John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This article fails to hit its target, though. John Gray mentions other kinds of violence - incarceration, civilian casualties. But he offers no evidence that these are going to be so negatively correlated with casualties in war as to overturn Steven Pinker's thesis. He also talks about proxy wars, but these are included in the war statistics, no?
An actual attack on Pinker's evidence would require getting your hands dirty in the numbers. Instead we get handwavy complaints about the murkiness of official statistics and the opacity of numbers. It's true they are murky, but they are less murky than intuition and anecdotes.
There was a disconnect between murder rate and aggravated assault rate from the mid-1970s to about 1990, but before then and after then, the two rates were highly correlated.
Vehicle theft rates are less than a fourth what they were in 1990. Burglary less than half. Aggravated assault is down 40%. Vandalism has been cut in half. Fraud is less than a fourth of what it was in 1995. Most notably, homicide rates track really closely with violent crime rates overall.[2]
You can say BJS is biased and collecting terrible stats, but this would have to be a new bias, since we're comparing their stats to earlier results. And they at least try to cross check trends across different methodologies, and publicize their methods for critics to scrutinize. Their approach would make it likely they'd notice some obvious trend (that would only affect death rates) that was skewing their stats.[3]
Also, other data sources seem to confirm their findings, including those from local police.[4]
It could be that many factors are conspiring to distort these statistics, each one covering for the other. The amount of other factors that would have to be messing with the statistics simultaneously though make the trauma care hypothesis seem a likely target for occam's razor.
Crime rates absolutely did fall. Every criminologist and even several economists are scrambling to solve the puzzle, and no one has definitively succeeded. It's a real trend driving everyone to study it, and there's no "gotcha" explanation for it, it's going to be a product of several complex factors.
[1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.c... [2] http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-histor... [3] https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html [4] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_sta...
I blame the internet. They're all sitting about on facebook and twitter when they should be out there stealing.
Pinker’s Rebuttal of This Note: Pinker has written a rebuttal (ad hominem blather, if he had a point he would have written something 1/3 of this, not 3 x the words). He still does not understand the difference between probability and expectation (drop in observed volatility/fluctualtion ≠ drop in risk) or the incompatibility of his claims with his acceptance of fat tails (he does not understand asymmetries-- from his posts on FB and private correspondence). Yet it was Pinker who said “what is the actual risk for any individual? It is approaching zero”.
I think anyone who's protested or supports the #BlackLivesMatter movement might quibble with that conclusion. Making conclusions like that based off crime data is specious if violence is in anyway systemic. Violence doesn't have to be murders, assaults and robberies...incarceration is its own form of violence and incarceration rates are as high as ever. Poverty is its own form of violence and income inequality is as high as ever. And civil asset forfeiture is basically legalized robbery, so if you included those statistics along with reported robbery statistics, you'd probably find that robberies have actually increased.
What I see happening is that some (rich) people have realized that nationalistic bonds no longer tie us together as strongly as they used to. They've been replaced by economic and religious bonds. So yes, the leaders of the largest countries in the world have largely avoided war against each other. But the top stratum of these countries has been very active in colluding against the bottom strata (G8, WTO, TPP, etc). They've largely waged war against the lower classes in all countries for many years now without most people realizing it. Just because the violence is perpetrated under the guise of law enforcement does not change the fact that it's still violence. And we still have "official" (not declared, but acknowledged) wars against religious extremist groups (Al Qaeda, Isis, etc), so there's that too.
In short, the nature of violence has changed, not the prevalence of it. That you don't realize it only reflects that you're not (yet) a target.
The thing that is missed by these critiques of Pinker seem to be that Determinist genetic theories, which caused much of the "Hemoclysm" held sway for a long time, really until the advent of DNA.So once a better tool came on line, the justification for the violence faded. Of course, this has been uneven; so we have Rwanda. To me that's sort of the exception that proves the rule. It's tribal and unmodern violence.
I think all that's required to see how far we've come it so read Kipling - especially "My Boy Jack". There's also a stage play and a "movie" of the stage play. The horror of the end implication of the Edwardian sense of manly military honor is brought into sharp relief.
Not in the statistics he used where casualties in civil wars are not counted. Afghanistan war casualties, for example, were not counted.
