Twenty Questions with Steven Pinker(the-tls.co.uk)
the-tls.co.uk
Twenty Questions with Steven Pinker
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/twenty-questions-steven-pinker/
81 comments
It's not just what Nietzsche actually wrote and published, but to some effect the forgeries by his sister, who had control over his manuscripts after his mental breakdown. She twisted fragments of his writing, sometimes to say the contrary of what her brother actually intended to express.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Power_(manuscript)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Power_(manuscript)
Seriously, I like Steven Pinker, but I find this view naive. Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9zdpLlXf0 called "How Hollywood Gets Nietzsche Wrong".
I haven't read the source texts yet (Twilight of the Idols e.g.) but my understanding is that his main goal was to ask people to not-systematize and live the lives of others or wholly subscribe to someone else's philosophy but to live life as a self-creative act in which we are the authors of what gives our lives meaning and purpose. I don't see anything offensive about that.
I haven't read the source texts yet (Twilight of the Idols e.g.) but my understanding is that his main goal was to ask people to not-systematize and live the lives of others or wholly subscribe to someone else's philosophy but to live life as a self-creative act in which we are the authors of what gives our lives meaning and purpose. I don't see anything offensive about that.
Yes, one can certainly find a lot of material in Nietzsche's work supporting this interpretation. But there is so much more to it. Giorgio Colli wrote that "Nietzsche has said everything, and the opposite of everything." Depending on how you pick and choose, you can construe it to mean pretty much anything you want. Which is also what enabled his sister to use her brother's work for her own nationalistic, antisemitic goals.
This is the milquetoast interpretation of Nietzsche to make him digestible for the mainstream.
Yea, he wished suffering on his friends, to forge them into beings worthy of respect. Etc. He did have an aggressive and elitist perspective. Ayn Rand's views are a decent comparison.
It's an effort to smear Nietzsche by association more than anything else. His influence was wide throughout the twentieth century; most of the people who read and drew from his ideas weren't fascists or communists. But I wouldn't expect Pinker to be able to engage with any modern philosopher with any depth.
Why wouldn't Steven Pinker be capable of engaging with any modern philosopher? He is certainly in the top 1% of rational and intelligent human beings on Earth. If he doesn't stand a chance, what does that say about the rest of us? Sounds more like an indictment of modern philosophy than anything else.
I’ve seen this touched on elsewhere and I think the conclusion is that, though Nietzsche himself would never have countenanced these movements, nor his philosophy taken as total, that there are fragments of his writings that very much speak to this mindset.
No, he wasn't a Nazi. But he rejected the idea of objective truth, and thought societies were established through violence and myth. If you try to make that into a political philosophy for today, you end up with something rather like fascism, and certainly not marxism or liberalism.
Where do you have this interpretation from that "societies are established through violence and myth" and how is that idea contrary to Marxist political philosophy?
I said this because I not a Marxist, but I have studied it. According to Marx, human beings are social creatures who have always lived in societies, and governmental violence against citizens came later when humans moved from foraging to agriculture. Liberalism has a similar view, and science has confirmed that this view is correct and the Nietzschean one is mistaken.
No one actually reads Nietzsche. He is just used as a boogeyman for anything bad.
>>It’s easy to see why Nietzsche sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-Right and neo-Nazi movements today
One of those things is not like the others.
One of those things is not like the others.
Presumaby you mean Bolshevism but that really depends on your parameters for evaluation. Presumably the author in this case wasn’t talking about economic principles ...
Actually, I was trying to defend Ayn Rand-style libertarianism, but it just goes to show how people's perspective differs.
edpazu(1)
that is one that I occasionally struggle with. I am fairly liberal but I find the absolutist attitudes that many libertarians have to be naive and often repugnant. I don't think it's a stretch at all to place them in the same bucket as those other groups. They all have taken simple defensible ideas to extremes and tend to offer no compromises.
As St. Randall of Munroe has put it: I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone'.
Well, you could order those groups by death toll? I'm not aware of Ayn Rand-style Libertarianism killing people.
Opposition to building codes? vaccination? pretty much any organized effort to make society safer (or avoid societal catastrophe)?
Libertarianism is pretty much "the tragedy of the commons" as a political ideal.
Libertarianism is pretty much "the tragedy of the commons" as a political ideal.
The US healthcare system definitely leads to more death than other developed nations, and the arguments against fixing it are generally Randian in nature.
I found Start The Week very good this week. Pinker appeared with Rob Riemen (philosopher, author of On Facism and Humanism) and Tali Sharot (neuroscientist, author of The Influential Mind.)
I thought Pinker's progress argument was soundly defeated by Rieman. His counter-argument was that Pinker's arguments have the same hollowness of similar arguments before the WW1 and then again WW2. Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror. The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate. Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj
I thought Pinker's progress argument was soundly defeated by Rieman. His counter-argument was that Pinker's arguments have the same hollowness of similar arguments before the WW1 and then again WW2. Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror. The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate. Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj
> Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror
In The Better Angels of Our Nature [1], Pinker posits a single measure of progress: the population-adjusted frequency of violence. He then proceeds to argue, on very long time horizons (e.g. thousands of years), that this metric has almost monotonically declined. The horrors of the twentieth century, in his eyes, are balanced by the larger population. (There is disagreement regarding his pre-historic data [2].)
TL; DR If population keeps rising with technological ability, ceteris paribus, the average person will be better off tomorrow than today. Even if ever-more terrible things happen from time to time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...
[2] https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20Lis...
In The Better Angels of Our Nature [1], Pinker posits a single measure of progress: the population-adjusted frequency of violence. He then proceeds to argue, on very long time horizons (e.g. thousands of years), that this metric has almost monotonically declined. The horrors of the twentieth century, in his eyes, are balanced by the larger population. (There is disagreement regarding his pre-historic data [2].)
TL; DR If population keeps rising with technological ability, ceteris paribus, the average person will be better off tomorrow than today. Even if ever-more terrible things happen from time to time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...
[2] https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20Lis...
I think that Better Angels makes a stronger case from a qualitative point of view than it does from the quantitative point of view. Taleb and others have criticized Pinker’s statistical analysis quite convincingly, but the historical narrative still stands: looking at the human cruelty throughout history, it’s hard to deny that there are many violent practices that are now taboo, and that we seem to have broken out of the hobbesian trap.
The overall historical narrative that he presents, about specific factors like capital punishment and infant mortality, is generally valid. But Pinker's use of historical evidence is at least as flawed as the issues with his statistics. Better Angels literally appears to be based on a group of research assistants, without archival training, being let loose in a library and tasked with cataloguing all examples of violence and mortality throughout history.
This leads to an obvious sample bias and to Pinker basing the bulk of his argument on some truly questionable, non-peer reviewed secondary sources. It is frankly the kind of approach that would get called out if done by an undergraduate history major.
And I say that as someone who thinks Pinker is a fantastic writer, and who is sympathetic to much of the argument of Better Angels. But it's hard for me not to see some level of condescension in Pinker's approach to doing historical analysis. What he does in that book is akin to me (if you couldn't already guess, an historian) trying to write a pop linguistics book by reading a bunch of library books on the subject and chatting with the linguistics professors who have offices down the hall from me.
This leads to an obvious sample bias and to Pinker basing the bulk of his argument on some truly questionable, non-peer reviewed secondary sources. It is frankly the kind of approach that would get called out if done by an undergraduate history major.
And I say that as someone who thinks Pinker is a fantastic writer, and who is sympathetic to much of the argument of Better Angels. But it's hard for me not to see some level of condescension in Pinker's approach to doing historical analysis. What he does in that book is akin to me (if you couldn't already guess, an historian) trying to write a pop linguistics book by reading a bunch of library books on the subject and chatting with the linguistics professors who have offices down the hall from me.
I stand corrected, and appreciate hearing your perspective. It does have a different structural feel to it compared to works I’ve read by respected modern day historians (which isn’t that many), so I think I can see what you’re getting at.
Another related development is that you don't need to have a successful military career to distinguish oneself. Also, compulsory military drafts aren't nearly as widespread.
> If population keeps rising with technological ability, ceteris paribus, the average person will be better off tomorrow than today. Even if ever-more terrible things happen from time to time.
I think that's a pretty big assumption... population has an upper bound to how large it can grow without causing terrible things to happen (destruction of all non-human supporting ecosystems, for instance), whereas there are no similar limits to the terrible effects of misused technology.
Also, if population were to drop, say from a new plague or the loss of resources from a cataclysm, the terrible capabilities of technology are still available and thus have a larger impact relative to the new population level.
It's to hard to argue with his data over those long periods, but the acceleration of new technological capabilities since WWII is quite unique in their power. It seems to me that much of the recent increases in prosperity and peace are based on the political and economic systems that have remained relatively stable throughout this unique time period. Should this situation destabilize this very new technology could be unleashed with uniquely terrible consequences.
I think that's a pretty big assumption... population has an upper bound to how large it can grow without causing terrible things to happen (destruction of all non-human supporting ecosystems, for instance), whereas there are no similar limits to the terrible effects of misused technology.
Also, if population were to drop, say from a new plague or the loss of resources from a cataclysm, the terrible capabilities of technology are still available and thus have a larger impact relative to the new population level.
It's to hard to argue with his data over those long periods, but the acceleration of new technological capabilities since WWII is quite unique in their power. It seems to me that much of the recent increases in prosperity and peace are based on the political and economic systems that have remained relatively stable throughout this unique time period. Should this situation destabilize this very new technology could be unleashed with uniquely terrible consequences.
I enjoyed it but took exactly the opposite from it, I thought Rieman's argument was weak whereas Pinker's seemed more empirical.
WW2 is interesting, Europe had been squabbling for a very long time before then, since then not very much. It's hard to imagine modern countries carpet bombing cities when technology offers us highly targeted weapons.
As far as I can see the only fly in the ointment is the environmental destruction we have been going through, I see almost no evidence that we are going to deal with climate change in time to avoid a catastrophe.
WW2 is interesting, Europe had been squabbling for a very long time before then, since then not very much. It's hard to imagine modern countries carpet bombing cities when technology offers us highly targeted weapons.
As far as I can see the only fly in the ointment is the environmental destruction we have been going through, I see almost no evidence that we are going to deal with climate change in time to avoid a catastrophe.
Interesting. I found the empiricism shallow. Its like Pinker is looking at a stock chart in a bubble and believing it will always go up. The issue is that the circumstances for next crash is not visible on the chart so no amount of ticks or chart analysis will reveals its future value.
> when technology offers us highly targeted weapons
So long as we can believe other humans are worthless, disgusting and categorise them as a disease worthy of eradication, every evil is on the table. I'm not sure we have progressed to make us less likely to do that.
For example, are we even more vulnerable to combination of high and low tech to stir up hate? e.g. a social media led ideology that could lead crowds going house-to-house with machetes.
> when technology offers us highly targeted weapons
So long as we can believe other humans are worthless, disgusting and categorise them as a disease worthy of eradication, every evil is on the table. I'm not sure we have progressed to make us less likely to do that.
For example, are we even more vulnerable to combination of high and low tech to stir up hate? e.g. a social media led ideology that could lead crowds going house-to-house with machetes.
>Its like Pinker is looking at a stock chart in a bubble
Having looked at a few stock charts of bubbles it's not like that - the bubble charts you chose a decade or two out of the 200+ year of stock trading and think that's how it will continue. Pinker's analysis is much more like that in Stocks for the Long Run where you look at all available data and figure stocks have averaged like 7% over the 200 years. It doesn't prove it will continue but is quite a fair representation of what has happened so far.
Having looked at a few stock charts of bubbles it's not like that - the bubble charts you chose a decade or two out of the 200+ year of stock trading and think that's how it will continue. Pinker's analysis is much more like that in Stocks for the Long Run where you look at all available data and figure stocks have averaged like 7% over the 200 years. It doesn't prove it will continue but is quite a fair representation of what has happened so far.
> Its like Pinker is looking at a stock chart in a bubble and believing it will always go up.
Pinker has often explained that he's not doing this. He has never denied that there can or will be a next "disaster" and that he would have no ability to predict it. But there is a big difference between a bubble bursting and a centuries-long trend reversing.
It's the difference between saying, "I am going to fail this class tomorrow," and "I will fail to become a wiser and more educated human being throughout the course of my lifetime."
It's the difference between saying, "The tech bubble is going to burst," and "Technological progress will stall and we'll spend hundreds of years at the level we're at today if not worse."
Even if the former happens, you haven't made any headway whatsoever in demonstrating that the latter is likely to happen.
