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My new favorite book of all time

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Re: My new favorite book of all time

#351

Post by Nomentatus »

torstenvl wrote: post #329
Nomentatus wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs, start there. In Rome, you'd have a better chance to seek justice if poor (if a citizen, and most people weren't.) But you'd have been better off decades ago as what counts as "small claims" has been totally trashed by inflation.

The most readily available state historical summary of small claims limits I could find is from CT, where the 1981 limit was $1,000 (approx. $2,623 in 2017 dollars) and is now $5,000. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2017/rpt/pdf/2017-R-0166.pdf In California, the small claims limit was set at $7,500 in 2005 (approx. $9,695 in 2017 dollars) and is now $10,000. http://www.personalinjury-attorney.com/california-small-clai... Is…

You're right, I don't live there.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#352

Post by mirimir »

ABCLAW wrote: post #350
mirimir wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, "confusing"? I'd say more like "inconvenient" for his thesis. I mean, how is having my neighbor beat the crap out of me, and hold me hostage, any more violent than some cop doing the same?

His words, not mine. I agree with you.

Yes, I should have made that clear. And I agree with your comments.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#353

Post by cvsh »

chimprich wrote: post #120
chippy wrote: post #47

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…

> One example: Torture was recently brought back in the leading liberal democracy of the world. True, but a) highly controversially b) condemned by much of the rest of the world c) only allowed outside US territory and d) claimed to be legal only due to the allegations that it was carried out on people falling outside the protections of the Geneva Convention. Compare to much of history, where torture was widespread,…

It'd be one thing if the use of torture was increasing over time across our society, or all societies.

But using "torture was recently brought back" as a data point to rebut an overall statistical decline makes no sense. It's like saying "Apple's stock price fell today, therefore people are wrong to say the economy is improving".

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#354

Post by fiblye »

hoopladler wrote: post #54
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…

>Surely the Cold War would have been a real war if not for nukes, no? I don't think the US and Russia were avoiding conflict because "the UN made it illegal." No way, no how. Russia's economy, at their peak, was 1/7th of the size of the USA's. At the end of WW2, it's unlikely they could have beaten western Europe, let alone kept the US out, who were clocking 50% of world GDP at the end of '45. Equally, the USA could…

GDP is absolutely irrelevant to warfare.

The Soviets lost to the incredibly poor country of Afghanistan. Vietnam's GDP was/is a small fraction of Russia's, yet America still lost and communism spread through the region. If war came to Western Europe again, I find it unlikely that America could've won.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#355

Post by lukeholder »

btrettel wrote: post #348
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…

I share your frustration. Sometimes I feel like one of the few people who tries to act consistently. Most people are defecting in a massive prisoner's dilemma despite complaining about how defecting is bad! The suggestion that these apparently strongly held beliefs are actually about signaling doesn't seem to entirely square with my experience. Talk is cheap. One doesn't gain much credibility with me by just claiming…

> Sometimes I feel like one of the few people who tries to act consistently

most people think they do.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#356

Post by godelmachine »

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…

And any direct war that happened after 1945, had one belligerent that did not possess nuclear weapons, who turned out to be loser. That's the reason victor decided to wage war against him, citing some puny reason for the aggression.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#357

Post by wallace_f »

None of us have lived in any other generation, and we don't know what it would be like.

Gates asks "Why do we gloss over positive news stories and fixate on the negative ones?"

I dare you to asks someone on the subway what the DNC scandal was, who Snowden is, why media doesn't report record-breaking protests around the world, what happened at the Dakota pipeline protests, why Americans lack access to affordable healthcare, etc. In my experience, less than 50% of people even know what the DNC scandal is, or who Snowden is. It's not that we're drawn to pessimism.

Civil and constitutional rights are on the decline. The world is getting richer, but psychologists know that money doesn't make us happier (in absolute terms).

It's easy to say we have the greatest society every, and the leaders of such society would be pleased with such.

It's harder to be a skeptic and a critic, but that's how progress is always made.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#358

Post by ternaryoperator »

godelmachine wrote: post #356
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…

And any direct war that happened after 1945, had one belligerent that did not possess nuclear weapons, who turned out to be loser. That's the reason victor decided to wage war against him, citing some puny reason for the aggression.

> And any direct war that happened after 1945, had one belligerent that did not possess nuclear weapons, who turned out to be loser

The Vietnam War would seem to belie your claim

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#359

Post by dmix »

rictic wrote: post #197
bryanlarsen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Pinker explicitly addresses this argument, both in Better Angels and in the free chapter of the new book linked from OP. Quote: 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, the…

As Pinker said in the video, progress is not a popular concept among academics anymore. This is the concept that underpins his book, which is glossed over in attempts to characterize it as "everything is good now" instead of "everything is getting better thanks to perpetual human progress".

Which leads to the obvious question of how can we maintain or advance this progress?

Dismissing the progress that was made also dismisses how the progress was made. And I fear many academics are not comfortable crediting the longer term ROI from industry and technology, and would rather obsess over pet political or social issues of the day and their own ideologies.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#360

Post by tim333 »

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 wish the "War is illegal" thing would have more effect on stuff like Turkey's recent attacks on Arfin. Not much seems to happen on the legal front there.
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