That said I don't think this critique is very good, Herman's is much better.
Gray's philosophy, at least at the coarse level I understand it, seems to be predicated on the idea that humans are incapable of improving on ethical or moral dimensions beyond their inherent nature [0]. His truck with Pinker is not ultimately about whether it's currently true or not that we are becoming less violent, but whether or not it is ever true. Gray is approaching this from an a priori, non-empirical perspective, rather than attempting to meet empirical evidence with empirical evidence.
I'm not sure if he's ultimately right or not, but I don't find abstract rebuttals to empirical arguments to be particularly compelling.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_%28philosopher%29#Pol...
> When Denis J. Halliday tendered his resignation from his posts after 13 months on the job (September 1997 - October 1998) as UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq where he managed the Oil-for-Food Programme, and with a 34-year career at the United Nations, then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned to another experienced international civil servant, Hans C. von Sponeck, to carry on the UN mission. Sponeck had joined the UN Development Program in 1968. He had worked in Ghana, Turkey, Botswana, Pakistan, and India, and had become the Director of the UNDP European Office in Geneva -- an assignment that he had confessed to the General-Secretary he found "boring." Following his new assignment in October 1998, Sponeck arrived in Baghdad on November 8, 1998. He did not last much longer than Denis Halliday. Sponeck resigned from his positions on February 10, 2000. Like Halliday, who had said that, "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that," Sponeck decided that he could not remain associated with the punishing policies against the Iraqi people that he judged were genocidal in nature -- policies that had only one goal, regime change. In the years ahead, both of them worked tirelessly to stop the inevitable march to madness, the March 2003 invasion of this ravaged and mutilated country.
http://gicj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97...
If you look at it in terms of what percentage of people are acting non-violently towards each other, 90% of the population being peaceful versus 99.98% seems to show a clear positive movement.
It not only shows that, as a whole, we are more capable of being non-violent, it also provides more opportunities for people to move away from violent situations into peaceful ones.
I'm open to criticism of Pinker, but I don't think this article proves that Pinker's position is totally flawed.
1000 pages is a lot of cherry picking. And let's face it, at least his thesis is declared and we can interpret his data selection in that light. Gray offers no quantitative evidence. As far as I can tell, he's trying to cow the reader with a lot of "I read way more political philosophy than any a' y'all." Taleb offers a statistically oriented critique, but again offers no data, and apparently no proof-reading.
If anything, the evidence we have from Gray and Taleb is N=2: 2 ostensibly smart fellows found enough grist in Pinker's work to write a publishable response without gathering any data themselves. That alone suggests Pinker's thesis has merit.
My own view is that the thesis is not important. What is really at issue is the subtext that we should not be too worried about western violence because we are doing better than ever before and that violence is decreasing "naturally", neither of which is true or follows from the claim that violence has been historically in decline.
From conversations with social scientists I came to the conclusion, that their means of analysis are rather primitive. In most cases they also have no quantitative models (like in physics) to make predictions.
That is why double-blind studies exist, and one of the key parts in data-based social studies programs contains whole classes on building experiments: data is easily abusable. While Pinker might have charts, without understanding the causality of those charts - in depth! - all it becomes is propaganda for Pinker's ideas and a quick way to sway nerds.
(not to say that Pinker is right or wrong, but having data doesn't add credibility ipso facto).
But maybe reframe the cold war (korea, vietnam, contras, etc), as engagements in a long war (which harmonizes with at least some of the mentalities going on in that period). I think then the thesis of "no war" vanishes.
Like it or lump it, the logic of MAD is still inescapable. It's a real-life Catch-22 that's led to a large scale peace.
Nukes are only useful if you don't use them but project the ability to use them. As Nash equilibria go...
My worry with nukes is the black swan events. Used to be there would be a big war every few decades. Nukes put a stop to that... but what if instead of a big war every few decades, they just mean there's a really, really big war, once, after a long period of relative peace?
I excerpted the top few items that extend in whole or in part past the cutoff date of 1945 that they chose.
