Steven Pinker’s case for optimism
economist.com
economist.com
Then what happened? The 75-year great 20th century war from 1914 to 1989. It had three or four phases: WWI, WWII, the cold war, the wars of southeast Asia.
I would not get too confident again.
The 20th century was the least violent century in human history on a per capita basis. We know this, in part, thanks to Pinker's research.
The world 200 years ago and the world today is different.. politics are different and out global community is VERY different.
In fact UN has been pointed to as one of the reasons why we have less war..
In many ways, being able to say that is also what's cool about Pinkers book. Sure, it doesn't reference all studies ever done, but it does attempt to argue what worked and what didn't.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight...
"Much of its more than 500 pages consists of figures aiming to show the progress that has been made under the aegis of Enlightenment ideals. Of course, these figures settle nothing. [Uh, of course? Care to elaborate?] Like Pinker’s celebrated assertion that the world is becoming ever more peaceful – the statistical basis of which has been demolished by Nassim Nicholas Taleb [Oh snap! It was demolished by this dude I've never heard of, using reasoning that isn't provided? Dammnnnn, sick burn] everything depends on what is included in them and how they are interpreted. [Alright, I'm ready for you truth bomb]
Are the millions incarcerated in the vast American prison system and the millions more who live under parole included in the calculus that says human freedom is increasing? [Um, are they not? Or are you asking me to do the homework to see if your point has merit?] If we are to congratulate ourselves on being less cruel to animals, how much weight should be given to the uncounted numbers that suffer in factory farming and hideous medical experiments – neither of which were practised on any comparable scale in the past? [Good question... that you decline to answer]"
Basically: "X is misleading, because what about Y?" I don't know man, can you just tell me rather than leaving me guessing? It would be more compelling if he did his own homework rather than leaving his sucker punch as an exercise to the reader.
I think the original article is far more compelling than this so called rebuttal.
I was never a pessimist. But it have changed the narrative I often take in a discussion on a subject.
I found the descriptions of true poverty, quite impactful.
Yes, things are better, but only when they're not terrible.
I think the Vanderbilts and Astors, and their current cousins, inbred and not, still have a profound advantage over the rest of us, poor or not, in that they enjoy existential security within the current frame of reference, and can reasonably live their lives with that assumption.
In other words, the rich experience little to no risk in losing what security they have, or falling below the security level of the poor, while constant security risk could be the practical definition of being poor.
So what if you have a phone, if that and all else can disappear in the wink of a bureaucratic or natural systems eye.
The richest men a little over a century ago could have fallen to smallpox, influenza, cholera and a number of other today-curable diseases.
If you're the head of state, or the head of a successful company, or the venture capitalist, or simply heir to a fortune, you know you're on top. You wake up every day knowing your time belongs to you. You walk into a room and people smile at you, suck up to you, want to be your friend. You might even make frequent decisions about which other people in your world move upward or downward.
This seems like it would be a significant dimension for anyone wanting to measure quality of life. And for this reason, I bet a lot of people wouldn't mind terribly if they had to give up their electricity, air conditioning, color television, and the rest of their modern conveniences if it meant they could swap lives with the Vanderbilits and Astors of old.
I think you would be very interested to read the book, given the understanding you've demonstrated here.
Lets say you have a boxing match and your opponent's boxing gloves are slightly better than yours. The next boxing match, your opponent gives you his boxing gloves and he uses brass knuckles. You're currently better off compared to your previous self since you have better boxing gloves. But the distance between your current self and your opponent ( brass knuckles ) has increased significantly. So are you really better off?
It's like two groups going to battle. In the first battle, group A fights with wiffle bats and group B fights with baseball bats. For the next battle, group A wises up and brings baseball bats. But group B brings machine guns.
Technically, in battle 2, group A is better off with baseball bats rather than wiffle bats. But the "distance" between them and their opponent has increased significantly so you'd be hard pressed to say they are better off in battle 2.
This is the same trick economists use. Just because things improve in absolute terms over time doesn't mean that things are better off comparatively within societies.
With regards to progress only being relative, I think most people who get amazing medical treatments, will disagree with you.
Because power relations between groups is a zero sum game.
