The Cato Institute
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.
Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature — tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking — which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.
With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Source
boo Pinker, boooo! as Zizek so eloquently put it, Pinker is stupid.
7:55 Pinker starts
Pinker's conception of the Enlightenment, based in reason and science, seems to be incomplete. To bring forward information regarding human advancement and ex post facto use it as proof for the Enlightenment's value is weak; at least without discussing the philosophical relationships in detail.
Pinker gets credit for the "Blank Slate" where he addressed issues which were logically obvious, but few of his brethren dared to say, and that hasn't changed much which is a clue he now ignores when he confuses his political and ideological opinions with science. I've seen Sam Harris fall to this one as well, the idea that their analysis is a new kind of philosophy for finding the truth when its hardly so. Simply look at how he contradicted himself in this very speech, he can't dare address the issue of racial differences, even when evolution makes his position untenable, he requires creationism to be true for his utopian vision to be anything more than a reckless experiment.
You can tell he and his audience flatter themselves hinting that one side is thinking based on scientific reasoning. Yet the number of lefties who don't know what the AR in AR15 actually stands for while speaking stridently on the issue after every shooting never surprises me. I'm sure many of his audience cheered the Paris Accords, because "science", when it was revealed it wasn't actually based on any they didn't reconsider why they were so willing to be blindly led to spend hundreds of billions on faith. They didn't ask questions when the numbers were mysteriously "revised" to fit the previous agenda so they could try again.
This is why the alt right is rising btw, they are often right because they can take that extra step the Pinkers of the world dare not tread.
And this naive view of progress is built on an ever more fragile system, I'm sure it was nice for a while before Rome fell. The people are not violent because they are anesthetized. California is prime example, endless immigration, endless spending on the faith that the poor will pay for the yuppies retirements when in reality the pension system of that state is on course to disaster, never mind the rest. Democracy is not an unquestionable good so using it as a benchmark is a mistake. As the vote is expanded to every group, now to even illegals in many state as is their clear intention, the system is twisted more and more by the takers who have no investment in the system, you see this in Europe as well, they are happy to take your money, but not your values. A quick kick from a severe calamity whether economic, cultural or environmental will reveal the cracks in the system which were suppressed by prosperity, its an arrogant view to be certain of the future simply based on a few selective metrics which radically over simplify the changes in society.
Cato itself has proven this idea of scientific rationalism bunk, I watched you tweet out a twisted study minimizing radical Islamic terrorism by simply classifying everything under the sun as terrorism while shamelessly excluding 9/11 from the data set, counting incidents not deaths, the standard fake news apologist propaganda you see after every incident claiming white nationalists are responsible for more terrorism in the US than Muslims. But name me one white nationalist Orlando massacre in recent memory, never mind the rest, you can't, it should be obvious, but this is what Cato itself pushed because certain measures are required to protect the faith and by faith I don't mean Islam.
Nice presentation, but he does, understandably, look exhausted.
Great data points and thanks for bringing it up. The complete research and analysis is based on only 200 – 300 years. If it can be expanded to few thousand years ( especially older than 2000 or 3000 years), conclusions to Inventions, Industrial revolution, Health, Prosperity etc.. can be more substantial.
Thank you for your personal continued understanding, enthusiasm together with guidance to guide my trip to turning into more consciously watchful and as a consequence spiritually connected.
at 26:00 Pinker mocks comments about libertarian dystopia by presenting the rising spending of social spending. well, here is another take of it: why does the government see the need to increase it from nearly 0 to 22% on average? Because there is no need for it? Because Reagan, Thatcherites and the rest of the western world was against libertarianism? Give me a break. This graph actually proves the libertarian dystopia and its effects and at the same time demonstrates that it's pure BS if put to practice because it's a simplistic ideology, in that sense pretty similar to what rightwing nuts attribute to communism – and if a dictator would have put libertarianism to work, millions would have died in it, too.
Steven better be careful. He's straying from the accepted "progressive" script.