7,500,000 – Chinese Civil War (1927–1949)[11] 2,500,000–5,400,000 – Second Congo War/Great War of Africa (1998–2003)[17][18][19][20] 800,000–3,800,000[24] – Vietnam War/Second Indochina War (1955–1975)[25][26] 1,000,000 – Iran–Iraq War/First Persian Gulf War (1980–1988)[28] 1,000,000 Biafra War (1967-1970) 957,865–1,622,865 – Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989)[30][31][32] 400,000 – Civil war in Afghanistan (1989–92), Civil war in Afghanistan (1992–96) and Civil war in Afghanistan (1996–2001) (1989–2001)[37] 350,000–1,500,000 - Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962)[38] 300,000–3,000,000[41] – Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) 300,000 – Second Burundian Civil War (1993–2005)[42] 300,000 (TFG)–500,000+ (AFP) – Somali Civil War[43][44][45] [Dates not listed, wiki article puts it in the 80s-90s] 272,000–1,260,009 – War on Terror (2001–present)[46][47][48] 202,354–282,354 – Syrian Civil War (2011–present), see Casualties of the Syrian civil war 200,000 – Colombian conflict (1964–present) (1964–present)[50] [+ many more]
I note that a lot of these were 'civil' wars. I understand the book excluding those. I am not clear on the logic behind why. I do not know of a way to define a 'major war' that is not arbitrary.
The problem isn't really the definition of "major", you can draw the line wherever you want. The problem is that you compare wars to the worst in human history and then use relativism to make other wars insignificant, thereby normalizing state violence.
If a serial killer murders 10 people it's absurd to say that is no big deal because others have killed hundreds and, moreover, he killed 20 people the year before so things are on the right track to improving.
- strikes me as a bit of a straw man argument. As a believer in reason myself I see it as rather uncorrelated with living with doubt. People up on reason can often handle probabilities and uncertainties - it's more the religious who have a problem with doubt.
Looking at Pinker's numerous statistics it seems highly probable the world has been getting more peaceful. Gray's arguments implying doing the stats is dubious when you can nit pick some of the details seem rather weak.
The best explanation I've seen for the lower homicide rate in the developed world is that it's mainly due to a more powerful state with better policing, leading to fewer people dying in fight-homicides.
Back in the more "tribal" days of Europe, people's safety depended on their belonging to some sort of group (extended family, today we might call them gangs), because usually the "police" was one guy per village or neighborhood who could do little to stop a cycle of vengeance except by trying to get the involved groups to negotiate. It was also fairly easy to escape punishment by getting away from the area were the murder had been committed.
This meant that fights over minute matters could easily escalate into deaths, and that murder begat murder.
(the classic fight-homicide escalates from an argument over which Pink Floyd album is the best; tempers flare up, the protagonists punch each other, the loser of the fistfight comes back with a handgun)
This 2012 article by by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson demolishes Pinker's book far better and with fewer words: http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/steven-pinker-on-the-alleg...
I doubt the Guardian will be rushing to publish it though. Gray is much safer.
Arguments could be made for this in the case of the US, but it's pretty cut and dry as to IS.
There's a digest and comments more eloquent than i can muster from the guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/26/bitter-l...
But yes, quite an eye opener and in place beautiful and haunting. If anyone has any similar pieces i'd be interested in them though Curtis himself seems to tackle some quite interesting topics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis
And this is not a complete list, covers only pretty recent history and doesn't not mention any actions where the USA took indirect actions. Note that I wanted to make the statement sound provocative, see the related comments, but take out the rhetoric tone and you have proven facts. And that IS behaves even worse than the USA doesn't make the USA look any better, you are just setting the bar for what qualifies as a good peaceful country pretty low.
And by the way, this has nothing to do with a democratic society. You can have a perfect democracy and still behave evil against foreign nations. It actually is worse in the case of a democratic society because it implies that the actions were not done by a small evil regime but with support of the majority of the people.
We are biological creatures and we should expect that when interests collide there will be aggression. When violence is hampered, it turns into other forms of aggression.
From John Gray's:
Pinker dismisses the role of nuclear weapons on the grounds that the use of other weapons of mass destruction such as poison gas has not prevented war in the past; but nuclear bombs are incomparably more destructive.
