It’s Official — Steven Pinker Is Full of Shit

The author here and Pinker are using different definitions of "poverty".

The author's definition is defined in terms of wealth inequality. By their definition, there is a similar level of poverty today in America as there was in the 1920s. Not an unreasonable position to take, really.

But Pinker was talking in terms of absolute material wealth. The percentage of humans going without good nutrition, or any access to medicines, or without access to industrially mass-produced goods like clothing or steel tools, has fallen very sharply since the 1960s.

This is such an introductory level distinction understood by nearly everyone that I'm rather surprised someone writing for Jacobin, which while quite far left is usually intellectually rigorous, could fall for it.

Yikes - article's headline is a profane insult, the first paragraph describes Pinker as a 'Jeffrey Epstein buddy' (as though that has something to do with the truth of the claims Pinker makes), and the argument hinges on the opinion of one person.

What about other measures of 'the world getting better'? Like infant mortality, literacy, school enrolment, childhood deaths from diarrhea, measles, respiratory infections?

Honestly it'd be better to visit Our World In Data than read what's clearly a hit piece.

Pinker references dozens of studies with data, charts and graphs to make his case. If there is more data that suggests that conclusions made from the data Pinker presents doesn't provide an accurate picture of reality, that should be included in an article about his being full of *.

I usually respect the Jacobin as a publication, but am I misreading something if I still read those figures as absolute improvements - especialy given that the world population increased by 2 billion in the noted time frame? I absolutely agree that the originally-cited poverty metric is absurdly poor, and focusing on an at least somewhat higher standard should be our goal as a civilization, but I don’t see any evidence here that refutes Pinker’s core argument.

This article seems to swing between claiming that poverty is not decreasing, and when looking at the data only saying that the definition of non-poverty is too generous. That may be, but it only affect the speed of improvement. The article does not actually refutes that the world is getting bettter. Confusing.