TED
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2013–2018
21:13 · 487K views · Sep 11, 2007
Steven Pinker's TED talk charts the long decline of violence from biblical times to today, arguing that despite Iraq and Darfur we may be living in the most peaceful era of our species.
Cited as a counterpoint when threads claim the world is getting worse, and for Pinker's view that technology and trade create positive-sum interactions.
3 comments from Hacker News
His point about increasingly non zero-sum games reminds of a Steven Pinker talk. this video "Technology has increased the number of positive sum games that humans tend to be embroiled in by allowing the trade of goods, services and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of people." We still have a tendency to revert to meanness when resources become scarce - e.g. dwindling runways without forthcoming funding or competitors eating away at our market share. In many cases, It plays into the death spiral - visionary thinking, paced discovery and creative exploration of a problem space are replaced with short-term thinking, churn, frustration, and ultimately failure. In developed nations we've had the privilege of being able to take our time, spending at least 12 years of our lives educating ourselves instead of ploughing fields. Hans Rosling's talks get into this too: technology has allowed people to liberate time previously devoted to sustenance farming, washing clothes, 4 hour walks to the market. That time gets shifted to activities like education. There's a common them here of not letting our immediate needs overwhelm our ability to pursue goals that can dramatically change our lives and the world around us. Our opportunity is rare and the privileged position we have to pursue ideas can often be tenuous. In a way, if we don't hit escape velocity, we don't simply float, we crash. Meanness is a hack (one that doesn't even have an explanatory comment).
If any of those people are like Steven Pinker, I'll pass. It's silly science-worshipping nonsense. Science/rationalism is good but it isn't the magical solution to all of the ills which plague humanity (as they like to make it seem). Does Steven Pinker think he has all the answers? A fair reading of Steven Pinker would conclude anything but . He also knows full well that science isn't magic. However, the progress of science and industry has done way more to cure the ills of humanity than any other thing. Golda Meir was born to parents in conditions where parents would give birth to approaching 10 children in the hopes that a few would survive. It's vaccines, modern medicine, and bountiful food in modern societies which have changed that rotten equation. [LINK] [LINK] this video
Another obvious counterpoint is this TED talk, Steven Pinker on "The surprising decline of violence": this video