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You acknowledged that he made a specific argument about violence, which is a fairly straightforward and measurable metric. He didn’t claim that “conflict is bei

You acknowledged that he made a specific argument about violence, which is a fairly straightforward and measurable metric. He didn’t claim that “conflict is being better managed” or that “things are getting better,” which are extremely subjective and hard to quantify. Your point about the legal system, while valid, seems irrelevant to his argument. And you didn’t provide any argument that the situation has gotten worse than before. Was there a time when “normal people” had better access to justice and ability to enforce their rights?

ABCLAW 9y ago
1) The issue is that violence is a poor metric for progress. Pinker has made it clear that the description of declining violence is done in order to describe the improvement of the human plight, as most succinctly crystallized in the title of his first work on the point, and the overarching research thesis of his second. The structure of his first argument also points to this: violence has decreased, and all of the reasons have to do with humanity getting better, smarter and more empathetic. Here I suggest that in order to make that claim, broadly, we need to understand what violence is, and why its reduction may actually be a symptom of things getting worse for people. I am not the only one to make this distinction. Many groups advocating for historical 'have-nots' make the same counterpoint in reaction to Pinker's work. 2) With regards to the legal system, the issue is tremendously worse than it used to be. There was a time when "normal people" had better access to justice - the fact that you even need to ask this question should cause readers to pause and reflect upon what that means for the system. The legal system, like measures of international violence, have social purposes - this is where Pinker's arguments fall flat to me. Think of them as pressure release valves. If the negative causal force (i.e. Conflict) causing those systems to need to act aren't actually being reduced, yet the system is systemically reacting less and less to the stimuli it is receiving, it is akin to a server reporting that it is A+ Okay and only under 25% load, but ignoring that it is discarding 99% of requests to it. No sane engineer would think things are getting better if the report drops to 24%, given the full context.
- resu_nimda 9y ago
  You have yet to provide even a hint of a demonstration of how the have-nots have it worse than before. It should be pretty simple, just one example of backward progress that you think is more relevant than reduction of violence. Your second paragraph is pure logical fallacy and fully uncompelling.
  - ABCLAW 9y ago
    Yugoslavia under Tito is a great example of a cauldron of economic and sectarian violence being temporarily held in check by a violent warlord. Given none of those issues actually got solved during his time, the complete disintegration of his country which followed his death is a great example of actual conflict not being accurately tracked by violence figures. Feel free to check out the development figures for the bloc countries and read up on the history. Should be instructive. >Your second paragraph is pure logical fallacy and fully uncompelling. Well, I haven't seen your argument demonstrating that that's the case, but from the tone of this reply, I'll have to stop responding to your points as I don't think there's very much effort towards understanding and discussion.
    - shamino 9y ago
      "The issue is that violence is a poor metric for progress." Just to echo the commenter, I don't think Pinker is stating that humans are progressing in general - he is just stating that violence is decreasing. I also agree this is a measurable metric, that Pinker does well to argue for. If he claims things "are getting better", I think he says that "violence is decreasing", where "violence" is a measure of worseness. If we want to talk about progress, though, we would have to define what progress really means. Will Durant (from "The Lessons of History") says progress is more like the increasing ability of mankind to control his environment. If so, I would think there is some evidence for that. In terms of social injustice, Will Durant also makes an argument that there will always be this. Power is always concentrated to the few (that's just how it works in order to have organization), and those not in power will always have some level of injustice. The amount of people in power and their motives can change depending on the era/civilization/society.
Bartweiss 9y ago
> He didn’t claim that “conflict is being better managed” or that “things are getting better,” Hang on, my reading of Pinker is that he claims exactly that. Certainly Gates thinks so: this post on Enlightenment Now is about "how and why the world is getting better"! If I disagree with OP, it's only because Pinker directly addresses the growth of the legal system in Better Angels with his discussion of Leviathan. I certainly don't think it's irrelevant to Pinker's argument, since he explicitly lauds Hobbes and the rise of state power as a major factor in the decline of violence. As for better access to justice, that's a vastly harder question, and largely one of definition. But yes, I'd be inclined to argue that the evolution of social structures has frequently traded off declining violence against rising injustice.
- resu_nimda 9y ago
  I am legitimately interested in understanding the arguments that support a view of rising injustice. My understanding is that, historically, justice has been pretty abysmal, and as bad as it may be right now, I am not aware of when and how it was any better. It’s certainly plausible but in the arguments here it does seem like “things are bad now” is being conflated with “things were better before.”
emmelaich 9y ago
If you imprison people (violent or non-violent or even innocent) you may get less measurable violence. But perhaps only if you exclude imprisonment from your definitions of violence. That's one of the things ABCLAW is hinting at I think. I don't think it is the case, but it's worth considering.
- mirimir 9y ago
  > All in all, 15 percent of African-American men in the United States have been to prison (compared to about 6 percent of all adult men). But those figures reflect all men alive, including older men lucky enough to have escaped the great incarceration drive. For younger cohorts the risks are far higher. For boys born in 2001, the lifetime probability of incarceration is estimated to be 32 percent for young black men, 17 percent for Latinos, and 6 percent for whites. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/mass-incarceration-statistics-united-states https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/mass-incarceration-statis... That seems like a lot of violence. I wonder if Pinker includes that. Edit: To clarify, I consider state violence, even if legal punishment, to nonetheless be violence.
  - ABCLAW 9y ago
    Pinker explicitly removes these from his analysis, stating that including them is confusing and only serves to allow people to attach 'violence' to things they dislike, and that physical violence is a large enough topic for a book. He may be right logistically regarding book writing, but he does not account for the effect of his narrowed scope in his conclusions, nor does he account for the extraction of morality in his definition with the attempt of his project in lauding the progress of humans as good.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Ummm, "confusing"? I'd say more like "inconvenient" for his thesis. I mean, how is having my neighbor beat the crap out of me, and hold me hostage, any more violent than some cop doing the same?

