3 ms·

remains relevant in the dangerous age in which we now live (Amazon description) Put that next to the convincing arguments Steven Pinker makes in 'The Better An

by smhg 9y ago

remains relevant in the dangerous age in which we now live (Amazon description) Put that next to the convincing arguments Steven Pinker makes in 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' about this being the safest times ever. Makes it sound a bit cheap.

mulmen 9y ago
The nice thing about betting against the end of the world is that if you lose it doesn't matter.
- eru 9y ago
  You can structure bets to make it matter. Example contract: Optimist: pays 20 bucks to pessimist now. Pessimist: pays 40 bucks to pessimist, if world hasn't ended in 2020.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Whenever someone tells me that they believe the world is going to end on a specific date, or during a specific period of time, I offer them this bet: I will bet you my house and land against your car. If I'm right, and the world doesn't end, you owe me your car. If I'm wrong, you can have my house and land.
    - tome 9y ago
      You've missed eru's point.
      - eru 9y ago
        Yes, unless KGIII hands over their house now, and only gets it back plus car the day after the predicted date of the apocalypse.
yellowstuff 9y ago
Pinker has explicitly said that is a misinterpretation of his book: > The upshot is that each of the following two assertions can be true: (1) the chances of war are lower than they were before, and (2) the damage caused by the most severe imaginable war is greater than it was before. That makes it meaningless—an issue of semantics—to speculate about whether the world is “safer” overall; in one sense it may be safer, in another sense, less safe. That is exactly why Better Angels does not claim, contra Taleb, that the world is “safer” across the board. https://stevenpinker.com/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf https://stevenpinker.com/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker...