The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism

85 点作者 onuralp大约 7 年前

14 条评论

The review confuses psychological optimism with a problem-based definition of optimism: that problems are solvable (and hence progress is possible).As David Deutsch points out in The Beginning of Infinity, Winston Churchill was an optimistic leader and a fan of science and progress who nonetheless suffered from depression (the 'black dog') [1].Whereas Thomas Malthus (mistakenly) predicted mass starvation due to population growth [2] and was therefore a pessimist who nonetheless was of a sunny disposition and the life and soul of dinner parties in London.[1] <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-beginning-of-infinity" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-beginning-o...</a>[2] An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) <a href="http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf</a>

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valeg大约 7 年前

Interesting take on the new Pinker's opus by John Gray: <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon" rel="nofollow">https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight...</a>>To think of this book as any kind of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. The purpose of Pinker’s laborious work is to reassure liberals that they are on “the right side of history”.>Judged as a contribution to thought, Enlightenment Now is embarrassingly feeble. With its primitive scientism and manga-style history of ideas, the book is a parody of Enlightenment thinking at its crudest. A more intellectually inquiring author would have conveyed something of the Enlightenment’s richness and diversity. Yet even if Pinker was capable of providing it, intellectual inquiry is not what his anxious flock demands. Only an anodyne, mythical Enlightenment can give them what they crave, which is relief from painful doubt.

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ghostcluster大约 7 年前

I thought David Brooks had a good take on Pinker and his latest book.<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-radical-honesty.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-rad...</a>Pinker avoids addressing the social breakdown of families and the increased polarization and technology-driven personal atomization in the current mileau, whose undertow underlies a lot of the big issues today.Otherwise, an admiral figure from the elite academy.

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warent大约 7 年前

Can someone help me understand this part?> Enlightenment advances were tied to empire building and the nascent Industrial Revolution, predicated not just on noble ideas and scientific curiosity, but also on slavery, genocide, exploitation and cultural triumphalism. Like the Renaissance, it ended in chaos and conflict, including the French revolutionary wars of 1792–99.> Both eras show that science and evidence-based thinking do not necessarily triumph over irrationality and ideologyI can't tell if Ian is saying:1) Science and evidence-based thinking are the direct cause of these eras "ending in chaos and conflict", and that "irrationality and ideology" could have been preferred, or2) Science and evidence-based thinking were insufficient.If it's 1, I doubt that's really true and would definitely need evidence.If 2, then insufficient at what? Insufficient to act as a moral compass? Insufficient at convincing people to hold similar values in utilizing science and evidence-based thinking? Something else?

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js8大约 7 年前

I still have to read the book, but I am a bit worried that it will have a similar fate to Fukuyama's End of History..It's interesting to compare Pinker and Chomsky. IIRC, in some interview Pinker said that he has much more skeptical view of human nature than Chomsky.. And yet, regarding the humanity as a whole, he seems to be more optimistic than Chomsky, who considers (and rightfully so, I think) global warming and nuclear war as two grave dangers. Although Chomsky also often states that things are somewhat getting better when it comes to human rights and so on.

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wsxcde大约 7 年前

Genuine question: what values count as enlightenment values? And who gets the credit for coming up with these values? I heard Pinker on Ezra Klein's podcast and he seemed to imply that Gandhi/MLK's non-violent movements were the product of the enlightenment. Isn't that a patently ridiculous claim?I looked up wikipedia to see who the intellectuals of the enlightenment were and it seems many of these people are racists, slave-owners and colonizers who literally thought that Gandhi/MLK were sub-human. Their military philosophy seems to boil down to might is right and their values AFAICT are pretty close to Richard Spencer's. Sure, some of these people were great scientists and politicians, but I'm having a hard time seeing them as moral exemplars.

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hprotagonist大约 7 年前

DFW put it nicely in "Authority and American Usage", and it's stuck with me as a pithy counterpoint to this kind of teleology.Describing pinker's thoughts on linguistic descriptivism:Steven Pinker's 1994 "The Language Instinct" is a good and fairly literate example of this second kind of Descriptivist argument, which, like the Gove-et-al. version, tends to deploy a Jr.-high-filmstrip SCIENCE: POINTING THE WAY TO A BRIGHTER TOMORROW-type tone...I think it's a lot closer to the truth to say that humans tend to be human throughout history, for both good and ill, and that this alone is why neither anyone's idea of utopia nor dystopia will ever really happen. We're always somewhere in the middle.

