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I'd like to see evidence that Pinker thinks it is about "this special group of people". What I have read in the book doesn't support this. He of course gives

I'd like to see evidence that Pinker thinks it is about "this special group of people". What I have read in the book doesn't support this. He of course gives examples of the most remarkable people but goes on to say they depended on an immensely larger group of collaborators. For example the process of eliminating smallpox depended on hundreds of thousands of people including health workers, government functionaries and the patients themselves. Regarding the motivations of the mistranslators: I think those commentators are frustrated romantics who actually reject the enlightenment view that people can understand and improve their world. Look at John Gray's books on Amazon; he argues that progress isn't possible -- he's quite passionate about that! I have had discussions with people who take this position -- typically very intelligent academics. They rely on "anecdata" -- a blizzard of examples of bad stuff. Something like Pinker's blizzard of data and charts would naturally make them very very angry -- as much because of the reliance on statistical thinking as because of the subject. As to why these people are so passionately devoted to romantic (anti-enlightenment) values: I'm not at all sure. I think they have a visceral dislike for analytical treatments of human issues, but I don't have a deeper sense of why that is.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
I think it's because the fruit of the Enlightenment proved to be dehumanizing (despite the humanism in the Enlightenment itself). We got the clockwork universe - the universe as a machine. That was all right. But out of it we got machines (computers) that changed everything, including society. Some of the ways that society changed made it less personal - less real human contact. For some people, that's a real loss. They miss the past form of society. One could call that a romantic longing. Then we started putting humans into the "machine" category. That's also a loss of a romantic (or romanticized) past, but now the loss is intellectual or philosophical.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

I think it's because the fruit of the Enlightenment proved to be dehumanizing (despite the humanism in the Enlightenment itself). We got the clockwork universe - the universe as a machine. That was all right. But out of it we got machines (computers) that changed everything, including society. Some of the ways that society changed made it less personal - less real human contact. For some people, that's a real loss. They miss the past form of society. One could call that a romantic longing. Then we started putting humans into the "machine" category. That's also a loss of a romantic (or romanticized) past, but now the loss is intellectual or philosophical.