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Pinker's latest stinker
Having thoroughly enjoyed Stuff of Thought, I hoped Pinker would stick to linguistic/cognitive stuff. But it looks like he gave us a massive piece of Whiggish history instead. Have you read this one yet?
You know, I was so frustrated when Chomsky decided to jump into the political fray, with his "insights". Not that he isn't quite smart, and not that everyone doesn't have a right to an opinion... but it is still just an opinion.
George Lakoff did the same.
Now Pinker. just stick to what you know and can prove. Please!
Chomsky at least understands politics better than the other two, IMO.
I have not read this. I've read the amazon summary and decided not to spend money on it. And I'll tell you why. I find screeds like this, on either side, to be so point driven that i think they kinda "miss the point". heh. That is, our world is not better or worse, or even tangibly more or less violent. It is what it is; attempts to compare cultures fails for every point you, ADK and I have been tossing around. One supposes you can make a claim that "there are more/less murders per 1000 people in the US - but what does that *mean*. are there more cops now? or are people less inclined to kill when they can shoot something on tv? Are people truly more "moral" (again, in the context of US 2010, mostly christian view of morality) than they were 100, 1000 years ago? or are times just more difficult.
He sets out (according to the book jacket info) to show the world is not "worse" but "better". But that (supposedly) factual comment has little bearing on the perception of people who feel worse off than their historical ancestors.
Ironically, i do think humans and our social structures are becoming "better", in the sense that we are more egalitarian, we work toward the greater good in our social groups -- but we are still selfish asses, too. heh. I just don't think you can "prove" we are becoming "better" in any pop-culture book, cause to me, it would simply make way too many assumptions.
i'll probably check it out at the library eventually, but i just can't stomach paying for it. :-)
But polemical screeds are good fun. I'm curious as to how he gets statistics from the pre-modern era, though. Is there some kind of semi-legit methodology behind this or is it just a wholesale ass pull? Also, even if he were right, it's going to be irrelevant if we keep on the business-as-usual course of climate policy.
Well, yeah, I don't think ancestor Uggh kept records on how many people he killed.
Also, cultures change, but that cannot make them "better". We do not kill animals for food, directly. is that better? is it worse? not really, it just is.
I was also a bit off put (again - i've only read the amazon description and now this article) that he is going to somehow "fix" the views of liberals. Cause we run around with "the sky is falling" mentality, I guess. I'm not convinced this is at all a fair description. Other than, I have a limited life time and would really like things to change before i'm dead. :-)
Well, you can get some kind of idea about violent death from the archaeological record, but obviously that's only going to be an incomplete representation. Re: "Sky is falling," the formula reminds me of a standard Lomborg-esque Cornucopian tract. Progress marches on!
Progress is not, in itself, necessarily "good" or "better". Personally, i am now doing not only the paralegal research on Native issues, but the book keeping, and some of the legal support just cause it's so much easier to do research now, i have free time. I do 3 jobs, thanks to computers. I do not get 3 salaries. damn it. ;-)
And by teh way, the sky IS falling if the issue directly effects me. that's human nature. :-)
"What does it mean?" indeed.
One simply can't bandy about phrases like "the world is less moral than it used to be!" without causing a bit of arse-ache. You're probably frustrated with that sort of thing because whoever says it then spends 99% of their time justifying why what they're saying means "less moral" than actually delivering facts about the world to support it.
Trouble is, just delivering as much informed fact as possible rarely gets you any followers.
Actually, the definition of "violence" is more important to his argument. Just fiddle with the definition of your metric until the desired result is achieved -- it's ScienceTM!
Violence is a very interesting "metric" to play with, if you are in for a bit of mental fun. When we traditionally think of violence, it's with a level of blood guts and gore. A more particular definition would require that violence is something done with intention of harm. But even there, we have needed less violence as humans to survive. But that doesn't make us necessarily less violent in our motivations. That is to say, now that I have a police force, I do not need a gun to protect my home. Now that my police force has tazers, they do not need to use guns as often. Now that I buy hamburger at the store, I don't have to slaughter a crying animal -- no matter how much i need that food to survive.
So then I ask myself, what was the point of shooting people who came into your home? Safety. so is protecting yourself violence, of course. But of a necessary sense, so it doesn't have the weight of someone who today, with all the cops around, still shoots an intruder.
My father is of an age where kids got their butts tanned HARD for doing wrong. it was normal. Because he and all his friends shared teh same thing, none of them felt ashamed, and it was not 'abuse" (abuse is, like everything else, relative). Today, if you even get spanked it's probably quite shameful cause that doesn't happen in other kids home, and it probably is abuse. Reinforcing Pinker? or just something of a shift in society? I don't know... but i think a lot about it.
Ever see the Dara O'Briain skit on crime levels? Basically, we have statistics saying crime is going down, but no one likes that so they say "ah, but it's the fear of crime, that's going up!" But that's like saying "well, zombie attacks are at an all-time low, but the fear of zombie attacks..."
"Trouble is, just delivering as much informed fact as possible rarely gets you any followers." Speaking of which...
Looks like actual historians have caught him in the act of some severe rectal extraction.
oops... hehe. That's what always happens when non historians start historianing...
Historiography? Pfft, who needs that when you've got ScienceTM! Speaking of which, this is an opportunity for some more Coyne collecting.
Grand Theory People. I do love them. they make me giggle. and this critics article can easily been seen in the academic world. You publish 5 books on your topic (the lakota view of God in 1900-2000 and the role of language) and 5 people read it. You talk about "Exploiting paradigms - how language transforms religions as tools of the Oppressor", you'll sell all over the place. Consequently, I see so many of the scholars I enjoy in religion, linguistics and philo (the small ones, not the Pinkers or Chomskys) trying to "hit big" with some work like this.
bleah.
I'm really saddened he wrote this tripe. You would think he would consider that we live in an age where people actually USE SCIENCE and rational based thiking to say "does what he says, make sense?"
Oh come now, when did rational thought ever get in the way of a nice pet theory?
well, one can hope!