Steven Pinker has built a writing career out of telling people who are doing really well that everything is fine and that they should keep on enjoying.
The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
51–60 of 114 posts
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Say there's someone who wants to reduce inequality, and we ask them whether they approve of various scenarios: Situation: "People living on a certain well-off island discover a way to farm more efficiently, which means they produce 10% more food, but that technology only works on their island. Is this good or bad?" Inequality reducer: "This is bad, because that island's average income will go up while the rest of the…
That's an absolute straw man - someone wanting to reduce inequality doesn't want to do it at the expense of all other considerations, which is the assumption you've made. Complaining about an increasing wealth gap does not mean that the only other option is perfect equality of wealth. Have you seen the breakdown of wealth in America? The gap between, say, the top 1% and the rest of society is staggering. The top 0.1%…
What if it is not broken, but inevitable?
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an absolute straw man - someone wanting to reduce inequality doesn't want to do it at the expense of all other considerations, which is the assumption you've made. Complaining about an increasing wealth gap does not mean that the only other option is perfect equality of wealth. Have you seen the breakdown of wealth in America? The gap between, say, the top 1% and the rest of society is staggering. The top 0.1%…
What if it is not broken, but inevitable?
Then you need to speak to a philosopher…
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#54I think a lot of this has to do with perception.
The violence and suffering in the world, particularly overseas, feels more inescapable in the digital, high definition, always connected age.
This age has gifted us perception, but not perspective.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steven Pinker has done a fairly deep study of the long run decline in violence: it is real, it is over centuries, and it is dramatic. But it is not guaranteed to last. I highly recommend his book as it provides a lot of data on the topic (and is quite a good read too). "The decline in violence, he argues, is enormous in magnitude, visible on both long and short time scales, and found in many domains, including milita…
> Pinker uses the phrase as a metaphor for four human motivations that, he writes, can "orient us away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism,"[2] namely: empathy, self-control, the "moral sense," and reason. All of which are contrary to religious fundamentalism... which worries me as a US citizen.
Why? Fundamentalists are noisy, but they aren't a majority. Catholics are the largest group, probably followed by the various types of non practitioners (I'm including atheists and people that "aren't sure" together there, I think it's fair to say that "not sure" is a ways away from fundamentalist). It's harder to sort out the protestants, but the more moderate "mainline" groups certainly have more influence than the fundamentalist groups, even if they don't quite outnumber them (but they are at least similar in number).
The type of news that fundamentalists end up making also isn't all that discouraging, they are usually losing court cases where they tried to inject their beliefs into public life.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#56By the way, homicide rates chart should account for age distribution. As population ages, the 18-40 age group dwindles. And, statistically, that is who dominates homicide deaths.
If you account for that, your chart may switch polarity.
Same for rapes.
As for "Democracy and Autocracy" - this chart comes from people who still call Uzbekistan a "young democracy". Actually, many supposedly democratic countries actually aren't.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#57> England, Canada, and most other industrialized countries... England isn't a country. Constantly referring to it as one, was a distraction from the contents for me.
Wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdo...
“Wrong” is wrong. The linked article cites England as a country in the UK.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening In the US, yes. Globally, no. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/upshot/income-inequality-i...
That just makes us even more embarrassing.
the us had a higher standard of living than the rest of the world for years. now the rest of the world is catching up to us; that means things will seem to suck for us by comparison for a while.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#59It`s the end of the world as we know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzqiPvGrkTo
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an absolute straw man - someone wanting to reduce inequality doesn't want to do it at the expense of all other considerations, which is the assumption you've made. Complaining about an increasing wealth gap does not mean that the only other option is perfect equality of wealth. Have you seen the breakdown of wealth in America? The gap between, say, the top 1% and the rest of society is staggering. The top 0.1%…
What if it is not broken, but inevitable?
There's nothing economically inevitable about spending public subsidy on the rich instead of the poor.