35 ms·
My new favorite book of all time
- yarapavan 9y agoInteresting facts discussed: * The global average IQ score is rising by about 3 IQ points every decade. * Time spent doing laundry fell from 11.5 hours a week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014.
- dalbasal 9y ago..on laundry, that hour and a half is spent washing a lot more clothes than the eleven before. If we had the limited wardrobes of those people, it'd probably be down to twenty minutes.
- ams6110 9y agoOn the flip side, 11 hours seems high. I've washed clothes by hand before; it doesn't take that long and in fact it's faster than washing by machine (though you can't do something else at the same time).
- h1srf 9y agoIf you're only washing your clothes maybe but 11 hours a week sounds reasonable if one person is washing clothes for a family + hanging/collecting/folding
- voidmain0001 9y agoIf you live in an area with reasonably priced electricity and access to plentiful water. I lived in Honduras for 3 years (2009 - 2012) and laundry consumed far too much of my time because water in the community came twice per week, and electricity was expensive. I had a cistern which was connected to the water main, and I installed a floating shut off valve so that I could leave the valve open to fill with water when it came without notice and invariably I was out working. I couldn't afford a dryer due to high cost of electricity and I was volunteering without any spare income during that period so I had to wash and dry clothes on sunny days. There were people in the community that still washed clothes by hand using a scrub board and I know that they spent many hours weekly on it.
- Simon_says 9y agoEasy solution, just don't be born in Honduras.
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, and have already had to warn you more than once. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Diederich 9y agoWe have a long ways to go. I haven't read the book, but I strongly suspect that it doesn't suggest that we are finish, or that we rest on our laurels. Feeling good about progress made thus far is an excellent way to provide the motivation necessary to push forward even harder.
- notatoad 9y agoI believe th hour and a half is a global average. So the many hours you spend in Honduras is balanced by the 15 minutes a week I spend on laundry.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- disgruntledphd2 9y agoThe IQ thing is the Flynn Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect), which is pretty cool, if a little puzzling. The laundry one is also good, because I hadn't already heard of it :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- juskrey 9y agoHe needs some dose of Taleb
- _pmf_ 9y agoWho doesn't?
- arethuza 9y agoI listened to "Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens" by Eddie Izzard base on the last time Bill Gates book recommendations were on HN and it is superb so this is now an automatic buy for me.
- arethuza 9y agoIzzard is someone with quite astounding levels of determination - I had no idea until I read the book that his childhood ambition was to join the SAS, which he may well have been quite suited for.
- thisisit 9y agoStrange. Ublock is blocking the whole blog content. TL;dr - Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- SippinLean 9y agoLooks like it's blocking some script that changes .mainHolder's CSS opacity property value from 0 to 1.
- EdwardCoffin 9y agoSimilarly with Ghostery
- cseelus 9y agoWondered about that too. What also seems a little strange is that his blog has a members only section with special "deals" like book excerpts for which you need to sign up. Never saw that on a personal blog, I might be mistaken, but on first glance it seems like its more of a business than just a personal blog.
- dexterdog 9y agoI've had the same experience whenever I go to his page. It seems odd that a guy that needs no money from his website would have one that doesn't display on everything. There are few sites where my blockers block all of the content. This is one of them.
- gourou 9y ago"Sapiens" is another great recommendation by him https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-of-Humankind https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-of-...
- julian55 9y agoYes, that's a great book. I'm now reading "Homo Deus" by the same author which follows up on some of the ideas in "Sapiens".
- X6S1x6Okd1st 9y agoHow do you feel like Homo Deus compares to Sapiens w.r.t. being hand wavy and having a solid grasp on what the potential futures are that we are facing?
- koverda 9y agoI'm curious about that as well. I've only read Homo Deus and really enjoyed it.
- prepend 9y agoNot OP, but as a reader of both Sapiens and Homo Deus, I feel like the latter is a bit of fluff already covered by the end of Sapiens. Not a bad book, but more baseless theorizing while Sapiens was a really rich examination of history where he author definitely applied a lifetime of study and research.
- koverda 9y agoI'm surprised that you would describe it as baseless, because the theories he presents are built upon the lifetime of study & research of the examination of human history and motivations.
- prepend 9y agoGood point. I don’t mean baseless as worthless, just that it was largely out of the author’s wheelhouse and was more of his projection of ideas without much in the way of evidence. This differed from Sapiens as it was really rich in historical and anthropological sources. It’s not bad, just not very valuable as an entire book to read. It’s mostly already covered in the final segment of Sapiens. Homo Deus is certainly based on the author’s general wisdom and draws upon his study of history. It’s always hard to vet “futurists” to see who is worthwhile.
- dalbasal 9y agoI guess I can only give my opinion from my own limited world, but I feel to an extent that "reason, science, and humanism" are at need of advocacy today, more than usual. This book might be well timed.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drcode 9y agoGood on Bill Gates to not just choose a feel-good book for sake of "virtue signaling", but a book with real substance in it. (The fact that this book happens to be optimistic is incidental)
- dalbasal 9y agoI dunno how strong it is, but I have a feeling that the virtue signalling you mention is at least tangentially at odds with the "reason, science, and humanism" he mentions.