---
> So long as we can believe other humans are worthless, disgusting and categorise them as a disease worthy of eradication, every evil is on the table. I'm not sure we have progressed to make us less likely to do that. For example, are we even more vulnerable to combination of high and low tech to stir up hate? e.g. a social media led ideology that could lead crowds going house-to-house with machetes.
Your counterargument simply boils down to: it's possible for things to get worse.
Well yes, that's true. It's possible. In fact, it's trivially easy to develop a hypothetical example of how things might get worse. But that's not convincing, because you haven't provided any evidence at all of underlying reasons why your hypothetical is likely to come true.
Pinker on the other hand has built quite a strong case demonstrating that the underlying reasons that lead to human violence, suffering, and misery are largely changing for the better.
Pinker has often explained that he's not doing this. He has never denied that there can or will be a next "disaster" and that he would have no ability to predict it. But there is a big difference between a bubble bursting and a centuries-long trend reversing.
It's the difference between saying, "I am going to fail this class tomorrow," and "I will fail to become a wiser and more educated human being throughout the course of my lifetime."
It's the difference between saying, "The tech bubble is going to burst," and "Technological progress will stall and we'll spend hundreds of years at the level we're at today if not worse."
Even if the former happens, you haven't made any headway whatsoever in demonstrating that the latter is likely to happen.
---
> So long as we can believe other humans are worthless, disgusting and categorise them as a disease worthy of eradication, every evil is on the table. I'm not sure we have progressed to make us less likely to do that. For example, are we even more vulnerable to combination of high and low tech to stir up hate? e.g. a social media led ideology that could lead crowds going house-to-house with machetes.
Your counterargument simply boils down to: it's possible for things to get worse.
Well yes, that's true. It's possible. In fact, it's trivially easy to develop a hypothetical example of how things might get worse. But that's not convincing, because you haven't provided any evidence at all of underlying reasons why your hypothetical is likely to come true.
Pinker on the other hand has built quite a strong case demonstrating that the underlying reasons that lead to human violence, suffering, and misery are largely changing for the better.
The stock chart example is not arguing that calamity is likely. Its a skeptical argument to illustrate the limits of the type of empiricism that observes and extrapolates the path of a complex system without understanding it.
You might want to claim Pinker is not making a prediction, but he uses terms like "progress" that imply future states insead of neutral past-tense language that could equally apply to a random walk.
> Your counterargument simply boils down to: it's possible for things to get worse.
Not really. Rieman's counter-argument is that the source of human violence is human-nature which has not changed and that looking at some metrics is the wrong way to reach a conclusion. I believe Rieman's argument is that we are seeing the emergence of the next form of facism. He is not saying calamity might happen but this it is beginning to happen. I believe he thinks that the remedy for the darkness of human-nature is culture/humanism that has regressed with the decline of organised religion and concentration on science above humanities.
You might want to claim Pinker is not making a prediction, but he uses terms like "progress" that imply future states insead of neutral past-tense language that could equally apply to a random walk.
> Your counterargument simply boils down to: it's possible for things to get worse.
Not really. Rieman's counter-argument is that the source of human violence is human-nature which has not changed and that looking at some metrics is the wrong way to reach a conclusion. I believe Rieman's argument is that we are seeing the emergence of the next form of facism. He is not saying calamity might happen but this it is beginning to happen. I believe he thinks that the remedy for the darkness of human-nature is culture/humanism that has regressed with the decline of organised religion and concentration on science above humanities.
> The stock chart example is not arguing that calamity is likely. Its a skeptical argument to illustrate the limits of the type of empiricism that observes and extrapolates the path of a complex system without understanding it.
You should read The Better Angels of Our Nature, or at least a summary of it. The entire book is an attempt to "understand the complex system," as you put it. It's an attempt to understand the underlying causes of violence. It does not involve merely looking at charts and extrapolating that they will go up or down based on their previous trends. Pinker himself criticizes that type of lackluster "analysis".
> Rieman's counter-argument is that the source of human violence is human-nature which has not changed and that looking at some metrics is the wrong way to reach a conclusion.
"Looking at some metrics" — again, this is total strawman that can only honestly come about by failing to read Pinker. His argument is not and has never been, simply, looking at metrics and extrapolating. Instead, he's analyzed the sources of human violence, and found that Rieman is quite wrong — it is not so simple as "human nature".
