8 ms·

Critical review panning the book: http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2018/02/20/4806696.htm http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2018/02/20/4806696.h...

crusso 9y ago
I can only read so much snark before I give up and wonder at when the actual reasoned review of the book will begin.
- danharaj 9y ago
  Snark and reason can coexist, you know. What exactly did you find unreasoned in the review?
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    As can reason and sincerity. Humans, being humans rather than Vulcans or robots, should understand that excessive snark serves to distract from the point and draw attention to the author.
    - foldr 9y ago
      You only have to look at the outrageously arrogant title of Pinker's book to see that the reviewer is being pretty restrained.
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        "Enlightenment Now" is an arrogant title? It sounds remarkably generic to me. Anyways, that cuts both ways. If I believed that the book was going to be overwrought twaddle and then saw this review while deciding if it was worth my time, I'd be just as likely to dismiss them both as haughty wankers not worth listening to.
        foldr 9y ago
        The subtitle is "the case for reason, science, humanism and progress". >If I believed that the book was going to be overwrought twaddle and then saw this review while deciding if it was worth my time, I'd be just as likely to dismiss them both as haughty wankers not worth listening to. I guess you're not as big a fan of reason as Pinker is, then. It's the content of the review you need to look at if you want to figure out whether the book's any good or not. In any case, the style of the review is pretty much par for the course in academia. You can easily find similarly snarky articles by Pinker himself.
        euyyn 9y ago
        > It's the content of the review you need to look at if you want to figure out whether the book's any good or not. True. Doesn't mean it's worth his time to read if the style is distracting. He's just hoping to find a better-written review.
        Karunamon 9y ago
        >In any case, the style of the review is pretty much par for the course in academia. A bit off topic, but that's terribly damning of academia! It's not often you get a concrete example of the "educated elite talking down to the proles" stereotype, but that review is it, in the flesh. It's off-putting. Viscerally so. I've read bad restaurant reviews by professional critics that are less venomous.
        foldr 9y ago
        That's weird. I don't get that impression from the review at all. Pinker is a Harvard Professor, and hardly a prole from anyone's point of view. You have to bear in mind that Pinker has put out a series of publications in the past 5-10 years that are extremely patronizing to scholars in the humanities. If you're going to tell entire disciplines that they're doing it all wrong, and that you know how to do it right, then you can't really expect a friendly response. One can imagine the reaction if, for example, historians wrote articles telling physicists how to conduct their research.
- bobthechef 9y ago
  It's called polemic. Just because something is polemical doesn't mean it is untrue or unsound. Tone does not discredit content.
  - crusso 9y ago
    Technically true, but I'm kind of sick of seeing it. The more time I spend online, the more nauseated I feel when I read people writing serious documents who can't even be civil. If either of the criticism articles that I saw links to here were actually posted as comments on HN, dang would be asking them to reword their criticisms to be less hostile and aggressive.
wpasc 9y ago
>my own prediction is that future historians, if they haven't all been replaced by cognitive psychologists, will regard misplaced faith in data, metrics and statistical analysis as the curse of the twenty-first century I think that line ruined the review for me, that whole paragraph just chastises the notion of evidence
- foldr 9y ago
  No, it chastises misplaced faith in it.
  - Stefan-H 9y ago
    Can one have a misplaced faith in evidence? Once there is evidence for something, it is not merely faith - faith is conviction without evidence. The whole point of the scientific process is to re-evaluate conclusions when new evidence is presented. I suppose historians may look back and find that some of our scientific beliefs were held in spite of evidence to the contrary, or that evidence was not sought out to disprove those beliefs, but I do not see how a full discrediting of data and statistics would one day happen.
    - jsky_goog 9y ago
      I think an example of "misplaced faith in evidence" would be along the lines of equating correlation with causation based on evidence.
      - Stefan-H 9y ago
        I disagree with that as an example of a "misplaced faith in evidence". That is coming to the wrong conclusion due to committing a false cause logical fallacy. Drawing the wrong conclusion should not be confused with a "misplaced faith in evidence". It seems that the religious really want to use the term faith in regards to science so as to imply that scientists "stoop to their level". That argument is seemingly often made that scientists have a blind faith in science. Certainly it happens that a scientist will hold onto beliefs against evidence, will doctor evidence to confirm their belief, and will cherry pick data to prove their belief that they hold despite evidence. But those are all actions that are antithetical to the scientific process. while and endemic to religion.
mpweiher 9y ago
Hmm...that's not a review of the book, it's a hit piece by someone with a personal axe to grind because of a previous article. An example: The ultimate import of his graphs is to demonstrate some kind of inexorable and progressive historical law (although he doesn't admit as much). Where to begin with something as inane as this? The reviewer makes up a silly interpretation of what Pinker has provided, claims without any evidence that this is what Pinker really means, because he obviously knows better, and then faults Pinker for this silly interpretation. Hmm.. He goes on: In Pinker's history, it seems as though there are no real contingencies - no prospect that the battle of Britain might had been lost, no prospect that the cold war might have turned into nuclear catastrophe, and for the future, no real sense of a potential calamity produced by climate change or a trigger-happy Kim Jong-Un (or his U.S. counterpart, for that matter). This is an almost providential view of history. Again, the reviewer completely misses the point: we have always had potential calamities. But the real calamities have decreased dramatically, and life has improved so incredibly that it is not even funny. This really hit me when I was on a tour at the Neue Palais in Potsdam, a palace/guest house built by Frederick the Great to impress his neighbors. This palace has a bunch of apartments for royal guests. Even the poorest households in Western countries today live better. Much better. We. Are. Living. Like. Kings. No: better than kings of even a few centuries ago. So yeah, Pinker is right.
- foldr 9y ago
  > But the real calamities have decreased dramatically, and life has improved so incredibly that it is not even funny How is that not an almost providential view of history? I don't see how the charge is misplaced.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    > How is that not an almost providential view of history? In about every conceivable way? "Providential" means that there is some divine guidance or care, so it is (a) about the cause of what happened and (b) that this cause is somehow divine in nature. Saying that "real calamities have decreased dramatically" is not saying anything about causes, it is simply making an empirical observation about the world. Which could certainly be wrong, but even then it is not saying anything about divine causes. Of course, Pinker does say something about causes, but these are about as far away from "divine intervention or guidance" as possible. In fact, it is about as secular as you can get. Of course, you may be of an opinion that such a "lucky streak" so to say is so highly improbable that it must be divine intervention, but that is purely you, because it isn't luck and it isn't divine intervention. The entire argument is that we have found something that works really well, empirically. Unless of course you change the definition of "almost" to be "the exact opposite of".