- djtriptych 9y agoHow do you know he isn't virtue signalling?
- sooheon 9y agoHe has successfully signaled his virtue to your eyes, has he not?
- cs702 9y agoI read Pinker's previous book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature," and found it eye-opening; it changed the way I perceived the world. Highly recommended. (Here's a review: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-angels-of-our-nature-by-steven-pinker-book-review.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/the-better-an... ) This book, his latest one, is now an automatic buy for me.
- pmelendez 9y agoNo wonder why Gates said "The Better Angels of Our Nature," was his all time favourite :)
- neves 9y agoI'm also a fan of Pinker's books, but stopping to consider valuable when he writes the preface or recommends a book. I've got 2 terrible flops reading his recommendations. It looks like he'd recommend any friend that ask him.
- jnordwick 9y agoSo torn. I'm generally a Pinker fan, but almost detest Peter Singer's thought to the core. Singer recommending that book makes me really second guess the recommendation. But I respect Bill Gates immensely too. Maybe the idea that Pinker could write a book so loved by both Gates and Singer is a testament to how good it is?
- blocked_again 9y agoHave you read Sapiens by any chance? If yes how does it compare with this book?
- melling 9y agoI don’t get it. It’s a feel good book? Something more interesting would be learn how to more quickly improve the world. The world of 2100 could arrive in 2050, for example. Gates has around $100 billion to improve the world. How to most effectively leverage his money, for example? Build a better pharmaceutical company and cure some of the diseases on his list? Help to create better economies in Africa? [UPDATE] This comment got downvoted fast. I guess I’ll be happy with the improvements and learn to live with the current rate of progress. Any other feel good comments from the book that I could use at a party? [UPDATE] Don’t want to waste fu karma today. So, answer is half the world’s population lives in cities. Perhaps we could increase by making them more liveable. I’m all for reducing the human footprint on the world. Wildlife crossings, fewer roads and cars, less plastic, etc. How about a billion people move one planet over? A lot depends on increasing knowledge and reducing costs. Let’s increase the rate of innovation!
- coding123 9y agoAbsolutely - even if everyone read this and suddenly feels complacent about our progress - what's next? Everyone is scared to talk about population growth - I mean at what point do we decide that we don't want to erase all unpopulated land simple because its there and fill it with humans. What about populations of wild animals - don't they get to share the earth with us? I feel like the movies about aliens coming and killing all humans is exactly how we treat animals on this planet. Just because they don't use verbal communication doesn't mean they should be slaughtered for our food. Why does progress always have to be pro-human?
- Santosh83 9y agoI have yet to meet anyone who gave a good answer to this question. It is obvious that we (as a species) behave like this because we can get away with it. Plain & simple. Whether it is a good long-term strategy is unclear to our brains that refuse to look at far-off effects. Time will tell. Besides moral relativism helps us to justify much of our destructive behaviour and inability to accept hard changes that might be necessary to make the world better for all living things.
- 9y ago
- amasad 9y agoLove Pinker but thought this was too funny not to share: "Steven Pinker jinxes the world" on how a lot of the trends that he spoke about started to stall and even reverse since the publication of the book. https://amp.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6ggwap/steven_pinker_jinxes_the_world/ https://amp.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6ggwap/stev...
- agumonkey 9y agoI remember something called like frontpage or coverage effect; by the time mainstream people talk about something big, it peaked.
- topleveldomain 9y ago"War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. But before the creation of the United Nations in 1945, no institution had the power to stop countries from going to war with each other. Although there have been some exceptions, the threat of international sanctions and intervention has proven to be an effective deterrent to wars between nations." I would argue that something else that happened in 1945 has been a much bigger deterrent of war - at least among the developed countries of the world: the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once the world saw the atom bomb's capability for destruction, the motivation to avoid war increased significantly (to put it lightly). Surely the Cold War would have been a real war if not for nukes, no? I don't think the US and Russia were avoiding conflict because "the UN made it illegal."
- chinathrow 9y ago> "War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. Yet that one rule is broken multiple times a year by multiple nations in multiple regions on earth.
- coding123 9y agoI think the jist is that this was still successful because if the UN didn't exist we may have already had 7 additional multination wars (that is if the first 2 didn't kill everyone). Of course we don't know for sure if that would have happened.
- Diederich 9y agoIt's a process. The point is that there is far less war going on now than ever before, on a population adjusted basis.
- adventured 9y agoFurther to that point, there hasn't been a serious war between major powers in seven decades. One of the longest stretches in recorded history. Overwhelmingly what we've seen in the way of war deaths since WW2, is in civil war and genocides by Socialist, Communist and Fascist regimes.
- craftyguy 9y ago> War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. But before the creation of the United Nations in 1945, no institution had the power to stop countries from going to war with each other. Although there have been some exceptions, the threat of international sanctions and intervention has proven to be an effective deterrent to wars between nations. While this may have kept the 'superpowers' from engaging in direct warfare with each other, it has done nothing to deter them from engaging in proxy wars with eachother. And in the process, devestating the proxy countries. It seems Bill Gates, through all of his philanthropist work, would have realized this first hand.