In actuality, there exist systems and institutions that are external to human nature that drastically and predictably influence the levels of violence we feel compelled to inflict upon each other.
For example, we have police for a reason. Because, by and large, they work! I don't know any well-read people who advocate returning to a pre-police society and think it will make us safer. And that's just one of many dozens of advancements in institutions that's led to a much less violent world, despite human nature remaining what it always has been. Is it possible for violence to still exist with police? Of course! But it's also a likely bet that, overall, it will be lessened.
The vast majority of refutations of Pinker unfortunately fall into one of two camps: (1) Arguing against the strawman claim that Pinker bases all of his conclusions on statistical extrapolation, which is simply false. (2) Arguing against the strawman claim that Pinker thinks it is impossible for things to ever get worse in unpredictable ways, which he repeatedly denies.
You should read The Better Angels of Our Nature, or at least a summary of it. The entire book is an attempt to "understand the complex system," as you put it. It's an attempt to understand the underlying causes of violence. It does not involve merely looking at charts and extrapolating that they will go up or down based on their previous trends. Pinker himself criticizes that type of lackluster "analysis".
> Rieman's counter-argument is that the source of human violence is human-nature which has not changed and that looking at some metrics is the wrong way to reach a conclusion.
"Looking at some metrics" — again, this is total strawman that can only honestly come about by failing to read Pinker. His argument is not and has never been, simply, looking at metrics and extrapolating. Instead, he's analyzed the sources of human violence, and found that Rieman is quite wrong — it is not so simple as "human nature".
In actuality, there exist systems and institutions that are external to human nature that drastically and predictably influence the levels of violence we feel compelled to inflict upon each other.
For example, we have police for a reason. Because, by and large, they work! I don't know any well-read people who advocate returning to a pre-police society and think it will make us safer. And that's just one of many dozens of advancements in institutions that's led to a much less violent world, despite human nature remaining what it always has been. Is it possible for violence to still exist with police? Of course! But it's also a likely bet that, overall, it will be lessened.
The vast majority of refutations of Pinker unfortunately fall into one of two camps: (1) Arguing against the strawman claim that Pinker bases all of his conclusions on statistical extrapolation, which is simply false. (2) Arguing against the strawman claim that Pinker thinks it is impossible for things to ever get worse in unpredictable ways, which he repeatedly denies.
The conflict is in part a "Two Cultures" division. Pinker's responses were little more than "look at the data", Riemen's responses were "read Nietzsche" - the two sides talk past each other.
> I don't know any well-read people who advocate returning to a pre-police society
Depends on the country! There are many police forces I hope never to meet. Its an interesting example because as good times fade and fascism rises, its precisely such an institution that becomes a source of violence and not a shield.
Riemens's argument something like: the trend of interest right now is the eternal allure of fascism that will corrupt such institutions and that Pinker's argument encourages complacency. I suspect they don't really conflict.
> I don't know any well-read people who advocate returning to a pre-police society
Depends on the country! There are many police forces I hope never to meet. Its an interesting example because as good times fade and fascism rises, its precisely such an institution that becomes a source of violence and not a shield.
Riemens's argument something like: the trend of interest right now is the eternal allure of fascism that will corrupt such institutions and that Pinker's argument encourages complacency. I suspect they don't really conflict.
> The conflict is in part a "Two Cultures" division. Pinker's responses were little more than "look at the data", Riemen's responses were "read Nietzsche" - the two sides talk past each other.
That's definitely what was going on. But in situations such as these, isn't looking at the data an absolute necessity? I appreciate theory just as much as anyone else, but when we're trying to reason about how the world works, I don't see a good reason to ignore troves of experimental data and rely on theory alone, unless we believe that human beings are fundamentally random creatures.
> There are many police forces I hope never to meet. Its an interesting example because as good times fade and fascism rises, its precisely such an institution that becomes a source of violence and not a shield. Riemens's argument something like: the trend of interest right now is the eternal allure of fascism that will corrupt such institutions…
I don't think Pinker would put forth any counterargument here. His point is neither "A, B, and C specific forms of violence will never happen again," nor is it "X, Y, and Z remedies to violence are incorruptible." Rather, it's that there exist specific "changes in our cultural and material milieu that have given our peaceable motives the upper hand," and as such "have driven the multiple declines in violence" that he demonstrates with the data in his book.