The First and Second World Wars were so shockingly destructive as to make Europe realise that, perhaps, there are better ways of going about things. Like trade.
No serious military historian doubts that fear of their use has been a major factor in preventing conflict between great powers.
Well, between two Great Powers -- the former USSR and the USA. Does anyone really think the only thing preventing China, the USA, and Russia from engaging in all-out war is the threat of nuclear annihilation? Everyone stands more to gain from trade.
Moreover deaths of non-combatants have been steadily rising. Around a million of the 10 million deaths due to the first world war were of non‑combatants, whereas around half of the more than 50 million casualties of the second world war and over 90% of the millions who have perished in the violence that has wracked the Congo for decades belong in that category.
That's disingenuous. Historically whole villages and towns, even cities, were routinely laid to waste.
Gray's article is sufficiently hand-wavey and cherry-picky to not even bother with.
From Taleb's critique:
Loss of the Island Effect: My point now is the loss of island effect, from interconnectedness. The number one danger is a biological agent that can travel on British Air and reach the entire planet. And it can be built in a high school lab, or, even, a garage.
That sounds a bit sensationalist. A biological agent that has the potential to be the number one danger can be built in a high school lab, or, even, a garage. Well, ok, sure, given a sufficiently equipped high school lab or garage -now we might as well call it a Biological Weapons Facility- but built by whom? Surely not high school students or me.
Generating a sufficiently virulent biological agent isn't trivial, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Maybe at some point in the future I'll be able to '3D print' a biological agent with all the right traits. Let's hope that never happens.
Taleb's statement above trivialises biological weapons, and spreads FUD.
Nuclear Potential: As I explain in Antifragile, risk management is about fragility, not naive interpretation of past data. If Fannie Mae is sitting on a barrel of dynamite I would not use past statistical data for my current analysis. Risks are in the fragility.(Sensitivity to counterfactuals is more important than past history, something Greenspan missed in his famous congressional testimony).
Pinker in 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' does repeatedly point out that we can't assume anything about the future based on the past but that there does appear to be a trajectory. Whether Pinker is wrong about that trajectory is beside the point here because Taleb is taking issue with naive interpretation of past data, yet Pinker wrote in the same book "Social scientists should never try to predict the future; they have enough trouble predicting the past."
Pinker conflates nonscalable Mediocristan (death from encounters with simple weapons) with scalable Extremistan (death from heavy shells and nuclear weapons). The two have markedly distinct statistical properties. Yet he uses statistics of one to make inferences about the other. And the book does not realize the core difference between scalable/nonscalable (although he tried to define powerlaws). He claims that crime has dropped, which does not mean anything concerning casualties from violent conflict.
I'm half way through reading 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' and that certainly isn't something I'd say about the book. Pinker admits that simple weapons and nuclear weapons are different, but that he focus on death rates in war over time. Pinker treats civilian <> civilian deaths separately as 'murders', so surely Taleb isn't conflating murder and simple-weapon-war-deaths.
Another way to see the conflation, Pinker works with a times series process without dealing with the notion of temporal homogeneity. Ancestral man had no nuclear weapons, so it is downright foolish to assume the statistics of conflicts in the 14th century can apply to the 21st. A mean person with a stick is categorically different from a mean person with a nuclear weapon, so the emphasis should be on the weapon and not exclusively on the psychological makeup of the person.
Should it? Why? Saying it should doesn't make it so, and doesn't convince. If we place the emphasis entirely on weapons potential this is most certainly game over. Yet global nuclear (and biological weapons) capacity has decreased since the height of the Cold War, and we're still here. This is one point of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' -- that despite our ability we eradicate ourselves we've chosen -so far- not to, and Pinker acknowledges this means nothing about predicting the future.
Now, I can't speak much for that part of the world I know little about, geographically & culturally, and also mathematics isn't something I've studied a lot, so I'll take it as given that Tabel's paper 'On the Super-Additivity and Estimation Biases of Quantile Contributions' is correct, and that Pinker's time series data is shaky.
So good, I've learned something from Taleb, and I think it's important to read criticisms.
Tabel's paper doesn't contain the words child, women, race, religion, rights, animals.
Edit: copy paste mistake resulted in only half my comment, corrected within 1 minute of posting.