> With regards to progress only being relative, I think most people who get amazing medical treatments, will disagree with you.
I didn't say progress was relative. I didn't even mention relative. I specifically mention the wealth gap and the growing disparity between the rich and the rest and the uneven power disparity. Hence my examples of battle.
I was sure someone would bring up "zero-sum" but not the way you brought it up by misunderstanding my comment. The garden variety "zero-sum" response would justify the wealthy getting the lion share of wealth and everyone getting crumbs because everyone is still better off. And normally, I'd respond that if the wealthy got crumbs and the rest got the lion share, everyone would still be better off. You replaced one straw man with another.
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-problem-with-pinkers-pos...
I'm more persuaded by the optimistic perspective, personally, but these are great contrasting pieces to highlight that it's not a slam dunk.
Since then, from 1925 - 2015, the rate has consistently halved every 20 years.
Your response is about a few statistics in the US since 1990. They don't even extend to the rest of the developed world.
Pinker doesn't say that everything is getting better all the time. There is still leaders like Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Maduro. He says, however, that in general things have become much better globally since 1800.
We don't experience deltas to the past. We experience deltas from what we remember.
> We're watching the entire meaning infrastructure in this country be destroyed. >
Ok, so we're clearly in a very US-centric context here.
> 1.Religion is going away.
> [Sidebar:] As an atheist I think there is a lot of good that comes from discarding religion, but as a humble realist I also need to acknowledge the downsides.
What downsides? Please state them explicitly. (I could read this as a conceit to the general political climate in the US where atheists seems to be viewed unfavorably by the majority.)
> 2. Most people will not have a good job or a good paycheck.
Clearly some type of Basic Income type system will eventually become necessary as more and more things are automated. That, or we figure out what purpose the concept of money actually serves and come up with a better implementation.
> > 3. Being a homemaker is no longer considered meaningful for a lot of parents.
I don't understand how you can claim that this is "destroying meaning"?
Let me ask a pointed question: Who do you envision as being the homemaker -- the wife or the husband?
> > So where is the meaning coming from?
I get the feeling that either I'm completely missing the point of what you're writing, or you're writing from a pretty "conservative" position.
(EDIT: HN is really absurdly shit at quoting others. I'd apologize for my bad formatting, but I really don't understand how this shoddiness is acceptable in any world. Anyway, I did my best and will probably proceed to try to delete my account at this point.)
This feels like a tacit question.
To answer the way you painted it: it doesn’t have to be either.
The role is eroding because the expectation is, that regardless of gender both partners in a relationship need to be working.
This is to facilitate the rising cost of a raising family in large city environments.
> The role is eroding because the expectation is, that regardless of gender both partners in a relationship need to be working.
Why would both partners working be a problem in the first place? What about socialized (gasp!) child care?
Obviously, you'll want both parents to be spending as much time as possible with their children, but the underlying problem here seems to be... money. If there were less pressure to earn then maybe both parents could change to a 3-4 days work-week, etc. etc.
(EDIT: I'll actually add a counter-point to my own assertion here. It may not actually be the case that spending more time with one's children is always better. There may be a Goldilocks zone.)
> This is to facilitate the rising cost of a raising family in large city environments.
I think I understand the symptom. Cost means money.
Obviously, things will have to change on a massive scale for "my" conception of the future to be feasible everywhere, but I still understand what this has to do with meaning (as your original blog post was about).
Sorry. I cannot claim credit for the author.
I’m not sure why you’re mentioning women historically being keepers of the house It’s not relevant to the topic, people in general don’t value that role anymore.
Should they value the role? I’m not sure, it has historically been a thankless task, probably soul crushing too. Having cleaning services and cooks would be better but I’m not sure if it would scale.
> I’m not sure why you’re mentioning women historically being keepers of the house It’s not relevant to the topic, people in general don’t value that role anymore.
My point was in the asymmetry -- so I found it odd that the blog author (not you!) would point to this as somehow being evidence of "loss of meaning".
How so? "Unhappiness" isn't what causes suicide, so using it as a guage for happiness is a stretch. Even still, why assume it is a drop in happiness and not a rise in something like access to guns?
