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Pinker explicitly addresses this argument, both in Better Angels and in the free chapter of the new book linked from OP. Quote: So you’re saying that we can al
by rictic 9y ago
Pinker explicitly addresses this argument, both in Better Angels and in the free chapter of the new book linked from OP. Quote:
So you’re saying that we can all sit back and relax, that violence will just take
care of itself.
Illogical, Captain. If you see that a pile of laundry has gone down, it
does not mean the clothes washed themselves; it means someone washed
the clothes. If a type of violence has gone down, then some change in the
social, cultural, or material milieu has caused it to go down. If the conditions
persist, violence could remain low or decline even further; if they
don’t, it won’t. That makes it important to find out what the causes are,
so we can try to intensify them and apply them more widely to ensure
that the decline of violence continues.
- dmix 9y agoAs Pinker said in the video, progress is not a popular concept among academics anymore. This is the concept that underpins his book, which is glossed over in attempts to characterize it as "everything is good now" instead of "everything is getting better thanks to perpetual human progress". Which leads to the obvious question of how can we maintain or advance this progress? Dismissing the progress that was made also dismisses how the progress was made. And I fear many academics are not comfortable crediting the longer term ROI from industry and technology, and would rather obsess over pet political or social issues of the day and their own ideologies.