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Comment by hypefi | Hacker News Reader

Do you know about the "The Turkey Fallacy" ?

"the story of a turkey who is fed by the farmer every morning for 1,000 days. Eventually the turkey comes to expect that every visit from the farmer means more good food. After all, that’s all that has ever happened so the turkey figures that’s all that can and will ever happen. But then Day 1,001 arrives. It’s two days before Thanksgiving and when the farmer shows up, he is not bearing food, but an ax. The turkey learns very quickly that its expectations were catastrophically off the mark. And now Mr. Turkey is dinner."

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That doesn't really line up with Pinker's argument does it? He's not saying things have been fine and so will be in the future. He's saying that the further back you go the worse things were.

The line I always use about running a marathon is that you always feel worse each mile but it's not a continuous down hill slope - sometimes things stay the same for a bit and sometimes they even get better before getting worse gain.

Pinker is arguing for a reverse marathon view. Sure sometimes one year is worse then the one before it - or a decade or a century. The trend though is towards improvements in the human condition.

luckily we control our own destiny unlike said turkey. Pretty paternalistic to compare people to pets. Quality of life has improved because of our actions, not the hand of some farmer.

This is the same line of thinking as the famous "what happened to all the horses" thought which conveniently ignores the fact that horses only existed to serve as tools for people and were therefore replaced when a more useful tool was found.

Do we really control our own destiny? If so, why in so many places are we creating such terrible conditions for our future?

First I'd say that things have consistently been getting better for the last 400 years, and I don't really see that changing in the near future.

> why in so many places are we creating such terrible conditions for our future?

Because many people have bad discount rates so they sacrifice future welfare for current welfare. Externalities are also extremely difficult to get people to internalize.

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