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My new favorite book of all time

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Re: My new favorite book of all time

#181

Post by Nomentatus »

8ytecoder wrote: post #112
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…

The author covers that. (More details and argument for why he thinks that is in his book) https://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-ab... The explanation for the decline of violence in the second half of the 20th century is obvious: The bomb. The theory of the Nuclear Peace is evaluated in chapter 5, pp. 268–278. I think it’s unlikely. World War II proved that conventional warfare was already unthinka…

In the past, such small-power wars generally began once the (at least failsafe) support of a larger power was obtained. This always had the risk that the conflict might escalating to a first-power war (such as the first Punic War which was sparked by a tiny-power conflict.) Nowadays, the downside of such escalation is obviously even sharper.

The U.S. was never going to chose between Spain and Canada in advance of actual fighting (or Canada and France re similar issues), because the larger nuclear-fueled conflict with Russia made dumping allies overboard foolish; whoever began shooting would have lost. I would argue that the nuclear standoff trickles down.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#182

Post by sooheon »

NoGravitas wrote: post #178
mcguire wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Pax Americana". That term isn't right, since there are a few other countries involved, but it brings to mind the right associations.

If you interpret "the UN" in this context as "the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council", it's pretty much the same thing as you're saying.

Yes, but being explicit and acknowledging the concentration of power is better than saying pithily "war is illegal", as if it were shoplifting or loitering.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#183

Post by ThomPete »

While I think all this might be true and I am definitely going to read the book, it's also true that humans on average have one testicle. In other words, global statistics aren't actually looking at more local phenomena.

What I really would love to see is it broken down into more detail with regards to geography. I don't think it's evenly spread and I do believe that there are some fundamental problems in the west because of globalization namely being that the cost of living is going up but not everyone is making more.

Anyway, interesting stuff, can't wait to get my fingers in the book.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#184

Post by Diederich »

craftyguy wrote: post #42
Diederich wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an effective deterrent to wars between nations Is this false? The last time I looked, the percentage of the human population afflicted by war has been shrinking.

My point is that war is not "illegal", and the current "deterrent" has done nothing to deter proxy wars in places like (as recent examples) Syria and Yemen. It has also done nothing to deter Russia's invasion of Crimea, the US's boondoggle in Iraq and Afghanistan (nor the extremely vague 'war on terror' that enables the US to arbitrarily attack anyone it perceives as a 'terrorist'). The number of folks experiencing w…

The wording could have been better, I agree. There are, no doubt, a whole constellation of reasons that war less of a thing.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#185

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #150
TeMPOraL wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot depends on your viewpoint. What you call "unprecedented levels of inequality" is, at the same time, unprecedented rise in quality of life for pretty much everyone - yes, for some people the improvement was greater than for others, but it's still a big improvement for everyone. (I don't want to dismiss this issue, but reading about it, sometimes it sounds to me like a case of pretty much the most pathetic human…

> A lot depends on your viewpoint. What you call "unprecedented levels of inequality" is, at the same time, unprecedented rise in quality of life for pretty much everyone That kind of assumes “quality of life” is a simple function of absolute material wealth and not strongly influenced by relative position. While certainly many people have moral beliefs that that should be the case, there is plenty of reason in all o…

[deleted]

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#186

Post by sooheon »

marnett wrote: post #135
adventured wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let me see if I have this straight. Highly respected, four star general, Wesley Clark says that the Iraq war was about attempting to strip Russian influence out of the Middle East. That the plan was to knock over several of the dictatorships there, which were overwhelmingly friendly toward Russia and hostile toward the US and its allies. You're saying it was about oil primarily. Yet the US didn't take Iraq's oil.…

> vaporized a trillion dollars It didn't vaporize any money whatsoever, in fact, Halliburton (and many of the hundreds of military strategy companies in the MIC) did quite well with their new economy.

Yes. In fact, it's quite the opposite of vaporizing--it's precipitating cold hard cash into the hands of the few.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#187

Post by cseelus »

thisisit wrote: post #5

Strange. Ublock is blocking the whole blog content. TL;dr - Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now

Wondered about that too.

What also seems a little strange is that his blog has a members only section with special "deals" like book excerpts for which you need to sign up.

Never saw that on a personal blog, I might be mistaken, but on first glance it seems like its more of a business than just a personal blog.

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#188

Post by carapace »

btilly wrote: post #117

On this topic, I highly recommend watching 200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo You see how wealth and health have changed over time. In particular you see that there is NO country today which is as badly off as EVERY country was 200 years ago. When you digest the truth of that, and look at it in terms of family stories, impact on society and so on, my impression is that we…

Yay! Pattern match!

> we are like a world recovering from an insane collective trauma that most people have amnesia about

This is the conclusion I have reached as well.

There is a scene in a David Lynch movie where the main characters arrive at the scene of a car accident moments after it has occurred. There is a car upside-down, with a wheel still spinning, and a girl is wandering around dazed and bleeding from a head injury, with no idea what has happened to her.

I think humanity has been in the situation of that girl.

I think it might have been the Younger Dryas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas with or without the possible comet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi... )

In any event, we do seem to be on the cusp of a Golden Age if we can avoid our worst pitfalls (war and ecological destruction, mostly I think)

Re: My new favorite book of all time

#189

Post by haberman »

sooheon wrote: post #170
haberman wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Pinker is against activists making the world better. But activists need to convince people that their ideas actually will improve things. Lots of activists have made the world better, but some have made it worse, despite having good intentions (see: eugenics, communism). If you're trying to sell people on the idea that status quo institutions like capitalism are bad, you have to compare it to the altern…

> An activist who thinks another system would be better has to convince people that their alternative will achieve more. Not necessarily according to Pinker's cherry picked statistics. Plantation owners were not going to achieve more by freeing their slaves, at least according to their own accounting.

Sure, if someone else thinks other statistics are relevant, they can cite those. I agree that a plantation owner would probably have cited statistics that didn't capture the harms of the fact that they are enslaving people.
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