremely upset, I went to the old emeritus piano wizard of the faculty for advice. He had been listening and told me that I had actually been improving very quickly, but my musical awareness had been increasing even faster. So relatively, my perceptions were telling me I was getting worse.

I tend to think that is behind the feelings of things being more violent. We're still adjusting to globalism and the greater feelings of interconnectedness.

The problem is what time frame we are talking about. Yes, society looks nice now if you compare it to 200 years ago. But that's not relevant. The fact is by a lot of measurements (not limited to crime) the 1990s was the best decade ever (at least in the West). The question is how we can get back to that.

No - for violent crime at least, the 1950's was the 'low point' - the 1990's were actually a high point.

Violent crime in 1992 was about 800% higher than in the 1950's at least in America.

It's come down a little, but crime is still about 600% greater than in the 1950's.

By which measurements? And why limit the window to the West?

Well, the US economic boom (the longest recorded expansion in US history), for example. And the drop in violent crime in the second half of the 1990s variously attributed to Bill Clinton's crime bill, the eventual indirect benefits of either legalizing abortion, or banning leaded gas. Limiting the window to the West avoids the whole issue of civil wars in Eastern Europe making anything seem better in comparison.

Don't forget the drop in the number of younger men, the most likely to become criminals, as the Baby Boomers grew older. Not to mention a bunch of the incorrigibles getting locked up for long periods of time.

The number of Millenials is about the same as the number of Boomers.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/millennials-...

Note that the article talks about the number of living Boomers and Millenials surpassing them. I'm not making that point. The max number of Boomers was about 79 million. 75 million Millenials is quite comparable to that.

We normally look at crimes by rates, X per 100,000, so the fact that the total population is quite a bit bigger between the two periods is significant.

So is the fact that the item you're comparing today's still living, old Boomers to a by definition much younger Millennial population. There were once quite a few more Boombers, and circling back to my entire point, young Boomers of the criminal producing age.

No, I'm comparing the 75 million living Millenials to the 79 million peak population of the Boomers. But I repeat myself.

I also disagree that a ~5% difference would be likely to drive significant differences in crime rates.

Later: Yes, that Millenials are a smaller percentage of the population would complicate the comparison.

That US economic boom was followed pretty spectacularly by a bust caused mainly by the rampant speculation that fueled the boom being based largely on bullshit.

You're clamoring for a soap bubble that didn't withstand a tiny pinprick.

I think it's at least fine to say that the parent is to some extent equivocating anecdotal personal "evidence" with extensive research and drawing very different conclusions.

Much of the criticism I've read of "The Better Angels..." has towed a similar line. It's obviously a hugely complicated subject, with at best terrible data for most of the period under examination, but I found that Pinker really did synthesize and explore a tremendous amount of data, history and theory in a way I found intelligent and compelling.

Pinker at least offers a more substantial counter-narrative to the standard news cycle where you're likely to get shot the next time you walk out your door. I would argue that view drives greater violence through a disproportionate law-and-order response to even the suspicion of a crime.

i dont think the parent disputed the data. Why should we not be worried about the recent rise of violence, stagnant wages, rising inequality in a time of peace? there is no excuse to be complacent. If we were in a virtuous cycle before, it might well be that we are entering a vicious one. That is worrisome.

I am old enough to remember being optimistic about the next year. I m afraid the newer generation has not felt what its like

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