crusso 9y ago

I can only read so much snark before I give up and wonder at when the actual reasoned review of the book will begin.

danharaj 9y ago
Snark and reason can coexist, you know. What exactly did you find unreasoned in the review?
- Karunamon 9y ago
  As can reason and sincerity. Humans, being humans rather than Vulcans or robots, should understand that excessive snark serves to distract from the point and draw attention to the author.
  - foldr 9y ago
    You only have to look at the outrageously arrogant title of Pinker's book to see that the reviewer is being pretty restrained.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      "Enlightenment Now" is an arrogant title? It sounds remarkably generic to me. Anyways, that cuts both ways. If I believed that the book was going to be overwrought twaddle and then saw this review while deciding if it was worth my time, I'd be just as likely to dismiss them both as haughty wankers not worth listening to.
      - foldr 9y ago
        The subtitle is "the case for reason, science, humanism and progress". >If I believed that the book was going to be overwrought twaddle and then saw this review while deciding if it was worth my time, I'd be just as likely to dismiss them both as haughty wankers not worth listening to. I guess you're not as big a fan of reason as Pinker is, then. It's the content of the review you need to look at if you want to figure out whether the book's any good or not. In any case, the style of the review is pretty much par for the course in academia. You can easily find similarly snarky articles by Pinker himself.
        euyyn 9y ago
        > It's the content of the review you need to look at if you want to figure out whether the book's any good or not. True. Doesn't mean it's worth his time to read if the style is distracting. He's just hoping to find a better-written review.
        Karunamon 9y ago
        >In any case, the style of the review is pretty much par for the course in academia. A bit off topic, but that's terribly damning of academia! It's not often you get a concrete example of the "educated elite talking down to the proles" stereotype, but that review is it, in the flesh. It's off-putting. Viscerally so. I've read bad restaurant reviews by professional critics that are less venomous.
        foldr 9y ago
        That's weird. I don't get that impression from the review at all. Pinker is a Harvard Professor, and hardly a prole from anyone's point of view. You have to bear in mind that Pinker has put out a series of publications in the past 5-10 years that are extremely patronizing to scholars in the humanities. If you're going to tell entire disciplines that they're doing it all wrong, and that you know how to do it right, then you can't really expect a friendly response. One can imagine the reaction if, for example, historians wrote articles telling physicists how to conduct their research.
bobthechef 9y ago
It's called polemic. Just because something is polemical doesn't mean it is untrue or unsound. Tone does not discredit content.
- crusso 9y ago
  Technically true, but I'm kind of sick of seeing it. The more time I spend online, the more nauseated I feel when I read people writing serious documents who can't even be civil. If either of the criticism articles that I saw links to here were actually posted as comments on HN, dang would be asking them to reword their criticisms to be less hostile and aggressive.