How about "a relic of the past?" One of my favorites.
re Pinkers views; no one can agree on what defines 'race' in humans. Most geneticists argue race is meaningless. So how can IQ scores be compared to race categories which are either arbitrary or self defined? Its irrational to do so.
Republics not democracy
Why is the US not the happiest I thought the capitalist republic was the best system devised
It's accurate to be accurate. Good and bad, who knows?, without accurate research.
lookslike einsteinfull of shitlikeeinstein
There's only two logical flaws in the entire presentation. The first, of course, is the backhanded and short-sighted dismissals of religion. Does Pinker have any comprehension regarding how solidly the Enlightenment values are derivative of Judeo-Christian culture? Or how enormously the advances of the Enlightenment have been brought by religious, not secular, men and women? The second is "liberal" democracies being the harbringer of these values. They are not liberal. Enormous periods of the Enlightnement in the graphs shown were periods of conservative government by and under conservative individuals.
Pinker has a good grasp of the data, but tends to ideologically interpret it.
inspiring
Pinker champions democracy. Democracy is tyranny of the majority. Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. I'm a voluntaryist/anarchist. Meaning, all human interactions should be voluntary. Underpinning premise of freedom of association is each individual's right to decline to associate with anyone they choose. If I did as government types do and forced strangers to give me money, would you consider me a criminal? If government services were wanted by the market they wouldn't be provided on a compulsory basis.
Can anybody delegate an authority they don't have?
Was anybody born with innate authority over anybody else?
Then how did authority nobody had get delegated to those who call themselves government?
Pinker likes strawmen. Not a lot of people alive today actually believe in a "Golden Age", or that tribal societies were edenic.
response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dch7TLX7HGg
He plots "England", should be United Kingdom since the Act of Union?
The fact that physical violence has gone down doesn't mean that people are less violent, they've just turned their violence inward in their own societies. We have gotten more civilized but human conflict will never go away.
Brilliant information, but please stop the tongue tsking, smacking sounds, Prof. Thanks (PS you may need a speech therapist to help you)
When an unconsidered person is questioned on their opinion, they frantically reach around their magazine shelf brain for any reason they can possibly use in the heat of the moment, but when Steven Pinker is questioned on his opinion, he calmly climbs up the ladder in his extensive library brain and pulls out the relevant encyclopaedia. The man is on another level.
The greatest achievement of enlightenment was reintroducing modern state as a mass terror and murder as it was during roman times (this is by the way what he shows in his book better Angels) And use of scientific means to institute this terror . Scientific method rational thinking use od data for arguments were product of medieval church!
Nevertheless despite his deep anti-catholic bias I strongly recommend his books as great compendium of data about wonderful progress
I wonder if Pinker is conscious of his anti catholic bias and is willfully omitting history Or ignorant to facts that Christianity and Roman catholic church in particular was uniquely responsible for idea of continuous progress in science For development of Universities as centers for learning and knowledge accumulation , for creating scientific method, rational thinking, use of mathematics to verify science, placing medicine as a science within university system, development of hospitals orphanages and and social work and so on.
It amazing that brilliant person like Pinker can be so ignorant about history and and so biased againt catholic church. He sound like moron which he is not but he should read Thomas Aquinas father of rational thought Or Ockham father scientific method and read about first agricultural revolution brought about monastics and concept of society duty to relieve human suffering
Nevertheless despite his deep anti-catholic bias I strongly recommend his books as great compendium of data about wonderful progress
This is good stuff, but I would be more convinced if Pinker would have spoken to what it the affect of homogenizing livestock and crops will have once the super viruses, diseases and pests evolve to get past the artificial sustainability of our mega-crops. it would have been interesting to see a graph of the diversity of species of flora and fauna of the earth, and what the reduction of diversity means for our ecology, and long term ability to feed the growing nations of people and livestock. It can't be good that we're headed towards another massive extinction of species, but he left that part out. Too bad, because that is what I am primarily concerned about. That and the development of the strength of the bacterias and viruses that are constantly evolving to overcome the protections we develop against them.
See a good recent discussion on this issue here (where science used to lengthen life is pitted against the current mass extinction we are sliding into: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAm0KHgFwTM