TEDx Talks
Contrary to the popular impression view that we are living in extraordinarily violent times, rates of violence at all scales have been in decline over the course of history. I explore how this decline could have happened despite the existence of a constant human nature.
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This is encouraging as it does show the trajection of history upward, but it's completely western focused. Every country he listed is in the global north and west. I'm watching this video conducting research on the nature of violence and the middle east/MENA region, which is left untouched. Also the cold war wasn't really zero wars, while the feared world war III did not break out, numerous bloody proxy wars did throughout the global south. A good talk, but not without some flaws and limitations.
Amazing video, thank you
The animal rights section of his presentation is an intentional obfuscation of the truth. 150 million animals slaughtered EVERY DAY as a result of the meat industry. Any statistics on that? An otherwise convincing TEDx talk rendered completely untrustworthy. Which other statistics were cherry picked or ignored to fit a certain narrative?
Love this guy, an objective view of our circumstance
this guy is fuckin lame
The sad thing is that we are living at a time when most conflict could be eliminated if only the Western democracies of the world would, together, link trade to human rights in a positive and consistent way. It is primarily the global market race-to-the-bottom that keeps exploitation, oppression and the military industrial complex, profitable.
Linking trade to human rights would make everybody better off by creating a stronger incentive toward freedom, than the current overwhelming incentive toward oppression. Oppression is what leads to conflict, and conflict leads to unstable governments by encouraging hatred and blame.
Pinker is a cool cat.
Since you put communism as ideological motive for violence you should sourly put capitalism as ideological motive for violence too mr. Stinker? Didn't you say that exploitation is the first motive for violence?
Great talk. My only critique is that in his discussion of "The Great Peace" he doesn't mention the Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghan wars…
Pinker is my fave cognitive psychologist and linguist.
Read his book:
Language, Cognition, and Human Nature
…when some country buts in into a civil war…we all know what country that usually is.
Very interesting talk. He sounds so eloquent, so well-read. It was very pleasant to listen to his lecture. From what he points out, perhaps compared to other times, it seems that there is less violence in modern times like ours. However, for the ones who still suffer violence every day, violence feels like an endless occurrence. There are conflicts he has not mentioned like in the Middle East, for example.
I understand he hasn't spent much time in the Asian or Arab countries the US has promulgated violence upon. I suspect he's simply trying to woo the Affluent as an "Intellectual neoliberal." What he really means is that it will be better for the elites who are able to survive the Anthropocene disaster we're facing (billions dying). Also, if they aren't able to survive, there also will be no wars. He basically ignores a massive amount of key knowledge we now have about systems theory and human biological behavior.
За коммунизм, конечно, в рот насрать автору не мешает, а так очень интересно)
Thank you 🙏
I once saw Pinker throat chop a guy in the same time it takes you to say, "in your face Charles Bronson".
I would like to see the data in regards to native american, indigenous people since the 1800's we seem to be ignored or silenced as an actual genocide..
This guy isn't seeing the big picture. We are far more violent today than cavemen ever were. He is only seeing the obvious physical violence in wars etc. However there is violence behind almost all diseases. Indeed the literature shows that in most cases, if not all cases, there is a fight or flight response. Why? Because behind disease there is underhanded foul game play and RELATED, INHUMANE people with some agenda.
More than 16 million people die every year world wide from cardiovascular diseases, 8 million die of cancer. And so on. And these are the deaths. There is also to consider the years of suffering in many diseases. This is due to violence but it entails a concealed threat and mentally presented malicious, hateful ideas aimed to have the person react as to bring into being adverse bodily reactivity.
We are thousands of times more violent today than in the old days. But of course it is not all people. There are humane and there are inhumane. The inhumane subculture, who I estimate amount to around 1.5 billion world wide are waging a quiet war against the humane. We need to wake up soon.
Very interesting and orderly talk
Violence is decreasing…and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise
His language is imprecise:
The State imposes it’s monopoly to INITIATE violence against peaceful people.
Individuals do have the right to self-defense, but only members of the State can legally initiate violence —or the threat of it— to force you to do as they command, ex: pay taxes and to go to war.
Watching this as Russia invades Ukraine 😢
Okay, let us, for a second, assume that the violence per capita has decreased, but it is not as if the inherent ability for violence and madness has decreased in an individual. Now, more people are raised to believe violence to be a vice, more people do not want to do violence, and most importantly because of policing, most people cannot indulge in it.
But the taste for violence and madness inherent in human psyche is still there and is always in wait for the right moment to break out. The austrian painter, uncle stalin, grandpa mao, rawanda, congo, pol pot, iraq war, vietnam war, hiroshima, nagasaki, bombing of tokyo, dresdon, korean war, libyan civil war, ukraine, hundreds of civil wars????
Having stringent policing and threats of law, school education are just holding the lid, and we always have to hold the lid. There is always a boil under the lid. Never assume the boil to be absent if you don't want to be surprised.
European revisionist history.
His research is skewed by his ideology.
19:48
This obviously predates the Russian/ Ukraine war 😢
Awesome talk… now with Russia in Ukraine and China looking at Taiwan, I wonder how this would update his view. I hope these are small rises in a continual trend toward total peace.
The big problem I see with this is that is kinda throws scale out the window. Because most of his graphs are number of xyz per 100,000 people the results get heavily skewed to the past. While his data isn't outright wrong, is 1 murder in group of 100 really the same amount of violence as 1 million murders in a group of 100 million?
Chicago🤪
Islam?