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There has been lots of contention around this topic. I personally agree with the contrary and Steven Pinkers position. You can see him refute Taleb's claims her

There has been lots of contention around this topic. I personally agree with the contrary and Steven Pinkers position. You can see him refute Taleb's claims here: http://stevenpinker.com/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf http://stevenpinker.com/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker....

jelliclesfarm 10y ago
I don't understand. Are you saying that Pinker claims that violence HAS been declining over time??
- zepto 10y ago
  He does
- travmatt 10y ago
  his book is titled "Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined"
- jelliclesfarm 10y ago
  Great. Now I have to go and burn my copy of Blank Slate. Another one bites the dust. I feel like an orphan now.
buzzybee 10y ago
I'm tempted to dismiss the Taleb paper as "lies, damned lies, and statistics". It has to do some rather complicated things to reach its conclusion, which correlates well with massaging data to fit an argument, and seeing as there's an academic dispute motivating that argument, there's a circumstantial-evidence case to be made for giving it no further thought.
acqq 10y ago
I've read it, and it can't be actually called a refutal, more "here's why I don't think so": "Better Angels goes out on a limb and speculates that the chances of all-out nuclear Armageddon were higher during the height of the Cold War than they have been since the Cold War ended. Perhaps that is statistically naïve; I don’t think so." "Taleb is surely right to urge us to think about the magnitude of events with non-negligible probabilities, and to caution us about our inability to assess such probabilities with confidence. Yet he does not acknowledge the problems with his own suggestion that “the emphasis should be on the weapon” ..." And then Pinker compares the warning of the possibility of the "worst case" (which would be a nuclear war or even a new conventional large-scale war, now that the world population is much bigger) with the "bloated American military budget" and the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. So on one side we have the nukes "on the short fuse" always ready to launch, in spite of the known errors (and who knows how many unknown ones): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-nukes-off-a-short-fuse/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-nukes-off-a-... and the response is, to paraphrase, if we'd worry about the worst case, we're doing the same error as the US going to war in Iraq. It has no sense, as us taking steps to do something against the fatal threats would be exactly to remove the most dangerous paths for the fatal use of weapons by the very military structures that Pinker also recognizes as being ready to make much more damage than possibly necessary. I don't think anybody can claim that our amount of care shouldn't be proportional to the scale of consequences that an error can produce. http://thebulletin.org/press-release/board-moves-clock-ahead10433 http://thebulletin.org/press-release/board-moves-clock-ahead...
- jelliclesfarm 10y ago
  Thanks. I think I will add it to my read list.
  - acqq 10y ago
    I hope I have been clear enough, I don't consider that Pinker technically "refuted" Taleb, and I wrote in the previous post why. At least the Pinker's response appears to be quite honest, not trying to hide that it's more based on a general attitude than on facts or statistics.

jelliclesfarm 10y ago

I don't understand. Are you saying that Pinker claims that violence HAS been declining over time??

zepto 10y ago
He does
travmatt 10y ago
his book is titled "Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined"
jelliclesfarm 10y ago
Great. Now I have to go and burn my copy of Blank Slate. Another one bites the dust. I feel like an orphan now.

buzzybee 10y ago

I'm tempted to dismiss the Taleb paper as "lies, damned lies, and statistics". It has to do some rather complicated things to reach its conclusion, which correlates well with massaging data to fit an argument, and seeing as there's an academic dispute motivating that argument, there's a circumstantial-evidence case to be made for giving it no further thought.

acqq 10y ago

I've read it, and it can't be actually called a refutal, more "here's why I don't think so": "Better Angels goes out on a limb and speculates that the chances of all-out nuclear Armageddon were higher during the height of the Cold War than they have been since the Cold War ended. Perhaps that is statistically naïve; I don’t think so." "Taleb is surely right to urge us to think about the magnitude of events with non-negligible probabilities, and to caution us about our inability to assess such probabilities with confidence. Yet he does not acknowledge the problems with his own suggestion that “the emphasis should be on the weapon” ..." And then Pinker compares the warning of the possibility of the "worst case" (which would be a nuclear war or even a new conventional large-scale war, now that the world population is much bigger) with the "bloated American military budget" and the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. So on one side we have the nukes "on the short fuse" always ready to launch, in spite of the known errors (and who knows how many unknown ones): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-nukes-off-a-short-fuse/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/take-nukes-off-a-... and the response is, to paraphrase, if we'd worry about the worst case, we're doing the same error as the US going to war in Iraq. It has no sense, as us taking steps to do something against the fatal threats would be exactly to remove the most dangerous paths for the fatal use of weapons by the very military structures that Pinker also recognizes as being ready to make much more damage than possibly necessary. I don't think anybody can claim that our amount of care shouldn't be proportional to the scale of consequences that an error can produce. http://thebulletin.org/press-release/board-moves-clock-ahead10433 http://thebulletin.org/press-release/board-moves-clock-ahead...

jelliclesfarm 10y ago
Thanks. I think I will add it to my read list.
- acqq 10y ago
  I hope I have been clear enough, I don't consider that Pinker technically "refuted" Taleb, and I wrote in the previous post why. At least the Pinker's response appears to be quite honest, not trying to hide that it's more based on a general attitude than on facts or statistics.