Kommentare
-
Can he really say this for the whole history of humanity?
-
I don't think anyone would disagree that Pinker is clearly a liberal based on how he's so willing and happy to praise and attribute President Clinton, a democrat, for the decline of homicide rates. However, he makes no comment on the fact that it was President LBJ, another democrat that held office over the initial and largest duration of the climb. I smell bias.
-
In my opinion one must first define what we understand as "violence", because if you are defining it as "Percentage of Male Deaths Due to Warfare", "Mutilation", "Torture" or "Death Penalty", then the talk should be named as such.
-
legalize drugs
-
Cold war...
-
Why are people so hostile to the suggestion that things have been getting better?
-
Violence has been going down in response to most counties and cultures gradually adopting the resource of a paid, impartial and armed civilian police force. You only have to see what happens when a modern day police force goes on strike. Violence quickly escalates to prehistoric levels. They may write me the odd traffic ticket, but God bless the 'pigs'.
-
Why do most Americans hate the meme that the world is getting better? Masturbatory self-righteousness? Looking forward to an apocalypse? Is fear that seductive? Or is it the obvious reason which I am too embarrassed to say?
-
Governments in Old Testament times were ARMED MALE HIERARCHIES with a chain of command, NOT hunter-gatherer tribal groups. So they should not be included
in his data. As communication, trade and travel shrunk the World, reduction in crime may be have been caused by an increase of accountability because of worldwide communication. Governments, NOT INDIVIDUALS, were the ones doing the murdering, and as the world shrunk and communication increased, leaders of these nations were made more accountable by the fact that they were being watched by the rest of the World and therefore were made more accountable by isolation, sanctions, courts and threat of attack. -
Steven Pinker is a fraud. https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/796450714679656448
-
9 years later and I still love this.
-
Excellent talk.
-
These are rigged stats..Any old bullshit to make "whitey"feel good!
-
what about the concept of mutually assured destruction. doesn't that also play a huge role as to why huge powers aren't invading each-other?
-
😪
-
Steven Pinker's whole idea of "cultures of dignity" vs. "cultures of honor" is just an ivory tower philosophy that attempts to classify those who operate in the context of a culture of honor into a sort of caste system; he implies that they are a lower, less evolved form of human.
Whether Pinker will ever admit it or not, violence is still a form of communication and forms of communication exist on a spectrum where physical force exists on one end and the highest rational intellectual discourse exists at the other end.
I would assert that those who are just as comfortable & competent in using violence (ONLY when necessary, of course!! i.e. self-defense or in defense of others who cannot defend themselves) as they are able to communicate with the highest reason, rationality and intellect are MORE of a WHOLE human being that the wimpy, smug, weakling intellectual academics Pinker speaks for. (Nietzsche would have had a field day with Pinker! lol!)
Pinker's philosophy about these two opposing cultures-claiming the "culture of dignity" as being the higher of the two-is just an attempt to insulate himself from the reality of violence and violent tendencies that will ALWAYS exist within humanity in some form or another.
I don't believe in the progressive idea that one day ALL and ANY violence will be completely irradicated. You would have to DRASTICALLY engineer human nature into such a state resembling that of the dystopian novel 'Brave New World'.
In this sense, I think Pinker is a naive utopianist. -
Steven Pinker's whole idea of "cultures of dignity" vs. "cultures of honor" is just an ivory tower philosophy that attempts to classify those who operate in the context of a culture of honor into a sort of caste system; he implies that they are a lower, less evolved form of human.
Whether Pinker will ever admit it or not, violence is still a form of communication and forms of communication exist on a spectrum where physical force exists on one end and the highest rational intellectual discourse exists at the other end.
I would assert that those who are just as comfortable & competent in using violence (ONLY when necessary, of course!! i.e. self-defense or in defense of others who cannot defend themselves) as they are able to communicate with the highest reason, rationality and intellect are MORE of a WHOLE human being that the wimpy, smug, weakling intellectual academics Pinker speaks for. (Nietzsche would have had a field day with Pinker! lol!)
Pinker's philosophy about these two opposing cultures-claiming the "culture of dignity" as being the higher of the two-is just an attempt to insulate himself from the reality of violence and violent tendencies that will ALWAYS exist within humanity in some form or another.
I don't believe in the progressive idea that one day ALL and ANY violence will be completely irradicated. You would have to DRASTICALLY engineer human nature into such a state resembling that of the dystopian novel 'Brave New World'.
In this sense, I think Pinker is a naive utopianist. -
The problems with Pinker and the other humanist cheerleaders is that they are totally embedded in speciesism- the idea that only humans count. Whether his theories about "violence" and improving conditions are accurate are debatable, but for all the other sentient animals on this planet, especially the BILLIONS of animals enslaved and killed by humans for food, violence is increasing. Violence against the planet itself is increasing.
-
Mr. Pinker brilliantly and tersely expresses the decline in human on human violence on earth. In modern history, law enforcement and criminal justice academics have recognized the decline in violent crime for decades. It's well documented in BJS, FBI, UCR, etc., stats.
He is right that no one really knows why, but the basic theories he presented are legit on a broad scale. The intentional or inadvertent impositions of law enforcement, society, government, education, etc., are all factors and his references are even more interesting when delved into further.
http://www.ted.com Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10