And isn't Pinker's larger point that people have been preaching the upcoming "CATASTROPHE" for the past three hundred years and yet largely things keep getting better?
That is such a terrible argument because, for one, it ignores all the catastrophes that did happen in the last 300 years to various peoples.
Historically, catastrophes can happen, do happen, cause a lot of suffering and death. It is actually good idea to take that possibility seriously, warn where you seen them becoming more likely and take steps to prevent them.
Really? It had such little impact, they were ready to do it again in twenty years. All your examples are similar in that regard. They were certainly horrible for the people involved, but not a catastrophe that was impossible to recover from.
You're using a less extreme use of the word "catastrophe" than what Pinker is describing. No one doubts that there are problems now that could get worse. More that we shouldn't romanticise some past age, and we shouldn't abandon the enlightenment values that got us here.
WWII was extinction level for large parts of population - notably civilian populations. Including non Jewish civilians. Not just horrible for people involved, they ceased to exist afterwards. Also, WWI having little impact is quite novel interpretation. Even if we ignore the impact on Russia, it's impact on French and German societies was notable.
Lastly, Pinker is not historian nor has peer reviewed articles/books on topic of history. Where historians reviewed his historical work (even those who share his ideological opinions), they complain about methodology, cherry picking, wrong data and so on. That goes about medieval parts, prehistoric parts and last century parts. That had nothing to do with romantization of history and a lot to do with not so great science driven by authors opinions (whether you agree or disagree with them it is possible to criticize his historical theories and approaches).
Enlightenment is large period spanning many contradictory thinkers. It has to do with both good and bad of that and later period. You can't pick just one and ignore the other.
It's being used here to mean total ruin, the word can be used other ways but I've been fairly clear with what I mean by it. That said, I would probably consider something like the bronze age collapse a catastrophe in addition to extinction events.
I'm not trying to say that those events weren't completely tragic or that they didn't lead to changes. And I'm only saying WWI had little impact compared to a catastrophe.
Pinker is not a historian, he is a scientist. I'm not claiming he's perfect, more that much of this criticism is ignoring the context provided.
The age of the enlightenment is a long period with many ideas. Enlightenment values are a relatively distinct thing, mostly empiricism and classic liberalism.
If WWI and subsequent WWII (which had a lot to do with world WWI created) are little impact, then "no catastrophe" is incredibly low bar. It means nothing, because "no catastrophe" still means we are all death or about to die in slavery.
> Pinker is not a historian, he is a scientist. I'm not claiming he's perfect, more that much of this criticism is ignoring the context provided.
Meaning, he studied something completely different. He is very good at that different thing. That knowledge and experience does not translate to other areas. That is general statement valid for all scientists in all areas in the world.
Enlightenment brought a lot more then just that. It was way more complicated (and interesting) then simplified easy "all the good things" framing would suggest. It also generated scientific explanation and defense of slavery which required scientific theory of racism. (Meaning the two ceased to be merely "I am more powerful or god wants me" and started to have harder to break theories behind them.) That is not to blame enlightenment, slavery existed before obviously, just to show that its own definition of freedom was not entirely like I would define it - and should be open to criticism and reflexion just like anything else.
1.) We need to take a step back and look at what we have and really appreciate how departed our current luxuries are from the entire history of humanity. Many of the issues described in Yang's book are about how menial repetitive jobs are disappearing from the market. There is an obvious downside in that these are lost jobs that might not be replaceable to the people of those capabilities, but the upside of this is that we have removed the need for people to do menial repetitive jobs; by no means a minor upside. A human's whole life used to be consumed by the necessity to do this work, the problem we have to deal with now is simply going to be in terms of how we handle the surplus of time we've freed from the human workforce. This is a much better problem to have, strategies like UBI are generally well received even by the staunchest libertarian types in recognition of technological advancement.
2.) We need to acknowledge what got us to where we are. Enlightenment values; justice, science, rationality, and most importantly, liberty. There was an ideological battle last century that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people, and I tend to agree with Pinker's ilk that the recognition of this being a consequence of deviating from Enlightenment values is extremely important, and not nearly as accepted only a few decades later is a cause for concern.
