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If you want to refute Pinker's arguments, you don't have to ramble on exaggeration and misrepresentation of actual facts, you just have to cite one broad metric

If you want to refute Pinker's arguments, you don't have to ramble on exaggeration and misrepresentation of actual facts, you just have to cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades.

newfoundglory 9y ago
Is "people have improved over the last few decades" really the core of his argument though? I think you'd need to actually address the Enlightenment, or at least a longer period of time.
comex 9y ago
> you just have to cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades. Within the U.S., how about economic inequality and political partisanship, to name two?
- mpweiher 9y ago
  But that's not "humanity", that's "within the US". Note that Pinker's argument is global, but not total, and not strictly monotonic.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  I wonder... Despite how, um, out of whack things are at present in the US, can we point to a time in the history of the US where things were definitely better for everyone? We can probably point to a time when things were better for the average white male.
scythe 9y ago
Arable land area per capita
SeanMacConMara 9y ago
easy our spaceship's life support system is changing to be less supportive of humanity due to our own sabotage
qwtel 9y ago
for this is be a valid argument, the sample mean has to be good estimator for the "true" mean, which is the case only for thin-tailed random variables. unfortunately, violence in humans is verifiably fat-tailed (short bursts of violence account for the vast majority of deaths). here other techniques for estimating the mean have to be used. this has been done by cirillo and taleb [1], and the results are sobering: there is no evidence for a drop in violence. in fact, there isn't sufficient data for any kind of claim (intuition: major conflicts account for the majority of deaths; the inter-arrival time of a major conflicts is 100 years (ballpark); therefore 60 years of relative peace are not sufficient). EDIT: removed preaching, since not relevant to the parent comment. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04722 https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04722
- tim333 9y ago
  Cirillo and taleb show as you say the decline in violence may be unproven. It still doesn't show anything has got worse though so it doesn't really fit with shubhamjain's point.
- useryournoggin 9y ago
  "Taleb’s article implies that Better Angels consists of 700 pages of fancy statistical extrapolations which lead to the conclusion that violent catastrophes have become impossible. He mistakenly refers to this as “The Long Peace.” In fact “The Long Peace” (the term is John Gaddis’s) refers specifically to the welldocumented post-1945 decline of wars among great powers and developed states. And the chapter with that title is one of six that describe historical reductions in rates of violence. Another chapter discusses the more tentative but still appreciable declines in civil war and terrorism since the end of the Cold War. The remaining four pertain to other kinds of violence: tribal raiding and feuding, violent personal crime, barbaric practices such as slavery and torture-executions, and violence on smaller scales such as lynching, rape, spousal abuse, spanking, hate crimes, and cruelty to animals. The book makes it clear that these developments obey very different statistical processes than those governing wars and terrorist attacks; not even Taleb, presumably, would expect a sudden, massive, unpredictable jump in human sacrifice, slave auctions, sodomy laws, or debtor’s prisons. So even if, as Taleb seems to believe, the danger from major war has not declined, we would have plenty of other declines of violence to explain. It’s an open question whether there are any common denominators behind these various declines. Better Angels considers some possibilities, while making it clear that these declines do not constitute a single phenomenon"
thinkingemote 9y ago
From https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight... which mainly refutes Pinker's defence of The Enlightenment, also: "Are the millions incarcerated in the vast American prison system and the millions more who live under parole included in the calculus that says human freedom is increasing? If we are to congratulate ourselves on being less cruel to animals, how much weight should be given to the uncounted numbers that suffer in factory farming and hideous medical experiments – neither of which were practised on any comparable scale in the past? "
- prepend 9y ago
  I have had a few conversations that seem similar to me. To refute global, long term stats, a specific, short term negative is brought up. Pinker isn’t making the point that there is no injustice. Or that there is no violence. Just that there is less injustice and less violence. Significantly less than previously in history. To answer your question, yes. Yes, the prisons of the US are included. It seems odd to me to refute wide scale increasing demographic statistics with narrative examples.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - thinkingemote 9y ago
    "a specific, short term negative is brought up." The GP was explicitly requesting a specific negative. I wouldn't find that odd. Gray's article doesn't give any detailed statistics in response but questions it broadly by asking good questions. Another question he has asked is whether, given that the number of military deaths in war has dropped, whether the number of casualties has too, or if it also counts civilians affected, made homeless, forced to migrate away from home, had their lives ruined. Or whether the changing nature of warfare is any less violent (e.g. proxy wars in far away countries). Personally, I find them interesting, not odd, questions to ask. I'm less convinced about Grays critique of Pinker's views on the Enlightenment (e.g. paraphrasing.. many of the founders of the Enlightenment were explicit racists and eugenicists - their rationality has more in common with Maoism). I think that the Enlightenment has changed in meaning over the years.
coldtea 9y ago
>you just have to cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades. That's assuming (and it's already wrong) that the "past decades" are representative of a general trend (and we can't eg. regress to WWII levels in a hurry).
pfortuny 9y ago
Effective mortality of single weapons. But he will still say that "oh, but we are having less violent deaths". Well, possibly. But deaths never came so fast from single individuals/actions/operations. You always lose when the other part sets the metrics and they cannot be discussed.
- bobthechef 9y ago
  So, airplanes. Safer than cars, but when they crash, they kill everyone.
  - pfortuny 9y ago
    <quote>cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades</quote> That is what I did.
bobthechef 9y ago
Consolidation of capital in fewer and fewer hands.
eesmith 9y ago
Quoting the article, "The number of refugees worldwide, for instance, has climbed vertiginously over the past few decades, and is now approaching levels not seen since World War II."

