> Someone let me know if I've been unfair and it's actually worth reading, thanks. Sorry, are you referring to the Salon article linked here (https://www.salon

> Someone let me know if I've been unfair and it's actually worth reading, thanks. Sorry, are you referring to the Salon article linked here (https://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/steven-pinkers-fake-enlightenment-his-book-is-full-of-misleading-claims-and-false-assertions/ https://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/steven-pinkers-fake-enlight...), or the Quillette article interviewing Pinker (https://quillette.com/2019/01/14/enlightenment-wars-some-reflections-on-enlightenment-now-one-year-later/ https://quillette.com/2019/01/14/enlightenment-wars-some-ref...)? I thought both were well worth reading! The Salon article gets better after the first couple paragraphs, and gives a number of specific examples of how Pinker appears to use poorly-sourced quotes out-of-context in manner that the original authors disagree with. It tracks down a couple of these quotes, with those authors explaining what they really meant. So while it's extremely anti-Pinker, I thought it made a good case for why one should be skeptical of Pinker's argument. I liked the Quillette article because I'm normally very pessimistic about human progress, and I thought Pinker made a good case that, in fact, lots of things are going much better than they did in the past. I particularly liked his quote of Obama's question "When would you choose to live if you didn’t know who you would be?" I now wonder if the quote is accurate, but I think it's still a good one to ponder. I also liked Pinker's attempt to explicate Scott Alexander's theory of "Conflict vs Mistake", where he says that he feels that the "mistake" side is the essence of the Enlightenment.