<story><title>Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence</title><url>https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/steven-pinker-language-instinct-evolutionary-psychology-darwin-chomsky-linguistics-b792d7cd2a05#.pr8d00o74</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onion2k</author><text>&lt;i&gt;we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no interpretative reasoning required when you&amp;#x27;re looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don&amp;#x27;t need an opinion about it. There&amp;#x27;s nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It&amp;#x27;s based on information. As such, your opinion is &lt;i&gt;objectively&lt;/i&gt; wrong. There is a wealth of evidence about how bad things have been over the past 200 years or so, and every metric shows that things are getting better. The only way to make the numbers look like things are getting worse is to cherry pick a short window - for example, you can show violent crime rose in the first decade of the 21st century, but it fell for the previous 5 decades to that, so things are still better now.</text></item><item><author>Analemma_</author><text>The whole &amp;quot;better angels of our nature&amp;quot; optimism thing kind of seems like sticking your head in the sand to me. Of course we should have a sense of perspective about how bad things are currently (which seems to be what Pinker is saying), but we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward), and more importantly, whether there are any forces or incentives on the horizon that might reverse the trend (IMO, no).&lt;p&gt;Better futures have to be consciously fought for. We can&amp;#x27;t really rely anymore on the &amp;quot;End of History&amp;quot; theory that the arrow of time inevitably points toward peaceful liberal democracy. Even Fukuyama was iffy about that as he admitted in a WSJ interview in 2014, and things have only gotten dicier since. My current pessimism about the future is not a function of how bad things currently are-- it has definitely been much worse-- but that all the incentives are aligned toward making it worse and I don&amp;#x27;t see many people or forces aligned toward making it better. Pinker ignores that to his detriment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Analemma_</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s based on information. As such, your opinion is objectively wrong.&lt;p&gt;Hang on, I&amp;#x27;m not making the claim you think I&amp;#x27;m making. Pinker observes that the level of violence in society is at an all-time low- that is, as you say, an objective fact beyond dispute (modulo measurement error). But there is a clear implied claim there that this fact means pessimism for the future is unwarranted. &lt;i&gt;That&lt;/i&gt; is what I am disputing, because I think trends and incentives are more important than current numbers (think about how a company&amp;#x27;s share price can fall even if they have a great quarter, if investors don&amp;#x27;t think its future prospects are great)&lt;p&gt;I also dispute your claim that _every_ metric shows things are getting better. Some are, especially in areas like health and lifespan, but others (income inequality, social cohesion, faith in democracy, etc.) are not. There are legitimate grounds for disagreement as to which metrics are more important to the question of &amp;quot;should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the future&amp;quot;, and maybe your opinion differs from mine, but that does not make me objectively wrong.</text></comment>
<story><title>Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence</title><url>https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/steven-pinker-language-instinct-evolutionary-psychology-darwin-chomsky-linguistics-b792d7cd2a05#.pr8d00o74</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onion2k</author><text>&lt;i&gt;we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no interpretative reasoning required when you&amp;#x27;re looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don&amp;#x27;t need an opinion about it. There&amp;#x27;s nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It&amp;#x27;s based on information. As such, your opinion is &lt;i&gt;objectively&lt;/i&gt; wrong. There is a wealth of evidence about how bad things have been over the past 200 years or so, and every metric shows that things are getting better. The only way to make the numbers look like things are getting worse is to cherry pick a short window - for example, you can show violent crime rose in the first decade of the 21st century, but it fell for the previous 5 decades to that, so things are still better now.</text></item><item><author>Analemma_</author><text>The whole &amp;quot;better angels of our nature&amp;quot; optimism thing kind of seems like sticking your head in the sand to me. Of course we should have a sense of perspective about how bad things are currently (which seems to be what Pinker is saying), but we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward), and more importantly, whether there are any forces or incentives on the horizon that might reverse the trend (IMO, no).&lt;p&gt;Better futures have to be consciously fought for. We can&amp;#x27;t really rely anymore on the &amp;quot;End of History&amp;quot; theory that the arrow of time inevitably points toward peaceful liberal democracy. Even Fukuyama was iffy about that as he admitted in a WSJ interview in 2014, and things have only gotten dicier since. My current pessimism about the future is not a function of how bad things currently are-- it has definitely been much worse-- but that all the incentives are aligned toward making it worse and I don&amp;#x27;t see many people or forces aligned toward making it better. Pinker ignores that to his detriment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lsd5you</author><text>Sorry but this is arrogant (and condescending) hubris and is wilfully misintepreting the gp comment.&lt;p&gt;Firstly there is no single bias free set of figures. Information has been thrown away and distorted to produce a single line, without error bars. (Even error bars themselves suffer from the same issue)&lt;p&gt;Then what you describe sounds like overfitting. You cannot just discard a change in a trend out of hand. It may be a blip or it may not be.&lt;p&gt;Worst of all though is that graphs of complex systems do not contain all the information (obviously) about the future direction of that particular graph. It may be better to distrust other information sometimes, but thoughtful and cautious thinkers should be encouraged to be skeptical.</text></comment>