- Diederich 9y ago> an effective deterrent to wars between nations Is this false? The last time I looked, the percentage of the human population afflicted by war has been shrinking.
- craftyguy 9y agoMy point is that war is not "illegal", and the current "deterrent" has done nothing to deter proxy wars in places like (as recent examples) Syria and Yemen. It has also done nothing to deter Russia's invasion of Crimea, the US's boondoggle in Iraq and Afghanistan (nor the extremely vague 'war on terror' that enables the US to arbitrarily attack anyone it perceives as a 'terrorist'). The number of folks experiencing war may be shrinking [citation needed], but it's far from being 'illegal.'
- Diederich 9y agoThe wording could have been better, I agree. There are, no doubt, a whole constellation of reasons that war less of a thing.
- DiffEq 9y agoThe UN and it's declaration have had nothing to do with the peace we have seen since 1945 - it has been becasue of Pax Americana...and with that on the way out we will see another major war in short order.
- misiti3780 9y agoLast year Bill Gates recommended The Vital Question (found this on HN): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OD8Z4JW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OD8Z4JW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... One of the best books I have ever read.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Numberwang 9y agoI can recommend this presentation if you want to feel a bit more hopeful about the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qyYQIRQE&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qyYQIRQE&feature=youtu.be
- JustAnotherPat 9y agomeh, seems to me like the richest are biased into seeing a 'better' world because that reflects well on their influence. But is the world really better relative to the progress we've made? I don't think you can use the sort of facts mentioned in the blurb as a case for the increase in Humanism.
- Fricken 9y agoPew research did a survey where it asked 42,000 people in 38 different nations how their day was. Respondents could answer 'particularly good', 'typical', or 'particulary bad'. Nigerians are having the best time, with 73% of respondents saying they were having a particularly good day. In Japan on 11% were having a particularly good day. The outcomes of this pew study correlate inversely with studies that objectively measure quality of life. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/02/particularly-good-days-are-common-in-africa-latin-america-and-the-u-s/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/02/particularly... A ship is safe in harbour, but that's not what ships are for.
- barrkel 9y agoPeople are biased to want to grow and be challenged. An easy life is an unsatisfying life. Are games the answer?
- bildung 9y agoInteresting! Amartya Sen's theory of justice had a similar passage about quality of live of Indian women: Originally they self-assessed as healthy and without problems (while objectively being in very poor condition and having very low life expectancy), then, years later, as both education (esp. health-related) and access to healthcare improved, self-assessed as unhealthier than before! Turns out they didn't know/ couldn't imagine their health problems as something optimizable. Life just was how it was, alternatives not imaginable.
- api 9y agoAnother factor is that there exists a massive advertising industry in developed nations whose goal is to convince everyone they can't be happy unless they are X or have Y.
- asciimo 9y agoIt just occurred to me that I could quit my job and lie around reading books all day and pretty much be in the same place as Bill Gates.
- graphitezepp 9y agoThis is a short explanation of why I am not financially ambitious.
- chippy 9y agoThe British philosopher John Gray is a good counterpart to Pinker's idea of progress. He focuses on the myths of progress, civilisation and freedom. This is his response to Pinker: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-stev... "A new orthodoxy, led by Pinker, holds that war and violence in the developed world are declining. The stats are misleading, argues Gray – and the idea of moral progress is wishful thinking and plain wrong" One example: Torture was recently brought back in the leading liberal democracy of the world. Something that was once thought to have been made illegal everywhere was made legal (waterboarding) but not in a backward dictatorship, but in the vanguard of progress and liberty - the USA. Now, Obama made it illegal again (mostly), so that shows that you have to fight to keep your progressions. Progress does not occur automatically, and once achieved, it doesn't stay, Gray argues. I think Gray also argues that wars are mostly many and small proxy wars that occur all the time instead of larger grander affairs. I think his current ideas on Freedom area also similar. We assume that western democracies are the best ever and getting more freer, but there are examples of a decline in freedoms, in a decline in enlightenment values etc. In a previous book, Gray even highlights that the Enlightenment itself was flawed (with leading figures being overtly racist to say the least) and that we shouldn't put a halo around it by default - rather that there is nuance, and that it's a fragile thing. He also points that whilst the Enlightenment and Freedom is an old idea, ISIS and Islamic terrorism is actually a modern thing. Modern != Progress. He encourages us to assume that progress is fragile, is not automatically improving and that we need to be active in defending our freedoms, our progress and the things we take for granted.
- olivermarks 9y agoI watched the video of Pinker & Gates, and I confess my prejudice was 'two comfortably rich elitists pushing a centralized globalization agenda'. I'll read the book but with a large pinch of salt...
- rpedela 9y agoHis books are an expanded version of his TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence/up-next https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_viole...
- k2xl 9y agoOne nitpick on a bullet point: "The global average IQ score is rising by about 3 IQ points every decade. Kids’ brains are developing more fully thanks to improved nutrition and a cleaner environment. Pinker also credits more analytical thinking in and out of the classroom. Think about how many symbols you interpret every time you check your phone’s home screen or look at a subway map. Our world today encourages abstract thought from a young age, and it’s making us smarter." This is called the Flynn effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect However, it's important to note that there is no consensus on why this effect is being observed. There are multiple theories and us having to interpret symbols on smartphones is just one of the proposed ones.