That's definitely what was going on. But in situations such as these, isn't looking at the data an absolute necessity? I appreciate theory just as much as anyone else, but when we're trying to reason about how the world works, I don't see a good reason to ignore troves of experimental data and rely on theory alone, unless we believe that human beings are fundamentally random creatures.
> There are many police forces I hope never to meet. Its an interesting example because as good times fade and fascism rises, its precisely such an institution that becomes a source of violence and not a shield. Riemens's argument something like: the trend of interest right now is the eternal allure of fascism that will corrupt such institutions…
I don't think Pinker would put forth any counterargument here. His point is neither "A, B, and C specific forms of violence will never happen again," nor is it "X, Y, and Z remedies to violence are incorruptible." Rather, it's that there exist specific "changes in our cultural and material milieu that have given our peaceable motives the upper hand," and as such "have driven the multiple declines in violence" that he demonstrates with the data in his book.
> I see almost no evidence that we are going to deal with climate change in time to avoid a catastrophe.
Admittedly it depends on what you mean by catastrophe, but if you mean the extreme interpretation, as often portrayed in the media, as in "the complete destruction of the human species and planet" i.e. The Day After Tomorrow or Mad Max, then you should look at the data on this because it will make you feel a whole lot better. [1]
If on the other hand your definition of catastrophe is along the lines of : "by 2100, 8 foot rise in global water levels, coastal cities being flooded, large loss of biodiversity, and heat waves that make life on regions on the planet deathly hot for certain periods of the year", then although that's the worst case scenario, it's still a likely outcome in the sample space.
1. https://www.skepticalscience.com/ - This is a great site for the layman wanting to better understand the scope and current state of climate change.
Admittedly it depends on what you mean by catastrophe, but if you mean the extreme interpretation, as often portrayed in the media, as in "the complete destruction of the human species and planet" i.e. The Day After Tomorrow or Mad Max, then you should look at the data on this because it will make you feel a whole lot better. [1]
If on the other hand your definition of catastrophe is along the lines of : "by 2100, 8 foot rise in global water levels, coastal cities being flooded, large loss of biodiversity, and heat waves that make life on regions on the planet deathly hot for certain periods of the year", then although that's the worst case scenario, it's still a likely outcome in the sample space.
1. https://www.skepticalscience.com/ - This is a great site for the layman wanting to better understand the scope and current state of climate change.
Disclaimer: I'm not at all familiar with Rieman, but I'll weigh in despite my ignorance :-P
> The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms
Well, his emphasis has been on rates of human violence. That's a pretty salient thing to study, no? Is your issue with his specific choice of quantitative metric, or the use of a quantitative metric in the first place?
> leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate.
If I recall correctly, Pinker touches on that in Better Angels of Our Nature's discussion of utopian political ideologies, such as Nazism, communism, and jihadism, which can justify enormous and perfectly avoidable human tragedies in the name of "it will all be worth it".
He's also fairly explicit that we shouldn't be complacent about the possibilities of such human tragedies.
> Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next.
Pinker's point is very much one of "there are no guarantees, but things are generally getting better". The purpose of his book was to (quite rightly) push back against the widespread misconception that the problem of human violence has only been getting worse.
> The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms
Well, his emphasis has been on rates of human violence. That's a pretty salient thing to study, no? Is your issue with his specific choice of quantitative metric, or the use of a quantitative metric in the first place?
> leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate.
If I recall correctly, Pinker touches on that in Better Angels of Our Nature's discussion of utopian political ideologies, such as Nazism, communism, and jihadism, which can justify enormous and perfectly avoidable human tragedies in the name of "it will all be worth it".
He's also fairly explicit that we shouldn't be complacent about the possibilities of such human tragedies.
> Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next.
Pinker's point is very much one of "there are no guarantees, but things are generally getting better". The purpose of his book was to (quite rightly) push back against the widespread misconception that the problem of human violence has only been getting worse.
I always found Pinkers optimism simply as a counter against the perception that the world is going to hell, which in turn fuels effects like "fake news" which turns such reporting into a self fulfilling prophecy.
I think that’s how he might see himself, a counter to the gloom and doom which is ubiquitous, fallacious and probably just another spurious product of human psychology. I think most it is owed to Hans Rosling.
