The surprising decline in violence | Steven Pinker

What Hacker News said

Cites henrikschroder · 2013-06 · on “The Fallacy of Human Freedom”

Another obvious counterpoint is this TED talk, Steven Pinker on "The surprising decline of violence": [this video]

Cites koobz · 2014-11 · on “Mean People Fail”

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 nation

Cites stcredzero · 2018-02 · on “Thinking Critically About Social Justice”

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 fo