- thomasmarriott 9y ago"Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory." —Franklin Pierce Adams
- randiantech 9y ago"The bomb? The plague? Trump? Not to worry; things are getting better."[0] Comparing Trump to nuclear bombs and plagues does not seem a good idea to start a conversation about reason, science, humanism, and progress. [0]https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/kirkus_review_of_elightenment_now.pdf https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/kirkus_review_of...
- 110011 9y agoI haven't read the book but I wonder.. as a billionaire he clearly stands to gain a lot from spreading a message of optimism and collective progress over the last century presumably to maintain status quo when an equally factual but completely opposite perspective on the world (unprecedented levels of inequality, our global lack of response to climate change, etc.) is also there for us to see. I find it very hard to believe that his motives are so pure.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoA lot depends on your viewpoint. What you call "unprecedented levels of inequality" is, at the same time, unprecedented rise in quality of life for pretty much everyone - yes, for some people the improvement was greater than for others, but it's still a big improvement for everyone. (I don't want to dismiss this issue, but reading about it, sometimes it sounds to me like a case of pretty much the most pathetic human behaviour - getting $10 for free and, instead of being grateful, getting angry that someone else got $1000.) Hell, WRT climate change, we need some optimism, and we need to devote less time to usual social bickering, and more time to fixing what's important. > I find it very hard to believe that his motives are so pure. Everything he's doing nowadays fits perfectly the theory that his motives are pure, and about the well-being of humanity. Is there anything in particular you're aware of that is evidence to the contrary?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> A lot depends on your viewpoint. What you call "unprecedented levels of inequality" is, at the same time, unprecedented rise in quality of life for pretty much everyone That kind of assumes “quality of life” is a simple function of absolute material wealth and not strongly influenced by relative position. While certainly many people have moral beliefs that that should be the case, there is plenty of reason in all of human history to believe that it is not in fact the case.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 9y ago
- _greim_ 9y ago"Better Angels"—and presumably this book—cuts against the grain of popular discourse, since claiming the world is in decline and a state of moral depredation has always been an effective way to agitate for change. Which is understandable on one level, because so much in the world is still obviously suboptimal. The reaction tends to be: "How can you claim the world is getting better when [insert bad current event stuff here]?!?" The problem is that so much of this lessening of horribleness came about via imperfect systems. We become focused in our opposition to the system's flaws, and (in some circles) that opposition morphs into opposition to the system as a whole, which is a dangerous kind of thinking if it becomes mainstream.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoNot sure I agree. It seems to me that "claiming the world is in decline and a state of moral depredation" has always been primarily a cheap way of bringing attention to yourself, your cause, and gaining popular support. Which is why, for example, journalists love writing doom&gloom articles. Also, if anything, everyone preaching doomsday makes people depressed, disinterested and detached. If the world is falling apart, what could possibly an individual do? IMO we need the exact opposite now - an optimistic tone that tells people that while there are problems, things are looking up, we're winning, and yes, you can help too.
- prepend 9y agoThere is always a lesser evil to tackle as each evil is eliminated. This doesn’t mean that eliminating evil is trivial or isn’t worthwhile. One day we will all be focused on the war on hangnails.
- jzymbaluk 9y agoI feel like people in this thread would also enjoy the excellent podcast How it Began, which is an optimistic take on the history of technologies by Dr. Brad Harris > The overall theme? Celebration! We are privileged to be descended from men and women who dared to dream big and even die for the cause of progress. Their work is unfinished, and some parts of modernity are even worse than before. But most are better, much better. And we have more tools than ever to fix what’s still broken. How It Began celebrates that progress, and presents a history of the modern world to help inspire its long lasting continuation. Link: https://howitbegan.com/ https://howitbegan.com/
- Santosh83 9y agoNot a comment on the book obviously, but just seizing on the five points enumerated in the review, 1 is pure fluff, 2 is not a very strong point, 2 and 3 are both more first-world applicable, 4 is again more first-world centric I'd imagine, and 5 is entirely irrelevant given that most countries still manage to go to war (unjustified) with total impunity, especially the biggest of them all. What is the use of declaring war illegal? The only thing world nations are afraid of is nuclear war, but never-ending conventional war can still retard humanity's progress significantly. It is not something we can just dismiss.
- kevmo 9y agoThe thing that I don't like about books and articles like this is that they promote complacency. They obscure shitty living conditions that billions of people are still living under by pointing to statistical averages and fun concepts like "war is illegal" (which is highly arguable in and of itself). I am all for recognizing that humanity is maturing, but I think books like this actually slow the pace at which it does so.
- criddell 9y ago> promote complacency I get the exact opposite feeling. Things aren't hopeless and there's no reason to stop pushing for improvement because what we've been doing for the past 100 years is working! Maybe it depends on if you are an optimist or a pessimist.
