3 ms·

> 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

> 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.

3 ms·

> 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

by niels_olson 12y ago

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.