My new favorite book of all time • Hacker News Board

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#291

Post by ryanwaggoner » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:44 PM UTC

zaksoup wrote: post #232

ABCLAW wrote: post #213

I've read a lot of the discussions regarding Pinker's work in both books (but particularly his position in Better Angels), and I've always found his position to be slightly disconcerting. Pinker attempts to make a specific argument, that violence has decreased over time. Violence is not a first order phenomenon at a social scale - it's presence is predicated upon the existence of other key criteria, largely the exist…

I work on criminal justice reform and this is SO true. I cringe every time I hear these kinds of stats being brandished without context as evidence of our society 'working'. Ben Thompson is a particularly bad example of this, but it certainly seems like it's the folks 'winning' the conflicts that love to cite 'reduced conflict'.

I rarely here them expressed as examples of society "working", but rather as examples of society progressing. And like most things, progress is rarely equally distributed, but that doesn't mean it's not being made overall.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#292

Post by shamino » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #278

resu_nimda wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have yet to provide even a hint of a demonstration of how the have-nots have it worse than before. It should be pretty simple, just one example of backward progress that you think is more relevant than reduction of violence. Your second paragraph is pure logical fallacy and fully uncompelling.

Yugoslavia under Tito is a great example of a cauldron of economic and sectarian violence being temporarily held in check by a violent warlord. Given none of those issues actually got solved during his time, the complete disintegration of his country which followed his death is a great example of actual conflict not being accurately tracked by violence figures. Feel free to check out the development figures for the b…

"The issue is that violence is a poor metric for progress." Just to echo the commenter, I don't think Pinker is stating that humans are progressing in general - he is just stating that violence is decreasing. I also agree this is a measurable metric, that Pinker does well to argue for.

If he claims things "are getting better", I think he says that "violence is decreasing", where "violence" is a measure of worseness.

If we want to talk about progress, though, we would have to define what progress really means. Will Durant (from "The Lessons of History") says progress is more like the increasing ability of mankind to control his environment. If so, I would think there is some evidence for that.

In terms of social injustice, Will Durant also makes an argument that there will always be this. Power is always concentrated to the few (that's just how it works in order to have organization), and those not in power will always have some level of injustice. The amount of people in power and their motives can change depending on the era/civilization/society.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#293

Post by koverda » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #160

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel like Homo Deus compares to Sapiens w.r.t. being hand wavy and having a solid grasp on what the potential futures are that we are facing?

Not OP, but as a reader of both Sapiens and Homo Deus, I feel like the latter is a bit of fluff already covered by the end of Sapiens. Not a bad book, but more baseless theorizing while Sapiens was a really rich examination of history where he author definitely applied a lifetime of study and research.

I'm surprised that you would describe it as baseless, because the theories he presents are built upon the lifetime of study & research of the examination of human history and motivations.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#294

Post by GeorgeTirebiter » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

kgabis wrote: post #230

jacquesm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dresden firebombing is very well known outside of Germany. And if you've seen the 'before' and 'after' pictures of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden you won't be surprised that people consider them to be on the same scale.

Bombing of Dresden is well known, of course, but it doesn't compare to a single bomb that can level cities when it comes to deterring your enemy. I'm not trying to diminish the scale of destruction in Dresden, but there are many cities other than it that got destroyed in similar, "conventional" way (like Warsaw, Breslau or Tokyo), so I don't see why it should be treated in a special way.

Robert McNamara points out that the firebombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 civilians. In "The Fog of War" he also says that if the Allies had lost, he and Curtis "Bombs Away!" LeMay would have been treated as War Criminals, because they were.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#295

Post by maxsilver » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #213

I've read a lot of the discussions regarding Pinker's work in both books (but particularly his position in Better Angels), and I've always found his position to be slightly disconcerting. Pinker attempts to make a specific argument, that violence has decreased over time. Violence is not a first order phenomenon at a social scale - it's presence is predicated upon the existence of other key criteria, largely the exist…

> On the micro-scale, in law we've been faced with a tremendous crisis - that of Access to Justice. The response of most legal institutions has been to decry the issue, then do nothing substantive to solve it.