- deeg 9y agoI understand your concern but I disagree that Pinker's book will lead to complacency. I believe the opposite: Pinker's book will prevent us from sliding into nihilism and despondency. We have plenty of media and politicians reminding us how terrible the world is; Trump gained the presidency in part by convincing a sizable population that America is declining. We need Pinker to tell us that we are actually making the world a better place. If the media ever switches to telling us how great the world is all the time then I'll agree with you. :)
- JorgeGT 9y ago> Time spent doing laundry fell from 11.5 hours a week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014. This might sound trivial in the grand scheme of progress. But the rise of the washing machine has improved quality of life by freeing up time for people—mostly women—to enjoy other pursuits. This. I remember following Reddit AMAs of two centenarian women, women who remembered SS troops arriving at their village, who watched live as men landed on the Moon, and witnessed the spread of electric light, cars, planes, radio, TV, phones, mobile phones, internet, etc. and other technologies that in the 1900s were only in the realm of fiction. And yet, when some redditors asked them which, among all these technological marvels developed in their time they had loved the most, both answered that the washing machine, because suddenly they had much more time to devote to other, more interesting things.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoIt’s worth noting that the act of sorting, inserting, removing, and putting away clothing is not very labor intensive. Having to manually wash each article of clothing takes actual effort, which can be quite tiring. It’s not easy to engage in other pursuits when one is tired out from physical labor. One could argue that the savings in exertion even outweigh the savings in time.
- JorgeGT 9y agoAs someone whose washing machine broke the other day mid-washing, having to do the laundry old-style, I cannot agree more with you.
- Tepix 9y agoStill, a robot that would remove the remaining hassle of dealing with clothing would be fantastic!
- GeorgeTirebiter 9y agoI think societies should embraced Naturism. It solves so many problems, certainly this one.
- cletus 9y agoI (like other commenters) am cautious to attribute the lack of Post-WW2 global war to the UN. The development of nuclear weapons seems a far more likely culprit since we now live in the age of MAD (mutually assured destruction). So I can of course get behind the idea that War is Bad [tm]. The problem is that in evolutionary and social terms it served a purpose. And that purpose was (and is) the ultimate resolution to resource allocation problems. If you think about how wealth is being concentrated into the hands of very, very few, you can attribute at least some of this to globalisation. Look at historical figures [1] and you see that in inflation-adjusted terms some would be far more wealthy than the wealthiest people of today. What about the likes of Julius or Augustus Caesar? 2000 years of compound interest! Now it's true that wealth doesn't tend to survive many generations but there are exceptions. Then look at conflicts like the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or any number of European conflicts. War really seems like it served the purpose of being the ultimate means of wealth redistribution. Of course it's ghastly but my question is this: in a stable world without conflict, how is it that the wealthy don't end up owning everything? And with an ever-rising population bordering on arguably more than the planet can support with ever-dwindling resources, how does this not end with catastrophic conflict since we've virtually eliminated every form of population pressure? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
- stormking 9y agoBefore the UN, two countries could go to war and nobody else would care. "If they want to go to each other's throats, let them." War was seen as a legitimate extension of politics, not as an absolute last resort only valid for self-defense. This could probably still be true at least for non-nuclear powers. Instead, we at least try to intervene and stop the fighting. So this argument is not so much about the UN as an institution but about this paradigm shift to see war as something bad that must be stopped ASAP, even if your own country is not involved or in any danger of getting involved. Or short: War is illegal.
- tziki 9y agoThe IQ rise of 3 points per decade has stopped and even reversed in many countries, like UK and Norway. That seems like a very big point to leave out, hopefully it's mentioned in the book.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Froyoh 9y agoWhat's the book? Can't load the page on mobile.
- randcraw 9y agoBased on the URL of the OP, I think it's Steven Pinker's new book shipping on February 27: "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJBYTB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJBYTB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
- antman 9y agoA comment of his previous book that whitewashed in the most absurd way modern era's industrialized warfare and other horrors, through data selection about thunders and other less important metrics: http://energyskeptic.com/2015/13-fallacies-of-steven-pinkers-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined-and-slate-the-world-is-not-falling-apart/ http://energyskeptic.com/2015/13-fallacies-of-steven-pinkers...
- sooheon 9y agoGates and Pinker are rich, ivory tower dwelling opiate peddlers.
- dang 9y agoThis breaks the HN guideline against name-calling in arguments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please post higher-quality comments, or no comments. Ones like this are actually worse if your underlying view is correct, since in that case they discredit the truth as well.
- rjkennedy98 9y agoThis article/video explains why so many people have completely lost faith in our technocratic elite. The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous. Why are people pessimistic about the future? Maybe its because the rates of addiction (including to smart phones and other screens), of psychiatric disease, and of suicide are all on the rise. Maybe its because rates of marriage and church attendance are on the decline. Maybe its because of the debasement of our culture and education. Technological progress is not the same as progress of the human condition. Our technocratic leaders would like to believe it is, but it is not.
- Letmesleep69 9y ago> The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous. I believe he put that in as an interesting, somewhat unexpected benefit of modern life. His next few arguments are what really backs up his points. > Maybe its because rates of marriage and church attendance are on the decline. As someone from a country where the church held far too much sway and still tries to hold back the rights of gay people and forbid abortions I take a lot of hope from the fact that people are attending church less. > Maybe its because of the debasement of our culture and education. I don't think western culture or education has been debased at all. Can you elaborate?
