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> Don't get me wrong: movements certainly can and do go "too far"[1], but in about 100% of the cases, the political activism that has brought us where we are wa

> Don't get me wrong: movements certainly can and do go "too far"[1], but in about 100% of the cases, the political activism that has brought us where we are was viewed as having gone too far (the American revolution and the abolitionist movement included). Sure, by some. It's also true that in about 100% of cases where people have argued for legitimately bad social change (eugenics, communism, prohibition, etc.), those people (and their allies) cast their opponents as immoral and regressive. It's like Carl Sagan said: "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Today on Twitter I saw a conservative arguing that people who deny the personhood of a fetus are like slaveowners who denied the personhood of slaves. As a radical leftist, I doubt you'd agree with that. But this person is just as convinced as you that they are the progressive on this issue. So we need a better heuristic than "people arguing social change are probably right." Some are right, others are not.

pron 9y ago
Right, but the point that Pinker is missing that we are what we are because people fought to get us here -- the very same kind of people he dismisses. Just a nitpick: communism has certainly not been "legitimately bad" everywhere. In my country (Israel), we have practiced communism (on a local scale, in the Kibbutzim) for much longer than the USSR (over 100 years now), and it's a more extreme form of communism (makes the USSR seem like a capitalist country by comparison), and while it has certainly not been an unqualified success (especially the communal raising of children), and it is certainly crumbling now (due to powerful external and internal pressures), it has been the complete opposite of failure. It has been entirely democratic for 100 years (with problems, but not unlike in any democratic system), and one of Israel's proudest achievements. So communism was an overall great success in Israel for a century.

pron 9y ago

Right, but the point that Pinker is missing that we are what we are because people fought to get us here -- the very same kind of people he dismisses. Just a nitpick: communism has certainly not been "legitimately bad" everywhere. In my country (Israel), we have practiced communism (on a local scale, in the Kibbutzim) for much longer than the USSR (over 100 years now), and it's a more extreme form of communism (makes the USSR seem like a capitalist country by comparison), and while it has certainly not been an unqualified success (especially the communal raising of children), and it is certainly crumbling now (due to powerful external and internal pressures), it has been the complete opposite of failure. It has been entirely democratic for 100 years (with problems, but not unlike in any democratic system), and one of Israel's proudest achievements. So communism was an overall great success in Israel for a century.