ABCLAW 9y ago

1) The issue is that violence is a poor metric for progress. Pinker has made it clear that the description of declining violence is done in order to describe the improvement of the human plight, as most succinctly crystallized in the title of his first work on the point, and the overarching research thesis of his second. The structure of his first argument also points to this: violence has decreased, and all of the reasons have to do with humanity getting better, smarter and more empathetic. Here I suggest that in order to make that claim, broadly, we need to understand what violence is, and why its reduction may actually be a symptom of things getting worse for people. I am not the only one to make this distinction. Many groups advocating for historical 'have-nots' make the same counterpoint in reaction to Pinker's work. 2) With regards to the legal system, the issue is tremendously worse than it used to be. There was a time when "normal people" had better access to justice - the fact that you even need to ask this question should cause readers to pause and reflect upon what that means for the system. The legal system, like measures of international violence, have social purposes - this is where Pinker's arguments fall flat to me. Think of them as pressure release valves. If the negative causal force (i.e. Conflict) causing those systems to need to act aren't actually being reduced, yet the system is systemically reacting less and less to the stimuli it is receiving, it is akin to a server reporting that it is A+ Okay and only under 25% load, but ignoring that it is discarding 99% of requests to it. No sane engineer would think things are getting better if the report drops to 24%, given the full context.

resu_nimda 9y ago
You have yet to provide even a hint of a demonstration of how the have-nots have it worse than before. It should be pretty simple, just one example of backward progress that you think is more relevant than reduction of violence. Your second paragraph is pure logical fallacy and fully uncompelling.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  Yugoslavia under Tito is a great example of a cauldron of economic and sectarian violence being temporarily held in check by a violent warlord. Given none of those issues actually got solved during his time, the complete disintegration of his country which followed his death is a great example of actual conflict not being accurately tracked by violence figures. Feel free to check out the development figures for the bloc countries and read up on the history. Should be instructive. >Your second paragraph is pure logical fallacy and fully uncompelling. Well, I haven't seen your argument demonstrating that that's the case, but from the tone of this reply, I'll have to stop responding to your points as I don't think there's very much effort towards understanding and discussion.
  - shamino 9y ago
    "The issue is that violence is a poor metric for progress." Just to echo the commenter, I don't think Pinker is stating that humans are progressing in general - he is just stating that violence is decreasing. I also agree this is a measurable metric, that Pinker does well to argue for. If he claims things "are getting better", I think he says that "violence is decreasing", where "violence" is a measure of worseness. If we want to talk about progress, though, we would have to define what progress really means. Will Durant (from "The Lessons of History") says progress is more like the increasing ability of mankind to control his environment. If so, I would think there is some evidence for that. In terms of social injustice, Will Durant also makes an argument that there will always be this. Power is always concentrated to the few (that's just how it works in order to have organization), and those not in power will always have some level of injustice. The amount of people in power and their motives can change depending on the era/civilization/society.

Bartweiss 9y ago

> He didn’t claim that “conflict is being better managed” or that “things are getting better,” Hang on, my reading of Pinker is that he claims exactly that. Certainly Gates thinks so: this post on Enlightenment Now is about "how and why the world is getting better"! If I disagree with OP, it's only because Pinker directly addresses the growth of the legal system in Better Angels with his discussion of Leviathan. I certainly don't think it's irrelevant to Pinker's argument, since he explicitly lauds Hobbes and the rise of state power as a major factor in the decline of violence. As for better access to justice, that's a vastly harder question, and largely one of definition. But yes, I'd be inclined to argue that the evolution of social structures has frequently traded off declining violence against rising injustice.

resu_nimda 9y ago
I am legitimately interested in understanding the arguments that support a view of rising injustice. My understanding is that, historically, justice has been pretty abysmal, and as bad as it may be right now, I am not aware of when and how it was any better. It’s certainly plausible but in the arguments here it does seem like “things are bad now” is being conflated with “things were better before.”

emmelaich 9y ago

If you imprison people (violent or non-violent or even innocent) you may get less measurable violence. But perhaps only if you exclude imprisonment from your definitions of violence. That's one of the things ABCLAW is hinting at I think. I don't think it is the case, but it's worth considering.

mirimir 9y ago
> All in all, 15 percent of African-American men in the United States have been to prison (compared to about 6 percent of all adult men). But those figures reflect all men alive, including older men lucky enough to have escaped the great incarceration drive. For younger cohorts the risks are far higher. For boys born in 2001, the lifetime probability of incarceration is estimated to be 32 percent for young black men, 17 percent for Latinos, and 6 percent for whites. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/mass-incarceration-statistics-united-states https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/11/mass-incarceration-statis... That seems like a lot of violence. I wonder if Pinker includes that. Edit: To clarify, I consider state violence, even if legal punishment, to nonetheless be violence.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  Pinker explicitly removes these from his analysis, stating that including them is confusing and only serves to allow people to attach 'violence' to things they dislike, and that physical violence is a large enough topic for a book. He may be right logistically regarding book writing, but he does not account for the effect of his narrowed scope in his conclusions, nor does he account for the extraction of morality in his definition with the attempt of his project in lauding the progress of humans as good.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Ummm, "confusing"? I'd say more like "inconvenient" for his thesis. I mean, how is having my neighbor beat the crap out of me, and hold me hostage, any more violent than some cop doing the same?