
The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism - onuralp
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02148-1
======
truculation
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] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-
beginning-o...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-beginning-of-
infinity)

[2] _An Essay on the Principle of Population_ (1798)
[http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf](http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf)

~~~
olleromam91
But if a would be problem solver is not psychologically optimistic...what
happens to the odds that the problem will be solved?

~~~
joaomacp
They go down. But so do the odds of him being disappointed by failure.

------
valeg
Interesting take on the new Pinker's opus by John Gray:
[https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight...](https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-
thinking-steven-pinker-s-embarrassing-new-book-feeble-sermon)

> _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._

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
I don't mean to be overly picky about Gray's response, but proper English is:
"Yet even if Pinker were capable...". (I am not aware of this being a British-
ism.)

When an author, none less, writes incorrectly -- it makes me question his
basic thesis.

~~~
kemiller
That rule is all but forgotten in American English, sadly.

~~~
dredmorbius
Gray is not American.

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
I knew that Gray was not American. I do not know British English, so I don't
know whether Brits speak that way. I pointed this out. Do you know the answer?

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd expect your suggested form to be used, by an educated Brit or American.

------
ghostcluster
I thought David Brooks had a good take on Pinker and his latest book.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-
rad...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-radical-
honesty.html)

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.

~~~
lostlogin
> Pinker avoids addressing the social breakdown of families

Is it really a problem that families aren’t together? Previously (with some
hold outs) there wasn’t much choice and families had to stay together due to
issues around control through money, religion and social pressures. Go back
further (hopefully, though this is still pretty grim in many areas) and
domestic violence was also legal. “Breakdown” of families is a considerably
better option than what was previously available.

> the increased polarization and technology-driven personal atomization in the
> current mileau

I don’t understand what this means, could you give an example?

~~~
ghostcluster
> Is it really a problem that families aren’t together?

if you care about the epidemic of loneliness, the negative medical
consequences of social isolation, and the demographic sustainability of
developed countries, yes.

~~~
jeoi2838
Research shows having a roommate is enough to combat feelings of loneliness.

Marriage in and of itself isn’t shown to automatically increase happiness;
most folks reported having maintained their baseline mood after the wedding

Maybe this is just old definitions needing to be updated, but “family” in the
traditional mom-dad-kids all visit grandma and the like, isn’t essential to
the species.

Socializing is, but not the traditional structures

------
warent
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 ideology_

I 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, or

2) 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?

~~~
westoncb
I think there's a '3' here: Science and evidence-based thinking are
(relatively) orthogonal to the emergence of social chaos and conflict.

If I'm not mistaken this is implied in Marxist thinking, so it is an idea that
is 'out there' (in the sense of being available). I think the idea there is
that our rational thinking largely serves as justification rather than being
something very powerful on its own.

The way I see it is that (at least much of) rational thought is the latest
stage in 'elaboration' of lower-level mental/emotional processes. In which
case, our rational thinking on subjects which impact real circumstances in
which we're invested will be constrained and influenced by our goals, values,
and something like coefficients for strength of influence of various emotions
etc.

------
js8
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.

~~~
jhbadger
I think "The End of History" gets a bad rap. People say the rise of China (for
example) is a counterexample to his theory, as it is becoming economically
successful without being a democracy, but with all the clever wordplay Chinese
citizens are using online to get around attempts of censorship, it is really
questionable how long China's educated and technologically sophisticated
populace can be controlled by a one party state.

~~~
garmaine
I think Tianimen square and it’s afterma is a counter example to this.

------
wsxcde
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.

~~~
psyc
The enlightenment's values and luminaries are enumerated in any number of
sources on the subject. The rest of your comment appears to be a dubious
framing, with numerous distortions caused by feats of time-travel within your
modern, progressive mind. Within the past 5 years, it has become a necessity -
an _emergency_ \- to disassociate oneself as far as possible from people,
their ideas, their friends, and their friends' friends, at the faintest hint
of _la problématique_. I like to imagine Gandhi and MLK were more mature, and
better able to handle the cognitive dissonance in the human mind.

'Outing' Benjamin Franklin is not even a tiny bit like outing Harvey
Weinstein, and 'outing' historical figures as racists and sexists is
practically content-free, since it's no secret. If social justice enthusiasts
continue down the path you seem to be alluding to, you'll wind up burning
every book written before 1970, and plunging us into another dark age.

If this is not the answer you wanted, my only suggestion is to try to pose
your question more thoughtfully.