- TeMPOraL 9y agoPlenty of people complain about their culture disappearing, and being replaced by the universal culture (usually, but wrongly, called "Western culture" or "American culture"). It's one of the many factors contributing to the present rise of nationalism in Europe. Personally, I don't mind the universal culture. But then, I'm just comfortable in it; many people are not, and cling to their local traditions.
- coldtea 9y ago
- michaelmcmillan 9y agoThe Blank Slate, another great book by Pinker, is a thorough and fascinating read that lays out the many misconceptions of human nature and its implications. He performs an exorcism on those who confuse morality with nature – myself included.
- btilly 9y agoOn this topic, I highly recommend watching 200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo You see how wealth and health have changed over time. In particular you see that there is NO country today which is as badly off as EVERY country was 200 years ago. When you digest the truth of that, and look at it in terms of family stories, impact on society and so on, my impression is that we are like a world recovering from an insane collective trauma that most people have amnesia about. And the more you pay attention, the more ways in which this is obvious. This is not to say that there isn't plenty of trauma today. As the saying goes, "The future is here. It just isn't evenly distributed." But for all the problems we have reason to worry about, there has never been a time when there was a better case for optimism for our future.
- DiffEq 9y ago"there is NO country today which is as badly off as EVERY country was 200 years ago" - I can name a few middle east countries that are worse off...and some African countries as well. I think something else that needs to be considered is that all these years since 1945 Germany was held in check. This is increasingly not the case anymore and no matter how modern and progressive we think we are Germany always seems to have a penchant for starting wars. This time around, with them in control of the entire EU, it won't be so pretty and it is likely we will not last through it.
- btilly 9y agoReally? Watch the video. Note where the top-right corner started 200 years back, and where the bottom-left corner ended when the video was taken. And yes, the world has continued to improve since. The world has improved more than most realize. More than I did until I watched that video more closely.
- carapace 9y agoYay! Pattern match! > we are like a world recovering from an insane collective trauma that most people have amnesia about This is the conclusion I have reached as well. There is a scene in a David Lynch movie where the main characters arrive at the scene of a car accident moments after it has occurred. There is a car upside-down, with a wheel still spinning, and a girl is wandering around dazed and bleeding from a head injury, with no idea what has happened to her. I think humanity has been in the situation of that girl. I think it might have been the Younger Dryas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas with or without the possible comet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi... ) In any event, we do seem to be on the cusp of a Golden Age if we can avoid our worst pitfalls (war and ecological destruction, mostly I think)
- sisu 9y ago"The global average IQ score is rising by about 3 IQ points every decade." Is this statement correct? I was under impression that while the per-country averages are mostly rising, the global average is going down. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-S... http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/ http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/
- lawtguy 9y agoThe statement about rising IQ is the Flynn Effect[1]. The fact that IQ has risen over the past 80 years or so is well accepted. Exactly why this is happening is open to debate. The fourmilab link you mentioned seem to be based on the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations"[2]. They explicitly normalized all IQ data to have Briton as 100. The author then assumes that IQ hasn't changed any in the past 50 years. The author mentions the Flynn effect and then ignores it. Once you do that, you really can't say anything about how IQ is changing over time. Instead he basically ends up measuring the relative growth rates of countries. The Daily Mail link has a whole bunch of things, the graph they have of lowering world IQ looks pretty much like the one in the fourmilab article, so I suspect it's based on the same data. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
- rsbartram 9y agoA great read. So is this one. - https://latechnews.org/create-winning-corporate-venture-capital-fund/ https://latechnews.org/create-winning-corporate-venture-capi...
- igravious 9y agoWow – waaaay off-topic.
- ThomPete 9y agoWhile I think all this might be true and I am definitely going to read the book, it's also true that humans on average have one testicle. In other words, global statistics aren't actually looking at more local phenomena. What I really would love to see is it broken down into more detail with regards to geography. I don't think it's evenly spread and I do believe that there are some fundamental problems in the west because of globalization namely being that the cost of living is going up but not everyone is making more. Anyway, interesting stuff, can't wait to get my fingers in the book.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- phlakaton 9y agoI'm not sure how any American can read a call to return to Enlightenment values as a feel-good, no-worries pallative. It rather seems to me that such an appeal is a radical declaration of war against the prevailing political winds in America today – on both the left and the right. I would read it as a kick in the pants, not a soothing lullaby.
- vanderreeah 9y agoThe vast, vast majority of people in the world have to work most of the best hours of the day in order to pay for shelter from the weather and food for their family. In return they get the dubious privilege of allowing their brain to decompress in front of corporate-manufactured garbage on television. Although we are not currently in a World War or its aftermath, and therefore our lives could reasonably be said to be better than in, say, 1917, I think this is taking a remarkably short view. There's a solid argument to be had that the life of an average human (well, admittedly a man) in the 17th century was immeasurably richer than the life of an average man in the late 20th / early 21st century, and that this downturn is because of the Enlightenment Pinker worships. Sure, life was shorter, but it's at least arguable that the quantification of life ushered in by the Enlightenment is responsible for the impoverishment of quality as a measure.
