Here's my rebuttal, comparing it to Andrew Yang's book: The War on Normal People
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/the-problem-with-pinkers-pos...
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.
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.
> 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".
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.
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.