Steven Pinker and the Failure of New Optimism ft. We’re in Hell

45 thoughts on “Steven Pinker and the Failure of New Optimism ft. We’re in Hell”

1. I'd like to see graphs when he speaks.

2. Thanks. Excellent.

3. Ah this feel well crap masking as scienctist called new optimism. Makes sense.

4. Pinker is a fraud, a charlatan, and buddy buddy with Jeffrey Epstein. Watch the video “Steven Pinker and the Failure of New Optimism” this dude has to lie to make his points. Shame on you for platforming this tool

5. Blocking this channel for platforming a fraud

6. All technocrats think we’re fine because this is the system they envision- a faux meritocracy that reassures their righteousness and brilliance at the expense of the poors who haven’t earned their agency yet (and never will).

7. This is like saying I've been living better since I quit working. I simply live off borrowing money and ignore that when I run out of credit with the banks, it will be time to pay it all back with interest.

   In the same way, civilization has been living high by borrowing against the future, running up a huge debt that future generations will have to pay back. Some of us alive today are already starting to experience the payback.

8. Im thinking of the middle " pink" er finger…a shallow , lazy, comfortable , rich , insular individual…who never looked out the window, or watched the destruction of the planet in real time….declaring …we are ALL better off…Pinker…you're a juvenile

9. Great video. Thank you for always citing sources and including texts instead of just reciting them.

10. Why halfway through the video did you get an absolutely deranged guy to do a segment? I disagree with you _significantly_, but you are at least reasonable and I can listen to you easily. This guy is clearly insane. Video-ruining.

11. It is funny how Pinker age of enlightenment was the era of slavery and the conquest of Africa by Europeans. Today we have a genocide in Gaza and a war in Ukraine and a war in Sudan. and more on the way. Strange "better".

12. Not shocked Bill Gates would love it, how many experiments he has going on in Africa? Building toilets for African schools while the libraries and IT resources are empty.

13. Sowell your time will come, and it did come

14. The Joe Biden administration would have been wise to watch this video… especially that bit about inflation measures understating impact on the poor

15. The Joe Biden administration would have been wise to watch this video… especially that bit about inflation measures understating impact on the poor

16. Maybe he's living in The matrix and he pops out every once in awhile to interact with the rest of us?

17. Pinker: not an anthropologist, not an historian, not an economist. But a friend of Jeffrey Epstein (he'll probably sue me for mentioning that), and a publicity hound and poodle to the oligarchs of America. Also horribly wrong on the subject of language acquisition and literacy, although that is only my opinion.

18. 3:43 This is on par with your average prageru graph

19. How does it look actually?

20. Awesome video, homie

21. But isn’t increasing the number of people in the world itself impressive .. ie it is still an achievement for the world to be able to sustain 8 billion people rather than 1 billion as existed in 1900 even if the living standards are no higher (which they anyway are)? This is an even greater achievement since the population has been growing exponentially rather than linearly …

22. Humans beings are mostly OK. But they are easily programmable. And with the advent of psychopaths, these vanilla brains collectively get hacked into nasty pieces of shit.

23. Love this. A simple truth is – if they say your life is getting better, but it doesnt feel like it, and you are getting poorer, then someones bs-ing, and its probably not you.

24. using a GDP graph featuring several years where GDP was not measured because it hadn't been invented yet. NICE!

25. Hans Rosling's work was about how people were wrong. After his death, his son gave a speech in his place and told how angry he would get when in meetings at the World Bank the people didn't know the correct statistics. He wasn't like that in the BBC video because the audience was not of specialists. Isaiah Berlin says that comparisons like that are meaningless because it's impossible to put oneself in the place of a Middle Age person – even if we knew everything there was to know about the Middle Ages. (that's available on the Philosophy Overdose channel – the last interview of Isaia Berlin).

26. Excellent conclusion. I myself use Reinhold Neibuhr's term pessimistic optimist.

27. 39:42. Not for someone making 2 $ a day but to prevent the proverbial broke liberal arts college student or recent grad from radicalizing and turn their rage inward instead of outward at their society.

28. 24:50 As if it weren't hard enough to take Pinker seriously, we chooses that fecking tie, and as if it weren't distracting enough, it peeks out from under his jacket 💀

29. In the first couple of minutes for the video, he says, "Yah man, I'm not going to read your book", referring to Pinker's Enlightenment Now. That is a very disingenuous way to start a video in which he is critiquing that book. The video is focused on economics, which is a small part of the book.

30. Finally, I’ve found a gem.

31. AYYY ROBERT SAPOLSKY MENTIONED BIOLOGY GANG RISE UP!!!!!

32. Who would have thought that reality is more complicated than making 75 graphs and saying „look, the world is good O:“?

33. Pinker has repeatedly denied accusations of optimism.

34. thanks for these videos, man.

35. Just like a pessimist to take optimism and refuse to be inspired. Leftisis never fail to embrace lunacy

36. Yes. Quality of life and "production" do not correlate. I would rather live with an Ohio Valley tribe than a London tenement in 1730.

37. Markets ensure that resources are allocated most efficiently to where they are needed. Surely private equity will improve healthcare operation.

38. China absolutely needs to be excluded from an argument defending neo-liberal economic policy. I think eventually China will become a case study of how to manage a fairer more equitable society. Early days though.

39. Mehdi Hassan still the best interviewer in the modern era.

40. he's in the epstein files

41. As someone who enjoys Pinker’s writing and enjoyed reading Enlightenment Now
    because it made me feel less shit about the world and our ability to improve it, I have to say I truly enjoyed being exposed to these criticisms.

42. Pinker was friends with Epstein. Of course he advocates for the wonders of capitalism

43. Plus live births, world life expectancy, people with electricity, water inside, toilets are all off the charts. Due to the blessing of capitalism. The guy interviewing him is a total whack job. No one listens to him anymore.. To libearls, people HAVE to be poverty to give them someone to virtue signal with. They spend their lives showing how virtuous they are by "heliping poor people," uninsured people. By every point Just google how many people got electiricity in the last 10 years. And food, healthcare. Where is Chiner?

44. Older people, especially Britsih are way more valuable. Refugees? We need to do that to show how virtuous we are? That is what is bringing down the Democratic party. The US has become ridiculously generous. We feed billions daily into porpping people up who can't support themselves. We should make sure they have skills, English and aren't' on Government Assisstance for more than 18 months. If they aren't self supporing they have to go. You would see way more working, happy people. Giving them money forever creates bad people, and we can't afford it and don't have to do it. You are on target with liberals thinking you should redistibute wealth. In the market we call this as "selling your winners and feeding money to your losers." Dems are enabling parents who are paying full boat for their 35 year old kid who smokes pot and doesn't needt to work. When he dos have to he will. Of course it's the same as with people. Dems are the ones running around telling immigrants and black people that they can't do anything on their own. It is death to a sense of purpose and accomplishment.

45. Who else here after Pinker confirmed an Epstine affiliate?

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