- beatinho 9y agoWow, apart from the book, this is something I am thinking about a lot. Does the book give any further thought on this?
- Haul4ss 9y agoI do not believe that is a solid argument at all. A man in the 17th century would likely have to bury at least one of his children because of disease. The man himself might succumb early to painful illness or infection. If he needed to travel for business he would be away from his family for months. If he lived on a farm (as many did) his days would be filled with hard labor and his standard of living would be much lower. To say nothing of men of color, or gay men, or women, or men who were not landed gentry. For many, many people, the 17th century was not a good time.
- alvil 9y agoFuck you Gates
- ABCLAW 9y agoI've read a lot of the discussions regarding Pinker's work in both books (but particularly his position in Better Angels), and I've always found his position to be slightly disconcerting. Pinker attempts to make a specific argument, that violence has decreased over time. Violence is not a first order phenomenon at a social scale - it's presence is predicated upon the existence of other key criteria, largely the existence of conflict within or between societies. Better Angels indicates that violence has gone down, but does not sufficiently set out the basis to indicate that conflict is being better managed over time. If anything, it indicates that conflicts are being 'won' as the winners are increasingly able to ignore the plight of the losers. On the micro-scale, in law we've been faced with a tremendous crisis - that of Access to Justice. In short, the courts are simply too expensive for normal people to avail themselves of, outside specialty practices like family or traffic issues. The result being that the majority of people do not actually have the ability to enforce their legal rights. The response of most legal institutions has been to decry the issue, then do nothing substantive to solve it. We can pretend things are getting better but absent thinking about what 'better' means maybe the lid on the boiling pot is just getting heavier faster than the heat is being turned up.
- zaksoup 9y agoI work on criminal justice reform and this is SO true. I cringe every time I hear these kinds of stats being brandished without context as evidence of our society 'working'. Ben Thompson is a particularly bad example of this, but it certainly seems like it's the folks 'winning' the conflicts that love to cite 'reduced conflict'.
- sanderjd 9y agoI'm a Ben Thompson reader / listener, and I'm not sure which of his arguments you're referring to, but I'm intrigued by the premise. Would you mind throwing out some links and further commentary on this?
- zaksoup 9y agoLast week's (Friday, Jan 26) Exponent has a lot of this kind of conversation after his article about Amazon Go. Toward the end of the article is this gem [0]: > In fact, they are all gone, replaced by automation. And, in the meantime, nearly all of humanity has been lifted out of abject poverty. I think Ben is an incredibly intelligent and accurate commentator who constantly ignores the very real side-effects of tech on poverty and justice in favor of handwaving about potential side-effects of regulation that doesn't currently exist. > Still, what of those companies that can’t afford to pay for zero rating — the future startups for which net neutrality advocates are willing to risk the costs of heavy-handed regulations? [1] Meanwhile, 48% of America have only one broadband provider and 30% have no access to broadband at all [2]. Ben is scared of title II but strangely silent on the same cable companies he's so desperate to protect from scary scary 'regulation' spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to make municipal broadband in underserved locations illegal. [3] All this being said, I am a frequent reader of stratechery, an exponent subscriber. I think Ben gets it right more often than not, but I often find that he goes out of his way to defend 'capitalism' in ways that seem antithetical to his other espoused beliefs. All of his articles and their associated exponents on anti-trust take great pains to make the point that 'real capitalism' has competition [4,5,6]. He fails to address what, if 'real capitalism' means competition, our current economic situation is. Personally I'd describe myself as a socialist so perhaps this is just a pure idealogical divergence on our parts, but it seems like Ben is make the same arguments about capitalism that are so popular among people criticizing communism: "Sure, it works great on paper, but in practice it is an abject failure". I fail to see how Ben's points about capitalism and competition, which I agree with, are not the exact same critique of our current economic system. Sorry for the long and late reply, this sort of just became a bit of an unstructured rant about all the things I yell at exponent in my car on the way home Friday evenings... [0] https://stratechery.com/2018/amazons-go-and-the-future/ https://stratechery.com/2018/amazons-go-and-the-future/ [1] [https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/ https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/ [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-broadband-still-no-isp-choice-for-many-especially-at-higher-speeds/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br... [3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/voters-reject-cable-lobby-misinformation-campaign-against-muni-broadband/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/voters-reject-ca... [4] https://stratechery.com/2017/ends-means-and-antitrust/ https://stratechery.com/2017/ends-means-and-antitrust/ [5] https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopoly/ https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopo... [6] https://stratechery.com/2017/everything-is-changing-so-should-antitrust/ https://stratechery.com/2017/everything-is-changing-so-shoul...
