Chomsky Responds to Steven Pinker on Violence

24 thoughts on “Chomsky Responds to Steven Pinker on Violence”

1. Yea I can sympathize with the Pinker people here, it's not fun to watch people you admire have their ideas refuted in 2 minutes, lol.

2. Pinker doesn't believe violence is intensifying because he ignores structural/institutional violence. This form of mass violence usually from a sanctioned elite of some kind is intensifying in our world and wasn't really a problem for our ancestors. It's effects of course are much more far reaching.

3. Why we still wasting time on Chomsky?

4. What a ridiculous statement by Chomsky. Totally illiterate, irresponsible. You owe Steven Pinker a public apology and the expression of deep admiration for his impecable work.

5. That's shameful. I would have rushed the end of this talk, embarrassed by his arrogance.

6. Device that can destroy us all created a relative peace between developed nation-states. No more total wars can happen without all of us dying in a fraction of a second. Now we can moraly progress further from this state of existence if we set it as our goal. Give some credit to the A-bomb!

7. Bullshit Chomsky! How do you tell if there where less murders in hunter gatherer societies? And even if there where so what?! After farming was developed people started living longer and population rose. The 20th century was the most peaceful in all of human history! Fucking Chomsky, he's such a Negative Nancy.

8. I love how “He thinks” but doesn’t site specific statistics.

9. It depends ion what you mean by "killing". Within tribes we actually had much higher murder rates in the past. Similar to how modern sub ethnic groups like black Americans have high homicide rates within their group. But we never had large scale killing as in massive wars. That's relatively new. So, it depends on what you mean from what I've read.

10. Let's just tabulate these comments to find out which one was right about something literally unprovable

11. Chomsky's comment about hunters gatherers time as a better society is so amazing stupid. That was a time with very low population density and very high mortality rate. It was obviously a terrible time to live in. War as in the sense of the later civilizations of course couldn't take place at that time, but that doesn't mean that was a peaceful society. It was a brutal world where survival in the wilderness was the main goal and where extremely violent clashes between tribes existed as proven specially in the recent geological record. Chomsky seems to believe the good savage myths, which only proves that his arrogance goes well beyond his knowledge.

12. Chomsky contradicts himself. He thinks that moral values have improved over time, but then asserts that social structures effect more killing. His notions of moral improvement only means that his values are in the ascendant. Or, to tie Chomsky's misstatements, we can say that as Chomsky's moral beliefs become more prevalent, the more death from social structures that occur. Somehow, Chomsky avoids that connection.

13. He is old, and thinks like a 20th century person. Pinker is new.

14. States create graveyards and call it peace.

15. Chomsky is trying to mix up two different things, scale and frequency. Prehistoric violence is never large scaled, but violence happens on a daily basis and that's how humans were able to evolve. Then came the birth of nations which introduced war, but people were much more peaceful in civil society. Violence has dramatically decreased, but monopolized. The modern world wars were not even close to proportionally deadly compared to wars in ancient times. We had wars that wiped out complete ethnic groups, wars which caused countries' population to decrease by 90%, wars which completely destroyed civilization. As an anarchist, Chomsky doesn't want violence to disappear. He just wants to be no longer monopolized by the government, which results in primitive chaos.

16. it's important to keep in mind the relative population size. In the hunters and gatherers time there were few people for huge areas of land.
    To really compare the violence, you'd have to look per capita.
    Also, the destructive power of wars has increased because of technology but the number of wars has dramatically decreased in the world over the past 500 years.

17. All you'd have to do is take a look at Chimpanzees and see how peaceful and stateless they are to see that we were essentially in a similar state. Oh wait… no, they rape and murder/wage war and form small nations naturally as well. With hierarchy and ranks. It's as though people who believe in anarchy and "free will" think that they can exist in a state of noninfluence, or that they can deny human nature itself. Homosexuality is more natural to the human experience than stateless freedom is. Think about that.

18. I dont know much on this whole "subject" but when I first thought about the question 'would living in today's era result in a happier life as opposed to that of a Neanderthal?' I immediately thought "No, living in todays time is way better than some time before the prehistoric era" However I began thinking of my life and how happy I am and what it would be like living in a different time period and I now think that this is not the happiest I can but blaming that on a time period also seems a little crazy. In conclusion..

    .who the fuck cares

19. Chomsky cites one paleontologist…Pinker used dozens and probabilities and conclusions based on actual burial sites and bone damage…Chomsky is deluded and since Pinker questioned some of his conclusions about linguistics he has an axe to grind…who would refute the grand Chomsky??

20. Of course we never appreciate the good times until they’re over

21. Noam can be the first person to go to live in 100 bc when we develop a time machine. See how much he likes it then when hes picking berries and running from saber tooth tigers instead of philosophizing with an electric microphone as people laugh and applaud.

22. I see this video was produced prior to release of data proving that we in the USA are dying at ever earlier ages than we did in the past. This brings to my mind recall of the scientific experiment, done decades ago, that proved each new litter of kittens from parents exposed to toxins died at ever younger ages. That the American mortality rate shrinks every year is a fact Pinker could not take into consideration when writing his our better angels book.

23. Chomsky is dogmatic af

24. i'm racing for pinks
    i'm talkin pink slips
    ya papas

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