This is a personal frustration of mine, and it happens in nearly every field. "Loudly talk about how terrible problem X is" and then go back to work everyday making X worse.

Software Developers decry the immense complexity of software, and then walk into work and load up five package managers on top of one another and npm install left-pad or whatever. Urbanists / Urban Planners decry the cost of housing and lack of transit, then go to work everyday and rapidly increase the cost of housing and eliminate transportation access. Education that used to cost $4k/yr now costs $40k/yr. Healthcare costs are rising exponentially and life expectancy is dropping. People complain about corrupt politicians doing bad things, and then go and vote for the corrupt person with the party affiliation of their choice.

"Things may be getting better" in the most general sense or at the most base levels. I don't dispute that. But 100% solved (or mostly solved) problems are becoming rapidly unsolved at a scary rate, and it's affecting a lot of regular people in bad ways.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#296

Post by JustAnotherPat » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

trophycase wrote: post #282

ABCLAW wrote: post #213

I've read a lot of the discussions regarding Pinker's work in both books (but particularly his position in Better Angels), and I've always found his position to be slightly disconcerting. Pinker attempts to make a specific argument, that violence has decreased over time. Violence is not a first order phenomenon at a social scale - it's presence is predicated upon the existence of other key criteria, largely the exist…

Violence has decreased because the systems of control have improved exponentially.

Yes, just throw every potential violent person in jail/prison.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#297

Post by GeorgeTirebiter » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:52 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #225

topleveldomain wrote: post #17

" 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…

Another factor making war less likely is the mass media. Remember how the Vietnam War was "the first television war"? Actually seeing what happens in war turns peoples' stomachs, and the propaganda of war's "glories" is revealed for what it is.

Which is why the Afghan and Iraq wars never made it to TV in the same way. Journalism was strangled in scope to conform to commanders' wants; else, no access.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#298

Post by GeorgeTirebiter » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #115

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that the act of sorting, inserting, removing, and putting away clothing is not very labor intensive. Having to manually wash each article of clothing takes actual effort, which can be quite tiring. It’s not easy to engage in other pursuits when one is tired out from physical labor. One could argue that the savings in exertion even outweigh the savings in time.

Still, a robot that would remove the remaining hassle of dealing with clothing would be fantastic!

I think societies should embraced Naturism. It solves so many problems, certainly this one.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#299

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 10:59 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #295

ABCLAW wrote: post #213

I've read a lot of the discussions regarding Pinker's work in both books (but particularly his position in Better Angels), and I've always found his position to be slightly disconcerting. Pinker attempts to make a specific argument, that violence has decreased over time. Violence is not a first order phenomenon at a social scale - it's presence is predicated upon the existence of other key criteria, largely the exist…

> On the micro-scale, in law we've been faced with a tremendous crisis - that of Access to Justice. The response of most legal institutions has been to decry the issue, then do nothing substantive to solve it. This is a personal frustration of mine, and it happens in nearly every field. "Loudly talk about how terrible problem X is" and then go back to work everyday making X worse. Software Developers decry the immens…

> Urbanists / Urban Planners decry the cost of housing and lack of transit, then go to work everyday and rapidly increase the cost of housing and eliminate transportation access.

I'm not following here. Lack of urbanism in American cities seems largely the result of various government decisions, especially at the local level. I'm guessing those urbanists and urban planners are voting for politicians friendly to transit and walking and housing supply (or at least more friendly than the opposition), so what exactly are you blaming them for?

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#300

Post by TulliusCicero » Mon, Jan 29, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #289

torstenvl wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time when "normal people" had better access to justice - the fact that you even need to ask this question should cause... ...you to realize that your propositions are not accepted uncritically and you should support them with evidence.

This seems so open ended so as to be fruitless - We aren't going to peruse 300 page UNDP or 50 page CBA methodological reports to define the issue, then jump into the data sets themselves on this forum. But they exist, and they're easy to search for if you want to satisfy yourself. This just isn't the place, nor is that the point of the assertion. If you have a particular observation or set of data which contradicts…

Are you serious? If you're making the assertion here, it's on you to support it. Don't try to put the burden on others to disprove something you've shown zero evidence for, that's ridiculous.