~~~
watwut
Afaik, there were big discussions about slavery and racism all the time
concepts existed. The discussion about some past actors being more racist then
others or even actively pushing for slavery while others were not should not
be taboo.

It is relevant that someone writing about freedom conveniently did not counted
whole groups as deserving that freedom in the first place.

It is much easier to be for free speech for example, when the group of people
most likely to oppose you dont count.

Edit: by this logic, you cant critize Robespierre. Or Lenin/Stalin, because
they were product of time and built an imperium anyway.

It is also relevant that nice sounding definition of freedom was used to
defend the slavery or that the rational science at the time was actually
exercise in motivated reasoning convenient to speaker (whether practically or
just made him feel good and superior) - but not really result of fair unbiased
cold look at world.

~~~
b1daly
The general thrust of “mainstream” thinking on “enlightened” thinkers of the
past is that they offer a framework for freedom and justice, however I’m
perfectly framed, and in spite of them falling short of living up to the
ideals they espoused.

To deny the concept of human rights, and the validity of science because some
foundational thinkers fell short is ridiculous.

~~~
wsxcde
> _The general thrust of “mainstream” thinking on “enlightened” thinkers of
> the past is that they offer a framework for freedom and justice, however I’m
> perfectly framed, and in spite of them falling short of living up to the
> ideals they espoused._

OK, that's fair. Is the claim that such a framework did not exist before? Or
is it that this new framework was somehow "fairer" and closer to our modern
ideals of justice than the ones that existed before? Because neither of these
claims seems defensible.

> _To deny the concept of human rights, and the validity of science because
> some foundational thinkers fell short is ridiculous._

But where did I (or anyone else for that matter) deny the concept of human
rights or the validity of science?

------
hprotagonist
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.

~~~
chongli
We've already had plenty of dystopias: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Maoist
China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, North Korea today... As for a utopia?
Nobody can agree on what that would look like. When somebody claims to have a
plan for a utopia, my first question is: "for whom?"

How does any ideological utopia work without excluding anyone? I have yet to
see a satisfactory answer. The paradox of tolerance would suggest that utopias
are impossible, at least with human beings.

~~~
truculation
I suspect your dystopias have in common that they all had _utopian_ visions.
Instead of focusing on real problems and making gradual progress they kept
talking about building heaven on earth. Apparently they just needed to tear
down existing institutions and kill a few people first...

~~~
chongli
_Instead of focusing on real problems and making gradual progress_

That's a _protopia_ [0], not a utopia. A utopia is a radical, top-down,
planned society based on some ideology.

[0] [http://kk.org/thetechnium/protopia/](http://kk.org/thetechnium/protopia/)

------
pbreit
For a counterpart, it is Bill Gates' new favorite book:
[https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-
Now](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now)

~~~
ghostcluster
they co-produced a really nice video with some of the graphs from the book
inlaid on giant physical glass plates:

[https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/967449421238579201](https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/967449421238579201)

------
jochung
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
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
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.

~~~
ggm
_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._

No.. really: tell us what you think? Pinker is smart, and writes well, and
holds opinions you don't agree with, but this is an eggregious take-down. Do
you really question his chops on linguistics too? Or is it just that he chose
to step outside his baseline and do work you don't want to respect or bond
with?

Put up better stats if you want to refute his numbers.

~~~
petermcneeley
If you have time please review my critique on his "group selection" article.
[http://darkcephas.blogspot.ca/2018/01/on-group-
selection.htm...](http://darkcephas.blogspot.ca/2018/01/on-group-
selection.html)

~~~
ggm
good graphics. but I don't see why we go to _Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus_
on this. Its an area of active debate.

------
tim333
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"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qyYQIRQE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s2qyYQIRQE)

------
yters
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.

~~~
rimliu
Yes, because letting grown up woman die because of someones believe in
fairytales or forcing preteen rape victim to give birth is very moral. I think
some should take more time and find out more what science is and what morality
is.

~~~
yters
It looks like you agree...

------
alexashka
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]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_Now)

~~~
staunch
This criticism boils down to a disappointment in humanity's progress. It's
true that humanity could be Star Trek-level in 2018, if things had gone a bit
better for us historically.

But we'll get there in 2118 or whatever. It's an inevitable result of
technology building on itself. Even if it costs a dozen World Wars and
rebuilding civilization from ashes. And it hopefully won't even cost us a WW3,
though it may.

The journey will be a rough ride for humanity but on the other side is an end
to most forms of human suffering and limitation.

We don't even know what's on the other side of this level of progress except
that humanity will not remain humans as we think of ourselves today.

