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The best part about Pinker's book is he actually uses data to backup his thesis. Gray is just rambling and appealing to emotion.

foobarqux 12y ago
Except Pinker's data is problematic, cherry picked in a way to support his thesis. For example casualties in the Afghanistan war were not counted because it was labelled as a civil war. He also defines "less violent" as relative to the size of the world population which is at least debatable.
- michaelchisari 12y ago
  I agree with using a percentage of the world population, though. If you look at it in terms of what percentage of people are acting non-violently towards each other, 90% of the population being peaceful versus 99.98% seems to show a clear positive movement. It not only shows that, as a whole, we are more capable of being non-violent, it also provides more opportunities for people to move away from violent situations into peaceful ones. I'm open to criticism of Pinker, but I don't think this article proves that Pinker's position is totally flawed.
- niels_olson 12y ago
  > cherry picked in a way to support his thesis. 1000 pages is a lot of cherry picking. And let's face it, at least his thesis is declared and we can interpret his data selection in that light. Gray offers no quantitative evidence. As far as I can tell, he's trying to cow the reader with a lot of "I read way more political philosophy than any a' y'all." Taleb offers a statistically oriented critique, but again offers no data, and apparently no proof-reading. If anything, the evidence we have from Gray and Taleb is N=2: 2 ostensibly smart fellows found enough grist in Pinker's work to write a publishable response without gathering any data themselves. That alone suggests Pinker's thesis has merit.
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    Pinker's data being flawed doesn't make Gray's critique good. If you want a good critique read Herman and Petersen's. My own view is that the thesis is not important. What is really at issue is the subtext that we should not be too worried about western violence because we are doing better than ever before and that violence is decreasing "naturally", neither of which is true or follows from the claim that violence has been historically in decline.
  - benbreen 12y ago
    From the perspective of historical evidence, Pinker's book is indeed cherry picking. He has a huge number of footnotes but when you actually look through them, you find that dozens and dozens are from the same book, which purports to explain thousands of years of history but wasn't even written by a professional historian. I find aspects of Pinker's argument to be convincing but his use of historical evidence is, frankly, not much higher than the level of the undergraduate students I teach. And since a large part of the book deals with historical change, that's problematic.
orbifold 12y ago
While quantitative approaches are appropriate in natural sciences, their use in social science appears to be more often than not a pretext to back any preconceived notion the author happens to have. It also appears to give any argument an air of objectivity, if you can point to some data that supports it. From conversations with social scientists I came to the conclusion, that their means of analysis are rather primitive. In most cases they also have no quantitative models (like in physics) to make predictions.
pnathan 12y ago
One of the difficult things with handling data is that you have to pick the data, then determine its meaning. If you pick the wrong data or have a pre-built meaning you are hanging the data on, your research is void. That is why double-blind studies exist, and one of the key parts in data-based social studies programs contains whole classes on building experiments: data is easily abusable. While Pinker might have charts, without understanding the causality of those charts - in depth! - all it becomes is propaganda for Pinker's ideas and a quick way to sway nerds. (not to say that Pinker is right or wrong, but having data doesn't add credibility ipso facto).
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
Pinker uses data. He doesn't always use the data to back up his conclusions though.

foobarqux 12y ago

Except Pinker's data is problematic, cherry picked in a way to support his thesis. For example casualties in the Afghanistan war were not counted because it was labelled as a civil war. He also defines "less violent" as relative to the size of the world population which is at least debatable.

michaelchisari 12y ago
I agree with using a percentage of the world population, though. If you look at it in terms of what percentage of people are acting non-violently towards each other, 90% of the population being peaceful versus 99.98% seems to show a clear positive movement. It not only shows that, as a whole, we are more capable of being non-violent, it also provides more opportunities for people to move away from violent situations into peaceful ones. I'm open to criticism of Pinker, but I don't think this article proves that Pinker's position is totally flawed.
niels_olson 12y ago
> cherry picked in a way to support his thesis. 1000 pages is a lot of cherry picking. And let's face it, at least his thesis is declared and we can interpret his data selection in that light. Gray offers no quantitative evidence. As far as I can tell, he's trying to cow the reader with a lot of "I read way more political philosophy than any a' y'all." Taleb offers a statistically oriented critique, but again offers no data, and apparently no proof-reading. If anything, the evidence we have from Gray and Taleb is N=2: 2 ostensibly smart fellows found enough grist in Pinker's work to write a publishable response without gathering any data themselves. That alone suggests Pinker's thesis has merit.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  Pinker's data being flawed doesn't make Gray's critique good. If you want a good critique read Herman and Petersen's. My own view is that the thesis is not important. What is really at issue is the subtext that we should not be too worried about western violence because we are doing better than ever before and that violence is decreasing "naturally", neither of which is true or follows from the claim that violence has been historically in decline.
- benbreen 12y ago
  From the perspective of historical evidence, Pinker's book is indeed cherry picking. He has a huge number of footnotes but when you actually look through them, you find that dozens and dozens are from the same book, which purports to explain thousands of years of history but wasn't even written by a professional historian. I find aspects of Pinker's argument to be convincing but his use of historical evidence is, frankly, not much higher than the level of the undergraduate students I teach. And since a large part of the book deals with historical change, that's problematic.

orbifold 12y ago

While quantitative approaches are appropriate in natural sciences, their use in social science appears to be more often than not a pretext to back any preconceived notion the author happens to have. It also appears to give any argument an air of objectivity, if you can point to some data that supports it. From conversations with social scientists I came to the conclusion, that their means of analysis are rather primitive. In most cases they also have no quantitative models (like in physics) to make predictions.

pnathan 12y ago

One of the difficult things with handling data is that you have to pick the data, then determine its meaning. If you pick the wrong data or have a pre-built meaning you are hanging the data on, your research is void. That is why double-blind studies exist, and one of the key parts in data-based social studies programs contains whole classes on building experiments: data is easily abusable. While Pinker might have charts, without understanding the causality of those charts - in depth! - all it becomes is propaganda for Pinker's ideas and a quick way to sway nerds. (not to say that Pinker is right or wrong, but having data doesn't add credibility ipso facto).

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago

Pinker uses data. He doesn't always use the data to back up his conclusions though.