Riemen mischaracterises Pinker's argument by saying someone writing before WW1 might say aren't people great which ignores their darker side but that's not Pinker's argument at all. If you read The Better Angels it's full of humanities basest natures and horrors and we've just got a bit better at restricting them. The new book is a bit like Better Angels but looking at other stats than war deaths.
[deleted]
[deleted]
> The Beats are boring.
Hear hear. I was always confused about what they offered. Every generation has some pushback against mainstream culture but the best movements are accompanied by something greater. I never got the feeling there was a larger cause with the Beats - maybe that was the whole point.
Hear hear. I was always confused about what they offered. Every generation has some pushback against mainstream culture but the best movements are accompanied by something greater. I never got the feeling there was a larger cause with the Beats - maybe that was the whole point.
there are many aspects of the beat movement, and i think many of them get muddied or hidden by the more publicized, overt statements of drug use and and sexual freedom. But, paired with a post-world war II era, its more clear why these are the more prominently remembered themes, as they are the exact antithesis to the prevailing american lifestyle at the time. The “something greater” is a revolution of how we think about sexuality, personhood, and basic human rights. While not necessarily the driving force, the beats were a loud voice among the crowd proselytizing basic human rights, specifically for example gay rights.
Interesting - I did not know about their history with gay rights.
I couldn't agree more with Pinker's answer to the most underrated author / thinker. Thomas Sowell has extremely unique insights and perspectives to offer on a plethora of topics, I actually learned better ways to think about data from some of his research. But whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you should definitely be aware of the arguments and the data he presents.
kiliantics(2)
Pinker was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently if anyone is interested https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg
And if you rather hear just the podcast - https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan-experience-142216/107...
[deleted]
>Economic inequality [...] is both highly moralized (right-thinking people agree it’s the root of all evil)
No way. Even if all the money and stuff were ideally distributed our troubles wouldn't be over. Resentment and envy would find other fish to fry!
No way. Even if all the money and stuff were ideally distributed our troubles wouldn't be over. Resentment and envy would find other fish to fry!
He also says "it’s not clear that inequality (as opposed to poverty) is a moral abomination, or that reducing it is progress," so it may be unclear exactly what he means by the first statement.
Is he talking about extreme inequality, or inequality in general?
My guess is both, i.e., inequality as such is not a problem, whereas poverty is. Frankfurt makes a similar distinction in "On Inequality". One way to distinguish the two is to observe that it is possible to have a society in which everyone is equally poor and thus one in which inequality does not exist. Conversely, observe that the difference in material wealth between the upper middle class and the billionaire class poses no problems where wealth itself is concerned. Both classes are very well off.
Now, there may be problems that are more likely to occur when economic inequality obtains given the power that money can afford people in practice. But as such, inequality itself not the root of these problems and not the ultimate problem itself.
Now, there may be problems that are more likely to occur when economic inequality obtains given the power that money can afford people in practice. But as such, inequality itself not the root of these problems and not the ultimate problem itself.
He likely means that a healthy level of inequality is necessary otherwise productive individuals won't have incentives to be productive. There are real differences in output between different individuals and trying to normalize this difference means that society loses. With this in mind you can easily say things like "inequality is not a moral abomination and reducing it is not progress".
Inequality can be seen in two ways: extreme poverty versus absurdly rich upper class way of living in the same area (hello brazilians), and mostly everyone at least being self maintainable (say, your average european) even though your perception about others — the envy you talk about — is more of a psychological trap than an actual necessity in your life.
Inequality means stagnation of outcomes. You don't just want diversity for ethical reasons - not everyone cares about that anyway - but because by denying talented individuals the opportunity to develop, you're sabotaging future prosperity.
Of course you can argue that as long as you have enough talent this doesn't matter.
But invention and innovation are wildcards, and you can't always create gamechanging developments to order. If access to environments and resources that develop talent is heavily rationed, you're more likely to get a non-linear collapse in output than a linear decrease.
Of course you can argue that as long as you have enough talent this doesn't matter.
But invention and innovation are wildcards, and you can't always create gamechanging developments to order. If access to environments and resources that develop talent is heavily rationed, you're more likely to get a non-linear collapse in output than a linear decrease.