I don't think that Yang's arguments for the need to consider UBI is something that Pinker would disagree with at all. I don't think that Pinker's assertion that rationality and liberty have gotten us to where we are now, and the last centuries of human innovation have objectively lifted humans worldwide across many dimensions is something incompatible with Yang's message.
Statisically he may be right for certain measurable factors but it seems a little naive or callous when he's clearly not directly effected by the worst issues in the world.
This is one of the problems we see on the left from time to time.. for example someone suggesting that men can't have an opinion on gender equality, or what not..
(note. the problems on the right in American politics does however seem objectively worse by a few orders of magnitude)
It's about getting the people with the right experience and weighting people's opinions based on experience. For a long time mens opinions have been overweighted in gender issues hence the push for rebalancing.
But if you want to change the mind of other thinking people, it's better to argue the merits of the message than debate the identity of carrier.
There may be an interesting question here about the tension between, on the one hand, the benefit of anonymous publication to stop positive or negative associations with the author from affecting how their work is received, and on the other hand, the need for full disclosure when an author advocates for certain policies that they might gain undue benefit from.
I think your original comment suggested that because he was privileged, and because he had noticed that the situation for many people in the world is better than it has been before, that therefore he didn't care (or people like him might not care) that others still suffer from problems that we could prevent. I'm not sure if optimism reduces empathy, but I suppose that is something to consider.
This is actually a great example. We continue to reduce the lead in our water and environment, and kids in Flint today have all-time record low levels of lead in their blood.
There is no amount of lead that is safe, and this is not meant to let Flint and Michigan officials off the hook. But it's relevant to point out that kids in Flint today have dramatically, orders of magnitude lower levels of lead in their blood than kids born in the 1980s.
You'll be pleasantly surprised by his work. It suggests that if there is a natural arc to history, it involves the expansion of our "circle of empathy". Progress, in Pinker's definition, involves improving living standards for everyone. His is a counter to the "things are getting worse so we should keep more for ourselves" argument.
> My grandparents grew up without electricity or plumbing, not even a telephone.
> Infant mortality when they were born was 10% for children under the age of 1.
> There was no healthcare.
> There was no retirement/social assistance.
> There was no welfare.
> Many of grandads peers died in brutal wars.
> Epidemic diseases (aka spanish flu etc.) were still common and would wipe out a lot of people.
> There was no right to vote for women. There was no transparency in governance.
> There was no concept of 'worker safety' - people did unbelievably dangerous things. My grandfather worked in a lumber camp in dead winter, cutting down and hauling trees surrounded by others doing the same.
> There was no higher education for regular folk.
> They were white as can be yet faced intense racism as 'dirty Germans' (i.e. two world wars).
> Heck there wasn't even anything made of plastic ... can you imagine!
... I could go on and on ...
Life is incredibly better (materially, maybe not socially) for almost everyone, most of us wouldn't survive two weeks in Victorian-era conditions.
Steven seems much more like a realist who with a basis in fact predicts that things will be okay, if we keep working on the problems..
That happens in two instances.
In the first case, few people are capable of properly using logic, reasoning through any sort of discussion. Richard Dawkins has some great talks on this subject (and he runs into it constantly on Twitter). And I'm not speaking of advanced logic use, rather, extremely simplistic logic use. They can't control their emotions properly and can't control for their own bias at all. It's merely my opinion, however I'd say it's a single digit minority that doesn't fall into this irrational/emotionalism camp in common discussion. You see it universally even among the supposed most intelligent forums online. It makes routine discussion and debate extremely obnoxious, as you have to constantly pre-emptively point out that just because you say X you're not also proclaiming or supporting Y (eg if I say I dislike Hillary, that doesn't mean I support Trump; it's impossible to get away from this basic logic failure). If you don't pre-empt in that manner, you'll spend vast amounts of your time trying to correct people who can't use logic properly.
The second case, is where it's intentional. That's also very common. In this scenario the sole debasing option critics have left to attack something they don't like that is factually supported, is to ignore what was actually said. That requires inventing a means to bury the thing they don't like by trying to change what was said and redirect the conversation to a favorable position.