- keane 9y agoPinker wants to establish metrics to evaluate the state of the world. Once he establishes the metrics, he wants to show that the state of the world is improving over time. Showing improvement by these metrics, he wants us to celebrate this. This is easy to appreciate. He is right. There really are large differences in living and these differences are commonly experienced as better. There is real cause for celebration and continued efforts at improvement. If this were all he was doing, his book might be universally praised. But despite the truth of his cited facts, Pinker makes many common errors in reasoning when he attempts to claim sweeping philosophical conclusions from his series of empirical observations. You can see Pinker's faulty thinking in his attempt to define progress: "What is progress? You might think that the question is so subjective and culturally relative as to be forever unanswerable… Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness… All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress." Progress may exist. It is not established by whether most people agree on something or not. That the majority believes something to be the case, does not make the thing the case. It does inform us, namely of how humans experience the something but it does not establish the something to be the case. He repeats this error moments later: "Granted, not every one would agree on the exact list." Whether every one did agree on the exact list wouldn't change the situation. That 100% of Earth believed X would not make X the case. He follows this with a fallacy: "If you’re reading this, you are not dead, starving, destitute, moribund, terrified, enslaved, or illiterate, which means that you’re in no position to turn your nose up at these values." This is a cute display of polemic but not a valid argument. The fact that I can read, does not establish that reading is good. Reading may be good but whether reading is good or not is not at all determined by whether I can read or not. His sentence here is something that seems that way but is not true (my freedom does not establish what I must value). He continues with his previous rule-of-majority error: "As it happens, the world does agree on these values. In the year 2000, all 189 members of the United Nations, together with two dozen international organizations, agreed on eight Millennium Development Goals for the year 2015 that blend right into this list." Again, even if all 7 billion people expressed that they believe "murder is wrong" this would not establish that murder is wrong. This isn't to say that murder is not wrong. It's just to say that pointing out what humans do cannot establish what is wrong. Murder is wrong objectively (independent of human minds and their opinions and perceptions) or it is not wrong at all. Anything else is merely observation of what humans happen to hold or happen to practice. Pinker, Sam Harris, and others on the TED stage attempt to ignore this troublesome hindrance to the worldview they promote, dismissing it with a wave of their hand when it is raised and moving along with their presentation. The widely-held feelings and sentiments of humans everywhere do tell us something, just not what Pinker and Harris suggest: there is an intrinsic understanding of right and wrong in every human and we should pay attention that this is present. But this doesn't change the situation that values are objective realities or they are merely subjective whims/emotions/opinions (and may be treated like all other whims/emotions/opinions: ignored). Pinker as a discussion of what is happening–fine, useful, needed. Pinker suggesting both that many values many humans happen to hold should be held and on this basis and that those who notice this is not philosophically sound are simply pessimists–laughable.
- huskyr 9y agoWhen i loaded this page i just saw a photo of Gates and a large white space with nothing beneath (screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/vBb99 https://imgur.com/a/vBb99). I saw "Enlightenment Now" in the URL and thought maybe Gates had converted to Buddhism or something. Then i tried reloading the page with my adblocker turned off and the text finally loaded...
- halfnibble 9y agoDoes the author cover the spectacular lifestyles and living conditions that Dear Leader has gifted to the people of North Korea? Just curious.
- justonepost 9y agoIn Rainbows End, vinge argues that a more educated masses allows for the more random, asymmetric terrorism, which gets even much worse when you think of CRISPR, etc.
- mengibar10 9y ago"...we are living in the most peaceful time in human history..." Tell that to the people in Iraq. Under phony pretext their country was invaded, over a million people died. Destabilizing the whole middle east is still in full swing arming non-state entities, even groups which are in the terror organizations list (YPG, PKK, etc.) A bomb blasts and kills 100 people in Afghanistan and it is not even news anymore. It hurts when these claims come from an American.
- howscrewedami 9y agoEvery time I hear someone say "The world is getting better" or "We're living in amazing times", it's always a super rich person. Not saying they're wrong or anything, just an observation.
- wallace_f 9y agoNone of us have lived in any other generation, and we don't know what it would be like. Gates asks "Why do we gloss over positive news stories and fixate on the negative ones?" I dare you to asks someone on the subway what the DNC scandal was, who Snowden is, why media doesn't report record-breaking protests around the world, what happened at the Dakota pipeline protests, why Americans lack access to affordable healthcare, etc. In my experience, less than 50% of people even know what the DNC scandal is, or who Snowden is. It's not that we're drawn to pessimism. Civil and constitutional rights are on the decline. The world is getting richer, but psychologists know that money doesn't make us happier (in absolute terms). It's easy to say we have the greatest society every, and the leaders of such society would be pleased with such. It's harder to be a skeptic and a critic, but that's how progress is always made.
- brownbat 9y agoCharles Kuralt has an old documentary about the shopping mall. He mourns outdoor shopping downtown, worries about progress, then eventually gives up and announces, "Well, this is the way we live now." Uh, maybe. Kuralt didn't live to see Amazon. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail-debt/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail-debt/ Or if you prefer Randall Munroe, linear extrapolation can be risky. https://www.xkcd.com/605/ https://www.xkcd.com/605/ Crime, housing prices, and population growth always go up... until they don't. Mortality rates might be next to zag, who knows: https://www.vox.com/2016/12/8/13875150/life-expectancy-us-dropped-first-time-decade https://www.vox.com/2016/12/8/13875150/life-expectancy-us-dr... I think Pinker's right. I hope he is. But it's hard to evaluate claims that extend so far beyond human lifespans. The empires in Persia bounced between progressive tolerance and tyrannical repression for stretches of over two hundred years. From Gobleki Tepe's perspective, our entire known history is a blip... too little data for any coherent long run analysis.