There's a deeper argument here, too. Growing inequality is an indicator that the iron law of oligarchy is taking hold. The book "Why Nations Fail" divides societies into those with inclusive and extractive political and economic institutions. Inclusive institutions allow the benefits of productivity improvements to be shared broadly, while extractive institutions fear that the creative destruction of technological change will imperil the position and authority of the elites that benefit. There are some great stories in there about Tiberius and Elizabeth I banning technological innovations. https://panglott.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/books-why-nations-...
The book "Trekonomics" has some interesting discussion about this, comparing it to status- and prestige-driven competition in academica. However, even if prestige-driven competition is the norm at least everyone has enough food and medical care?
Listening to Steven Pinker definitely makes me feel warm and fuzzy; he's an optimist and we need those. With that said though, I think that trying to show that things are better could lead to an incomplete understanding of the world as better is not only subjective, but a value judgement, and therefore can only be given within the framework of the currently accepted morals of the present day. If you substitute different for better, then you are more free to consider all the aspects of a change, not just the ones that present day society considers the most important. So you might instead conclude something like:
Current society is safer than societies of the past, but also more closely monitored, and therefore less free.
We haven't had a war of naked aggression between major world powers for a while now, but probably because the weapons we have available to us are far more apocalyptic in nature, and everyone is afraid to use them.
We are rapidly improving our control over nature, but at the expense of depleting limited reserves of various minerals, and polluting the earth's ecosystem.
I don't know that I would necessarily describe any of those developments as better.
Current society is safer than societies of the past, but also more closely monitored, and therefore less free.
We haven't had a war of naked aggression between major world powers for a while now, but probably because the weapons we have available to us are far more apocalyptic in nature, and everyone is afraid to use them.
We are rapidly improving our control over nature, but at the expense of depleting limited reserves of various minerals, and polluting the earth's ecosystem.
I don't know that I would necessarily describe any of those developments as better.
Side note: Pinker was in the news recently because Bill Gates says that Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, is Bill Gates' "favorite book of all time." [0]
[0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now
[0]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now
His previous favorite book of all time was also by Pinker.
Damn you Pinker. Now I have another 33 books or so to read...
Surprisingly terse interview - lovely:)
I’ve always rendered that PKD quote as:
Reality is that which, when ‘I’ stop believing in it, ‘refuses’ to go away.
Much better.
Reality is that which, when ‘I’ stop believing in it, ‘refuses’ to go away.
Much better.
For what he is famous for? I've read his 'The language instinct' and found it boring and unconvincing.
"The Language Instinct" is almost 25 years old, and it has not fared well IMO, although linguistics is a multidisciplinary/multiparadigmatic field with lots of disagreement. That book was the result of cognitive psychology trying to grapple with Chomsky and generative grammar when they were at the height, and a dominant paradigm within linguistics. But the tide has been shifting away from Chomsky ever since. So the discussion of universal grammar, or the innateness of creole grammars, looks much weaker today.
An "interactional instinct" seems like a much better account of the forces at play in human language acquisition. https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Insti...
"The Blank Slate" repulsed me by criticizing Boasian anthropology for its rejection of biological explanations for behavior while ignoring the deeply racist context of early 20th century science. The biological explanations that people like Boasian anthropologists were arguing against were pure scientific racism, the premise that the social behavior of "primitive" peoples was a consequence of their biological inferiority, during a time when biology had (for example) not definitely repudiated Lamarckism.
"The Sense of Style", however, looks like quite a good book.
An "interactional instinct" seems like a much better account of the forces at play in human language acquisition. https://www.scribd.com/document/60713747/Interactional-Insti...
"The Blank Slate" repulsed me by criticizing Boasian anthropology for its rejection of biological explanations for behavior while ignoring the deeply racist context of early 20th century science. The biological explanations that people like Boasian anthropologists were arguing against were pure scientific racism, the premise that the social behavior of "primitive" peoples was a consequence of their biological inferiority, during a time when biology had (for example) not definitely repudiated Lamarckism.
"The Sense of Style", however, looks like quite a good book.
He is a very prolific writer. Try "The Blank Slate" and "Better Angels of our Nature".
“How the mind works” probably one of his most well known. I’ve also recently picked up “Sense of style...” which as a reformed grammar troll I’m very much looking forward to reading!
I can't square that with the Nietzsche I read, the one who hated anti-semitism and who was against nationalism and for a unified Europe. See this random point in 475: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lp...
But that's what makes Nietzsche so interesting I guess, you can find contradictory positions everywhere.