newfoundglory 9y ago

Is "people have improved over the last few decades" really the core of his argument though? I think you'd need to actually address the Enlightenment, or at least a longer period of time.

comex 9y ago

> you just have to cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades. Within the U.S., how about economic inequality and political partisanship, to name two?

mpweiher 9y ago
But that's not "humanity", that's "within the US". Note that Pinker's argument is global, but not total, and not strictly monotonic.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I wonder... Despite how, um, out of whack things are at present in the US, can we point to a time in the history of the US where things were definitely better for everyone? We can probably point to a time when things were better for the average white male.

scythe 9y ago

Arable land area per capita

SeanMacConMara 9y ago

easy our spaceship's life support system is changing to be less supportive of humanity due to our own sabotage

qwtel 9y ago

for this is be a valid argument, the sample mean has to be good estimator for the "true" mean, which is the case only for thin-tailed random variables. unfortunately, violence in humans is verifiably fat-tailed (short bursts of violence account for the vast majority of deaths). here other techniques for estimating the mean have to be used. this has been done by cirillo and taleb [1], and the results are sobering: there is no evidence for a drop in violence. in fact, there isn't sufficient data for any kind of claim (intuition: major conflicts account for the majority of deaths; the inter-arrival time of a major conflicts is 100 years (ballpark); therefore 60 years of relative peace are not sufficient). EDIT: removed preaching, since not relevant to the parent comment. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04722 https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04722

tim333 9y ago
Cirillo and taleb show as you say the decline in violence may be unproven. It still doesn't show anything has got worse though so it doesn't really fit with shubhamjain's point.
useryournoggin 9y ago
"Taleb’s article implies that Better Angels consists of 700 pages of fancy statistical extrapolations which lead to the conclusion that violent catastrophes have become impossible. He mistakenly refers to this as “The Long Peace.” In fact “The Long Peace” (the term is John Gaddis’s) refers specifically to the welldocumented post-1945 decline of wars among great powers and developed states. And the chapter with that title is one of six that describe historical reductions in rates of violence. Another chapter discusses the more tentative but still appreciable declines in civil war and terrorism since the end of the Cold War. The remaining four pertain to other kinds of violence: tribal raiding and feuding, violent personal crime, barbaric practices such as slavery and torture-executions, and violence on smaller scales such as lynching, rape, spousal abuse, spanking, hate crimes, and cruelty to animals. The book makes it clear that these developments obey very different statistical processes than those governing wars and terrorist attacks; not even Taleb, presumably, would expect a sudden, massive, unpredictable jump in human sacrifice, slave auctions, sodomy laws, or debtor’s prisons. So even if, as Taleb seems to believe, the danger from major war has not declined, we would have plenty of other declines of violence to explain. It’s an open question whether there are any common denominators behind these various declines. Better Angels considers some possibilities, while making it clear that these declines do not constitute a single phenomenon"

thinkingemote 9y ago

From https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight... which mainly refutes Pinker's defence of The Enlightenment, also: "Are the millions incarcerated in the vast American prison system and the millions more who live under parole included in the calculus that says human freedom is increasing? If we are to congratulate ourselves on being less cruel to animals, how much weight should be given to the uncounted numbers that suffer in factory farming and hideous medical experiments – neither of which were practised on any comparable scale in the past? "

prepend 9y ago
I have had a few conversations that seem similar to me. To refute global, long term stats, a specific, short term negative is brought up. Pinker isn’t making the point that there is no injustice. Or that there is no violence. Just that there is less injustice and less violence. Significantly less than previously in history. To answer your question, yes. Yes, the prisons of the US are included. It seems odd to me to refute wide scale increasing demographic statistics with narrative examples.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thinkingemote 9y ago
  "a specific, short term negative is brought up." The GP was explicitly requesting a specific negative. I wouldn't find that odd. Gray's article doesn't give any detailed statistics in response but questions it broadly by asking good questions. Another question he has asked is whether, given that the number of military deaths in war has dropped, whether the number of casualties has too, or if it also counts civilians affected, made homeless, forced to migrate away from home, had their lives ruined. Or whether the changing nature of warfare is any less violent (e.g. proxy wars in far away countries). Personally, I find them interesting, not odd, questions to ask. I'm less convinced about Grays critique of Pinker's views on the Enlightenment (e.g. paraphrasing.. many of the founders of the Enlightenment were explicit racists and eugenicists - their rationality has more in common with Maoism). I think that the Enlightenment has changed in meaning over the years.

coldtea 9y ago

>you just have to cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades. That's assuming (and it's already wrong) that the "past decades" are representative of a general trend (and we can't eg. regress to WWII levels in a hurry).

pfortuny 9y ago

Effective mortality of single weapons. But he will still say that "oh, but we are having less violent deaths". Well, possibly. But deaths never came so fast from single individuals/actions/operations. You always lose when the other part sets the metrics and they cannot be discussed.

bobthechef 9y ago
So, airplanes. Safer than cars, but when they crash, they kill everyone.
- pfortuny 9y ago
  <quote>cite one broad metric in which humanity has worsened over the past decades</quote> That is what I did.

bobthechef 9y ago

Consolidation of capital in fewer and fewer hands.

eesmith 9y ago

Quoting the article, "The number of refugees worldwide, for instance, has climbed vertiginously over the past few decades, and is now approaching levels not seen since World War II."