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Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

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Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#21

Post by haberman »

Analemma_ wrote: post #3

The whole "better angels of our nature" 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 incenti…

> The whole "better angels of our nature" optimism thing kind of seems like sticking your head in the sand to me.

I think it's a necessary counterbalance to a 24 hour news cycle that brings the most violent and strife-filled events into constant focus. It is easy to get the impression that the world is worse than its ever been. That's why it's important to take a step back and see a different perspective that accurately reflects how the world today compares to the past -- a past which we as humans are biased towards romanticizing anyway.

> 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't see many people or forces aligned toward making it better.

That is one perspective that may or may not manifest into measurable "worseness" in the future. Some people have a different perspective, and could point to things like: https://givingpledge.org/

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#22

Post by stcredzero »

Analemma_ wrote: post #18
stcredzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "better angels of our nature" optimism thing kind of seems like sticking your head in the sand to me. Any state that wants to stick around had better be good at defending itself and its interests. If you're so "enlightened" that you've forgotten how to resolve conflicts in a non-ritualized/systematized way, then someone is going to come along and We can't really rely anymore on the "End of History" theory t…

I'm reading your comment and having trouble figuring out exactly where we disagree. > Any state that wants to stick around had better be good at defending itself and its interests. I agree? I'm not sure where in my comment you got the opposite impression, nor why it seems relevant to my argument. > Was that ever a theory, or was it really just something that people wanted to believe because it sounds hopeful and nice…

I'm reading your comment and having trouble figuring out exactly where we disagree.

Why do you think we disagree?

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#23

Post by Analemma_ »

stcredzero wrote: post #22
Analemma_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading your comment and having trouble figuring out exactly where we disagree. > Any state that wants to stick around had better be good at defending itself and its interests. I agree? I'm not sure where in my comment you got the opposite impression, nor why it seems relevant to my argument. > Was that ever a theory, or was it really just something that people wanted to believe because it sounds hopeful and nice…

I'm reading your comment and having trouble figuring out exactly where we disagree. Why do you think we disagree?

Heh, I guess I just inferred that from the tone of your comment, but maybe you were irked by the same implications I was and was responding testily to them, not me. Or maybe I just misread you entirely. Mea culpa :)

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#24

Post by euyyn »

jhbadger wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward) There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinio…

The problem is what time frame we are talking about. Yes, society looks nice now if you compare it to 200 years ago. But that's not relevant. The fact is by a lot of measurements (not limited to crime) the 1990s was the best decade ever (at least in the West). The question is how we can get back to that.

By which measurements? And why limit the window to the West?

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#25

Post by edblarney »

onion2k wrote: post #5
Analemma_ wrote: post #3

The whole "better angels of our nature" 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 incenti…

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward) There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinio…

"There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society"

Yes, there is.

Imagine a society without justice/police in which people must fend for themselves. It would quickly deteriorate to the point wherein there would be a fair bit of violence.

Imagine you - the same person you are now - in that situation.

It would be a completely different dynamic of 'violence' and represent a completely different situation - and yet it could very well have little or nothing to do with our moral position (i.e. 'better angels').

Second - I think that 'war' is a completely different kind of violence than regular violent crime.

One could argue that the only thing that has made modern countries less apt for war is MAD, i.e. the fact that there's no real possibility for gain or winning outcomes, with nuclear weapons, the borders are largely frozen. Point being: a weapon, of all things, could have such geostrategic importance that it quashes violence, irrespective of anything else ('better angels') etc..

"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. "

This is also false.

From 1960 to 1992 crime in the Western world grew by 800%.

That's almost a 50 year period out of 200 and is not 'cherry picking'.

Violent crime today is still about 600% greater than it was in 1950.

It's a paradox few want to face: that the 'liberation' of the 1960's was also coincident with a massive increase in crime, which peaked in 1992 and has come down somewhat, but still quite high compared to the 1950's.

Anyhow - I don't think it makes any sense to look at violence outside the big contextual things.

