Name: Enlightenment now
ISBN: 9780525427575

Enlightenment now

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature -- tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking -- which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. Pinker makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

What Hacker News says

krosaenApr 2026

> But research is showing that social media and smartphones have made us addicted to screens from a young age. It’s taken a toll on how much time we spend together

Agree completely, but it has also lead to widely held pessimistic beliefs like

> But how do we find meaning when the climate is warming, politics is broken, and technology serves profit over people? We can’t think about thriving; we're merely surviving.

I anticipate downvotes, but I seriously suggest reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now for some perspective about long term positive trends, and insights into why we over weigh short term negative news to the detriment of our mental health.

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wiihackOct 2024

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

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cs702Dec 2023

> I'm not sure how I would approach issues like [examples] in a way that's pragmatic and doesn't ultimately rely on ideology or appeal to god/natural order.

A long list of people, many of whom are way smarter than me, have written about this issue extensively over the centuries. As a starting point from which to branch off, I'd recommend the book "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker.

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mdnahasNov 2023

Re: “historically, the world is doing better than ever.”

Yes, that’s true. If you read “Enlightenment Now”, there are tons of wonderful graphs showing life improving. And for almost every country, as it gets richer, it gets happier. But the one exception is the USA. We’ve gotten richer lately, but not happier.

Our government’s decision making ability is messed up. We have an excellent economy, but debt is increasing. Our government has income, but we nearly defaulted on our debt. Healthcare has been a problem for 30+ years.

My state of Texas is run by Republican primary voters, which are an extreme 10% of the population.

We need to end gerrymandering with single-party primaries. (I like jungle primaries with ranked choice voting.) We need popular elections for President (not everything riding on swing states). We need to remove the filibuster. We need to weaken the Speaker’s power, which caused omnibus bills rather than real debate.

I’ve seen good activism and change at the city level. YIMBY’s are making progress. They’re now working at the state level. But it is still hard to see us making the necessary fixes at the federal level. I have horrible worries about what will happen if we don’t fix those very soon.

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wiihackJun 2023

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

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kweinberMar 2023

I find it interesting that some people feel that moving away from cities and towards a more natural lifestyle means moving to a farm or ranch.

As Steven Pinker notes in his brilliant “Enlightenment Now”, there is nothing natural about a farm. It is basically a factory that subjugates the local ecology to produce monoculture crops so delicate that you have to domesticate humans to take care of them. If you want to live in nature and get away from command and control culture, you may want to skip the farm or livestock ranch and experience nature more directly as forests, meadows etc.

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