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pbreit大约 7 年前

For a counterpart, it is Bill Gates' new favorite book: <a href="https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now" rel="nofollow">https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now</a>

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jochung大约 7 年前

His book seems to have both people on the left and the right complaining, so at least my interest is piqued that it says something real.

MichaelMoser123大约 7 年前

Optimism is good, but it could have turned for the worse: we are lucky that we had the 'nuclear taboo' ; nukes are kept strictly as a weapon of last resort. If nukes were to be used in 'limited conflicts' then we all would life in quite shitty place. (in the real world nukes kept Europe safe and prevented big wars between regional/superpowers)I think we should be thankful for our extreme luck.You never know how the next advance in science & technology will change the pace and character of human conflict.

khrakhen大约 7 年前

We can simply look at /Better Angels of Our Nature/ to know what a hack Pinker is. His thesis is only good for intra-civilizational violence on decline, which is true and fascinating. Not a cause for celebration, but for study -- he should take into account the purpose of study is to study, not celebrate. This failure cripples his work beyond his knowledge area (psychiatry, neuroscience).Anyhow, /Better Angels/ is the most messed up, sloppily cited, cherry-picked history of human civilization I may have ever read from an academic. There is a certain Eurocentrism deep throughout, but one does not have to read between the lines. His estimates of battle deaths are prima facie ridiculous. Ancient wars always take the highest estimates. It's a wonder humans did not go extinct millenia ago, given how they kept killing a quarter of the population on a regular basis. Modern wars like Iraq, even at his time of writing in 2010-11, had far, far more deaths than he counts.Maybe he does not want to count anything that isn't a uniformed combat death, but then he would have to admit something happened to cripple typical life expectancy.I was about to lose my mind at the incredibly racist portion on Polynesians and genetic predispositions to violence and cannibalism. I say "incredibly" literally. I cannot fathom how it got published and praised. I imagine the exorbitant length meant most reviewers stopped a third of the way through.And Pinker has been the head of the editing panel for the American Heritage Dictionary since the Fifth edition, a serious downgrade from the Fourth, by the way.Pinker is more than jack of all trades, master of none. He is a charlatan. It would be all the more tolerable if he had a sense of humor.

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tim333大约 7 年前

You can get a reasonable 20 minute summary of the books ideas from Pinker's recent talk "Be Positive, The World Is Not Falling Apart" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qyYQIRQE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qyYQIRQE</a>

yters大约 7 年前

I'd say the huge moral innovation of the 20th century is scientifically showing the human fetus is neither human, alive, nor a person. In a previous era, society frowned on abortion and contraception due to the old fashioned Judeo-Christian moral views, and so we had over population and widespread violence and poverty. But, thanks to the moral innovation of fetal science, we've discovered that we can stop violence before it happens by eliminating fetuses instead. So, instead of millions of dead humans, we have millions of terminated fetuses. The great gift of 20th century science is an ability to define the problem away, in a sense. And today we are almost at the point where we can completely discard of morality altogether, which will bring about a true utopia on earth because then nothing will be wrong.

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alexashka大约 7 年前

I can't believe Steven Pinker isn't met with outright ridicule. The cult of positive-think is strong - I imagine anyone criticizing him publicly would be seen as 'being negative'.Steven Pinker uses statistics to argue that health, prosperity, safety, peace, and happiness are on the rise, both in the West and worldwide. It attributes these positive outcomes to Enlightenment values such as reason, science, and humanism. [0]Enlightenment values? Humanism?Did we not just live through 2 world wars, a cold war, etc? What is USA's military budget again? 597 BILLION USD in 2015? (Google 'usa military budget')Some humanist world power we have, it doesn't even provide health care for it's own citizens, while letting them buy guns!Some humanism that is... Shall we go down the list and discuss how humanist China is?The book concludes with three chapters defending what Pinker sees as Enlightenment values: reason, science, and humanism.[4] Pinker argues that these values are under threat from modern trends such as religious fundamentalism, political correctness, and postmodernism. [0]One of the top three concerns for humanity, according to Pinker, is political correctness... I don't even...[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now</a>

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