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My new favorite book of all time

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Re: My new favorite book of all time

#311

Post by yters »

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…

Depends how you define violence. If you define it as ending of innocent human life, then violence has skyrocketed astronomically around the globe since the advent of legalized abortion.

If you instead say our violence has become less messy and more controlled, then that seems true. But then Auschwitz would meet this definition. The gas chambers were invented because gunning civilians down en mass was considered too "barbaric".

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#312

Post by CWuestefeld »

intrasight wrote: post #110
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…

I think the fact that liberal democracies don't go to war was the main reason - at least amongst western democracies. And even among non liberal democracies (eg China and Russia) as long as there is enough wealth and quality of lifestyle at risk amongst the ruling elite, there's not going to be much appetite for war.

Or more to the point, countries that trade together don't go to war against each other. The surest way to keep the peace is to be mutually dependent.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#313

Post by intelhearts »

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #92

This article/video explains why so many people have completely lost faith in our technocratic elite. The idea that "You’re 37 times less likely to be killed by a bolt of lightning than you were at the turn of the century" makes a large difference in the happiness of people is ridiculous. Why are people pessimistic about the future? Maybe its because the rates of addiction (including to smart phones and other screens)…

We can be more optimistic once the rich are destroyed

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#314

Post by rotrux »

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…

@ABCLAW, you make a very good argument that on a micro-scale we have an unprecedented crisis on our hands. However that lack of precedent comes from a volumetric perspective of the issue. I believe you're failing to take into account a per-capita perspective vs the total-volume-of-humans perspective.

There have never been this many humans on the planet before today. To try and be more concise: Is the per-capita decrease in violent-crime a better or worse measure of its reduction than the overall volume of violent-crime? I believe the former is, you appear to believe the latter is.

If it's the latter, I'm right there with you. More people ==> more crime ==> more fringe-cases ==> more of a burden on defense-attourneys in the US, unless employment growth in that sector is keeping pace with population-growth, minus whatever the influence of the PER-CAPITA decrease in violent crime is.

I want to contest two points you've made:

> "We can pretend things are getting better..."

- violent crime per-capita IS decreasing...that's just a statistical fact unless there's a problem in the way data has been collected. The overwhelming consensus is that easier access to educational materials (think wikipedia) is the big causal factor there.

This next one isn't related to any of this^, but I still disagree, and pretty strongly:

> "Violence is not a first order phenomenon at social scale"

- By "not first order" I'm assuming you're saying violence is an emergent property of human interaction(if I'm misunderstanding you, please correct me.) However, I can be violent to myself or say...animals without anyone else around. By your definition, A delusional autocrat who starts a war out of paranoia of something fictitious (like...idk...ghosts) isn't being violent.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#315

Post by [deleted] »

ABCLAW wrote: post #310
TulliusCicero wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Entirely. The burden is placed upon the objector to have even a passing argument against the initially held position, otherwise you can raise infinite substance-less objections against an otherwise strong point and 'win'. This tactic is used in court and in point-based debate systems to game the system (in the first to drive up expenses, and in the second to score uncontested points). The bar doesn't need to be high,…

[deleted]

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#316

Post by maxsilver »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #299
maxsilver wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 trans…

I'm referring to the hyper-libertarian "gentrification is the solution to gentrification", "trickle down economics is the only affordable housing", "governments should be for-profit corporations" type philosophy that folks working in that space typically have (at least, in the US).

A lot of these people will say things like "what a shame that poor neighborhoods always lose their affordable housing and economically diverse populations". And then they go to work everyday for architects or property developers or city hall or construction companies, and explicitly target 'undervalued' poor neighborhoods for 'investment' to intentionally drive the property values up, despite knowing that those actions will directly displace many/most of the existing residents due to price.

It's one modern day version of saying "such a shame that smoking kills" while working for Phillip Morris. Or saying "digital advertising is so intrusive, annoying, and invasive" while working for Google.

-----

And while this is just one of many different examples of that problem -- the contraction itself is what really bugs me. People who claim "X is such a bad problem, we should fix X" while going to work every day to make X worse.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#317

Post by ust »

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…

I'm sorry, but your comment about Yugoslavia is extremely simplistic, if not outright wrong. While ethnic tensions certainly played a large role, the causes for the war were numerous, and also include outside influences (end of Cold War, geopolitical situation, etc.). BTW, Tito was dead for 11 years before the war started, and while he certainly was a dictator, albeit somewhat more lenient than other communist dictators, describing him as a "violent warlord" is a mischaracterization.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#318

Post by diego_moita »

yters wrote: post #311
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…

Depends how you define violence. If you define it as ending of innocent human life, then violence has skyrocketed astronomically around the globe since the advent of legalized abortion. If you instead say our violence has become less messy and more controlled, then that seems true. But then Auschwitz would meet this definition. The gas chambers were invented because gunning civilians down en mass was considered too "…

> violence has skyrocketed astronomically [...] since the advent of legalized abortion.

[citation needed]

> The gas chambers were invented because gunning civilians down en mass was considered too "barbaric".

[citation needed]

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#319

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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