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#26

Post by edblarney »

jhbadger wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward) There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinio…

The problem is what time frame we are talking about. Yes, society looks nice now if you compare it to 200 years ago. But that's not relevant. The fact is by a lot of measurements (not limited to crime) the 1990s was the best decade ever (at least in the West). The question is how we can get back to that.

No - for violent crime at least, the 1950's was the 'low point' - the 1990's were actually a high point.

Violent crime in 1992 was about 800% higher than in the 1950's at least in America.

It's come down a little, but crime is still about 600% greater than in the 1950's.

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#27

Post by onion2k »

Analemma_ wrote: post #9
onion2k wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward) There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinio…

> It's based on information. As such, your opinion is objectively wrong. Hang on, I'm not making the claim you think I'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. That is what I am disputing,…

We'll always be able to say "But what if things get worse again?!" just as we'll always be able to say "What if things carry on getting better?". Any answer to the question is useless. We should guard against doing things to make the world worse, obviously, but I don't see much value in pessimism, especially if it requires ignoring a long term trend.

That said, speculation about the future beyond a few years away is largely pointless anyway. We get things wrong far more that we get things right, and when we are right it's mostly because we were either lucky, we've only looked at the predictions we want to look at and ignored the wrong ones, or we were so vague we couldn't have been wrong. Predicting the future is hard.

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#28

Post by pierre_d528 »

cossatot wrote: post #17
pierre_d528 wrote: post #6

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violence.pdf Pinker does not know how to count. What is this doing here?

I don't think that this paper is the nail in the coffin that NNT or his groupies present it as. There are a lot of arbitrary transformations in the data that, while acceptable and in many cases enlightening, are by no means the only way of analyzing it. For example, having a bounded function between the population min and max and then a dual function that goes to infinity may help, but it's not immediatly obvious why…

Mr. cossatot,

Would you flesh out your ideas and submit them to Mr. Taleb?

You proving Mr. Taleb wrong would be quite an achievement and probably an instructive one.

If you cannot, please keep unjustified opinions to yourself.

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#29

Post by hga »

onion2k wrote: post #5
Analemma_ wrote: post #3

The whole "better angels of our nature" 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 incenti…

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward) There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinio…

Those measurements aren't as accurate as you might think. E.g. many local police forces in the US are under pressure to under report crimes of all sorts, and/or too busy to record petty crimes that are unlikely to be closed, and this can even extend to the hardest of them all to do that, murder. E.g. Chicago as of late redefining boundaries so murders that happen in places that used to be counted aren't any more (like in the highway to the airport as I recall).

Or, of course, it can be done at the medical examiner level, as I've heard in one case in the U.K. Fortunately for both those countries, we've got independent and apparently uncorrupted victimization surveys as a double check against what the authorities report.

And I should note that if you go beyond the US to e.g. the U.K., you won't find such a copacetic result, for a steady reduction in interpersonal violence rates since the 13th Century has been reversed in just half a century....

Re: Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence

#30

Post by hga »

edblarney wrote: post #25
onion2k wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we should also carefully note whether we currently appear to be on an upward or downward trajectory (IMO, downward) There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society - it can be, and is, something that we can measure. You don't need an opinion about it. There's nothing subjective to think about and decide on. It's based on information. As such, your opinio…

"There's no interpretative reasoning required when you're looking at a graph of the level of violence in society" Yes, there is. Imagine a society without justice/police in which people must fend for themselves. It would quickly deteriorate to the point wherein there would be a fair bit of violence. Imagine you - the same person you are now - in that situation. It would be a completely different dynamic of 'violence'…

While I generally agree with your points, the statement "* i.e. the fact that there's no real possibility for gain or winning outcomes, with nuclear weapons*" assumes facts that are simply not available.

Some day, nuclear weapons will again be used in anger, and there most certainly will be survivors (it's actually not very hard to survive one unless and until you run out of food), and who knows what they'll conclude about "winning" vs. losing outcomes.

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