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Comment by IceHegel | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised more people don't compare books like Pinker's Enlightenment Now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now) to The Great Illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion) which claimed war was impossible due to economic interdependence and new massively destructive weapons(published 1911). Pinker makes many similar points about progress and the reduction of violence in the 20th and 21st century, which for me is actually a worrying sign.

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Angell's argument was more along the lines that war cannot be strictly justified by economic, financial, or security incentives: "(2) War is not impossible, and no responsible Pacifist ever said it was; it is not the likelihood of war which is the illusion, but its benefits." [^1]

His point was that economic interdependence in the current age(1910-1860) meant that changing the international order by force of arms would not lead to a more favorable outcome for the aggressor. In fact, quite the opposite. The aggressor's economy would be wrecked even in victory no matter the length of the war. Economic isolation from world trade and credit would be devastating.

If he was claiming that war was impossible would he bother to write a book arguing that the benefits of war were not commensurate with the cost? The entire reason he wrote the book was to dissuade 'militarists' and stop the buildup of military potential that began with the dreadnought race and germany's more aggressive wilhelm foreign policy. The book was almost directly aimed at a german audience as a result.

[^1]: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38535/38535-h/38535-h.htm#Pag...

A new lap of the arms race is almost always increases the likelines of war, not decrease as every side believes in superiority of its weapons.

Equally so, believe that nuclear retaliation we will stop a war "will only hold so until it doesn't"

In WWI every side knew how terrible, and devastating the artillery has become — to the point of making the infantry warfare obsolete, and plainly suicidal for an enemy with inferior artillery.

It's just both sides mutually believed to have a trump card, and that the one suicidal there was their enemy.

Indeed and his predictions were quite accurate: WW1 devastated the empire's involved. No one came out on top from a war of conquest and it was the end of monarchies in Europe.

As usual, then just as now, the devil is in the details. If you garner enough support and do it in a far enough place from where most of your economic and political interests lie, then you're pretty much safe with waging decades of war or get away with genocide.

King Leopold II of Belgium got away with killing 10 million Africans right around the period mentioned (1865-1909) with barely a mention then or now. And the US has been waging war in the Middle East under one pretext or another for several decades now without being pushed into isolation.

War is less likely but more destructive, leading to the e(v) being about the same.

You should give Pinker a closer read. He does not say that progress is uniform in space or time. He certainly acknowledges there can be set backs. This is exactly why he emphases the importance of reason - to avoid the setbacks that would come from poor decisions.

I've read both Enlightenment Now! and The Better Angels of Our Nature and agree. Pinker has never said progress is uniform, or even preordained, for that matter. Both books are more descriptive than prescriptive, relying on hard data instead of theories, and appeal to the values of the enlightenment, i.e., the use of facts and reasoning for solving the problems that inevitably come with technological progress.

I would encourage IceHegel to read the books more closely too.

I own and have read both. They are fine books, but they don't deal with the potential for violence with much depth. It's hard to know what "hard" data to use to estimate potential violence, but an economist isn't getting higher than a B- if they leave the term out of their regression entirely (as Pinker does).

Pinker also says repeatedly in both books that humans feel worse about the way things are than they should because our picture is anecdotal and distorted.

Maybe, but we might also dislike the present age because there are possible future worlds that appear much worse than the futures worlds imagined by past ages, even if those ages themselves were more violent/less educated/more unequal/etc. than our own.

I know we should not judge person and only ideas but it seems like all of Pinker's ideas are tok shallow for an academic. For example,

Also, Pinker wrote a book on how the mind works, which is very very wrong (my wife, who's a psychologist absolutely hates it). She asked me to read a small article called "That's not how the mind works" by some guy at MIT to explain.

Then I've also read his book on "How to write" and as an avid reader, I'd say we'd not have had Shakespeare if we followed his advice.

And now you're telling me that his other books are also very shallow? Does he not realize it?

Did you read Pinker's reply to Fodor, the "some guy at MIT"?

https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/so_how_does_the_...

Seems like a solid retort, however this field is not specialty.

Just like all of the edge.org/Epstein people (if you’re unaware, Pinker is accused of raping a 15 year old girl and spent extensive time with Epstein), he’s all smoke and no substance. In fact the “third culture” group has proven to be amoral and completely corrupt.

https://newrepublic.com/article/154826/jeffrey-epsteins-inte...

Perhaps you read an excerpt… it's a 128 page book.[1] Also, Fodor was a Rutgers guy, out of Columbia and Princeton, though this was published by MIT Press.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Doesnt-Work-That-Computational/d...

He's not trying to deal with the question of potential violence, though. As the parent comment said, his books are mostly descriptive and just lay out data pertaining to extant trends. It's not a book about possible existential risks or tail risks. These are important topics to address separately, and I don't think that Pinker would dispute that (although he is a little too dismissive of AI risks for my taste, but that's separate from those books).

You may wish to read his reply to Taleb's critique of these books, where he addresses the criticism that he ignores tail risks.

Always good to learn something new - I had no idea that the amazing La Grande Illusion [1] (1937) took its name, somewhat ironically, from a book published decades earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Illusion

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