wpasc 9y ago

>my own prediction is that future historians, if they haven't all been replaced by cognitive psychologists, will regard misplaced faith in data, metrics and statistical analysis as the curse of the twenty-first century I think that line ruined the review for me, that whole paragraph just chastises the notion of evidence

foldr 9y ago
No, it chastises misplaced faith in it.
- Stefan-H 9y ago
  Can one have a misplaced faith in evidence? Once there is evidence for something, it is not merely faith - faith is conviction without evidence. The whole point of the scientific process is to re-evaluate conclusions when new evidence is presented. I suppose historians may look back and find that some of our scientific beliefs were held in spite of evidence to the contrary, or that evidence was not sought out to disprove those beliefs, but I do not see how a full discrediting of data and statistics would one day happen.
  - jsky_goog 9y ago
    I think an example of "misplaced faith in evidence" would be along the lines of equating correlation with causation based on evidence.
    - Stefan-H 9y ago
      I disagree with that as an example of a "misplaced faith in evidence". That is coming to the wrong conclusion due to committing a false cause logical fallacy. Drawing the wrong conclusion should not be confused with a "misplaced faith in evidence". It seems that the religious really want to use the term faith in regards to science so as to imply that scientists "stoop to their level". That argument is seemingly often made that scientists have a blind faith in science. Certainly it happens that a scientist will hold onto beliefs against evidence, will doctor evidence to confirm their belief, and will cherry pick data to prove their belief that they hold despite evidence. But those are all actions that are antithetical to the scientific process. while and endemic to religion.

mpweiher 9y ago

Hmm...that's not a review of the book, it's a hit piece by someone with a personal axe to grind because of a previous article. An example: The ultimate import of his graphs is to demonstrate some kind of inexorable and progressive historical law (although he doesn't admit as much). Where to begin with something as inane as this? The reviewer makes up a silly interpretation of what Pinker has provided, claims without any evidence that this is what Pinker really means, because he obviously knows better, and then faults Pinker for this silly interpretation. Hmm.. He goes on: In Pinker's history, it seems as though there are no real contingencies - no prospect that the battle of Britain might had been lost, no prospect that the cold war might have turned into nuclear catastrophe, and for the future, no real sense of a potential calamity produced by climate change or a trigger-happy Kim Jong-Un (or his U.S. counterpart, for that matter). This is an almost providential view of history. Again, the reviewer completely misses the point: we have always had potential calamities. But the real calamities have decreased dramatically, and life has improved so incredibly that it is not even funny. This really hit me when I was on a tour at the Neue Palais in Potsdam, a palace/guest house built by Frederick the Great to impress his neighbors. This palace has a bunch of apartments for royal guests. Even the poorest households in Western countries today live better. Much better. We. Are. Living. Like. Kings. No: better than kings of even a few centuries ago. So yeah, Pinker is right.

foldr 9y ago
> But the real calamities have decreased dramatically, and life has improved so incredibly that it is not even funny How is that not an almost providential view of history? I don't see how the charge is misplaced.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  > How is that not an almost providential view of history? In about every conceivable way? "Providential" means that there is some divine guidance or care, so it is (a) about the cause of what happened and (b) that this cause is somehow divine in nature. Saying that "real calamities have decreased dramatically" is not saying anything about causes, it is simply making an empirical observation about the world. Which could certainly be wrong, but even then it is not saying anything about divine causes. Of course, Pinker does say something about causes, but these are about as far away from "divine intervention or guidance" as possible. In fact, it is about as secular as you can get. Of course, you may be of an opinion that such a "lucky streak" so to say is so highly improbable that it must be divine intervention, but that is purely you, because it isn't luck and it isn't divine intervention. The entire argument is that we have found something that works really well, empirically. Unless of course you change the definition of "almost" to be "the exact opposite of".