191–200 of 421 posts
Good on Bill Gates to not just choose a feel-good book for sake of "virtue signaling", but a book with real substance in it. (The fact that this book happens to be optimistic is incidental)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Dickens was the most popular entertainer of his time. Shakespeare was widely popular as well. Both are considered too difficult for most audiences now days. Difficult largely because of the relatively rapid rate of drift in English idiom (which is a unique feature of English); but less popular largely not because of difficulty but drift in taste for entertainment media which is more about shifting fashion than any…
I think you are disregarding the degradation of the human attention span that modern media has brought to our minds. If you really think there is no difference in capacity between the minds of that time and now, just google "technology and attention span" and spend some time with the results. If you can manage to hold your attention long enough to read through them :) I know hardly anyone anymore who can sit on a cou…
On the other hand, plenty of people will spend a weekend on the new Harry Potter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why act like the world isn't getting better if it actually is?
It is getting better for some people by some measures, and worse for others by other measures. What Pinker and Gates are attempting to impose is a tyranny of faux rationality--"an 800 pg book with sources up the wazoo say that the world is getting better, all these whiny poor folk must just be delusional".
That is a pretty extreme reading of what Pinker and Gates are saying. I don't think they are saying that at all.
" War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. But before the creation of the United Nations in 1945, no institution had the power to stop countries from going to war with each other. Although there have been some exceptions, the threat of international sanctions and intervention has proven to be an effective deterrent to wars between nations." I would argue that something else that happened in 1945 has been a much bigge…
> "War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. Yet that one rule is broken multiple times a year by multiple nations in multiple regions on earth.
When a war happens we ask ourselves why, and the international community works to try to prevent it the next time. That would be truly alien to a world leader even a couple centuries ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all Europeans, just Germans.
It was what stopped the British led allied bombing which had escalated out of the Blitz. Dresden was not a military target and its destruction killed so many civilians that they stopped night time bombing raids.
Bigger raids happened after Dresden as well and Harris gave his opinion: “I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier.” Luckily he alone didn’t make describe I guess.
The British philosopher John Gray is a good counterpart to Pinker's idea of progress. He focuses on the myths of progress, civilisation and freedom. This is his response to Pinker: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-stev... "A new orthodoxy, led by Pinker, holds that war and violence in the developed world are declining. The stats are misleading, argues Gray – and the idea of moral progress is wi…
"He encourages us to assume that progress is fragile, is not automatically improving and that we need to be active in defending our freedoms, our progress and the things we take for granted." But would Pinker or Bill Gates disagree with that statement? I don't think so. Bill Gates is devoting his fortune to doing so, and is doing so very effectively. And even if Pinker is wrong, I believe his message is much more lik…
So you’re saying that we can all sit back and relax, that violence will just take care of itself.
Illogical, Captain. If you see that a pile of laundry has gone down, it does not mean the clothes washed themselves; it means someone washed the clothes. If a type of violence has gone down, then some change in the social, cultural, or material milieu has caused it to go down. If the conditions persist, violence could remain low or decline even further; if they don’t, it won’t. That makes it important to find out what the causes are, so we can try to intensify them and apply them more widely to ensure that the decline of violence continues.
" War is illegal. This idea seems obvious. But before the creation of the United Nations in 1945, no institution had the power to stop countries from going to war with each other. Although there have been some exceptions, the threat of international sanctions and intervention has proven to be an effective deterrent to wars between nations." I would argue that something else that happened in 1945 has been a much bigge…
I'm also reminded of the flavor of the Olympic Games during the Cold War as almost a "proxy war" between the Soviets and the U.S.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Dickens was the most popular entertainer of his time. Shakespeare was widely popular as well. Both are considered too difficult for most audiences now days. Difficult largely because of the relatively rapid rate of drift in English idiom (which is a unique feature of English); but less popular largely not because of difficulty but drift in taste for entertainment media which is more about shifting fashion than any…
I think you are disregarding the degradation of the human attention span that modern media has brought to our minds. If you really think there is no difference in capacity between the minds of that time and now, just google "technology and attention span" and spend some time with the results. If you can manage to hold your attention long enough to read through them :) I know hardly anyone anymore who can sit on a cou…
I definitely don't align with this sentiment, sounds more like who you are surrounding yourself with. Many of my friends and coworkers are avid readers, and books are a common discussion topic.
There is also a flip side to how technology has affected our attention span. Consider how many people now "read" while driving, working out, doing chores. Yes we may crave more stimulation, but it means while doing laundry or dishes we are going to seek out audiobooks and podcasts. I read more than ever now that I can get just about any book instantly, and read on the go
The British philosopher John Gray is a good counterpart to Pinker's idea of progress. He focuses on the myths of progress, civilisation and freedom. This is his response to Pinker: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-stev... "A new orthodoxy, led by Pinker, holds that war and violence in the developed world are declining. The stats are misleading, argues Gray – and the idea of moral progress is wi…