Followup to part 1, which now has a transcript!
As is tradition, I am posting this link without having listened to it. (too many podcasts)
(part 1) so pinker’s argument is basically that as the poors have been adopting moralities of the rich, violence decreased, and then he’s zooming in to 60s-90s period to say that violence increased because The Elites™ have become less culturally influential. first, it reads a lot like a priest getting all worked up at sunday school about these infidels and how they are all without morality and if you’re becoming atheist, then you’ll kill people!! so you have to keep these moralities of current elite, lest you slip into murderous barbarism. and second, it’s lead, it’s always been lead (and things like restricted access to abortion, and later invention and rollout of effective antipsychotics and fuckton more things. people are complicated, that’s what makes them people)
this shit must have been infuriating to get in contact with when you’re expert in the area (i’m not)
I’ve met Pinker and it is my considered opinion that he is an elitist dick. (Sticks tongue out.) Srsly, not surprising that an eminent prof at Harvard provides emotional felatio for the moneyed class at every opportunity. @skillissuer
Ah, but have you considered the fact that because he titled his book Rationality, he is by definition rational, and anyone seeking to argue against him using logic and reason is automatically self-defeating?
also a thing about warfare. only really from franco-prussian war on combat-related casualties started outnumbering non-combat related casualties. (think napoleon’s army dying of hunger and exposure during march on moscow). casevac got so good that during intervention in afghanistan american doctors started doing hemicorpectomies, that is amputation above pelvis. also, phaseout and ban of chemical and biological weapons didn’t happen because we’ve got morally better, it’s because this shit doesn’t work in modern wars
this shit must have been infuriating to get in contact with when you’re expert in the area (i’m not)
He’s not the world’s most annoying man for nothing! (Article has been discussed on old sneerclub, I think)
He argues in his books that the “long peace” since World War II was not the result of nuclear weapons, and argues that nukes are essentially “useless in winning wars and in keeping the peace” since no country would dare to use them
wow thanks this is the stupidest mind-numbing shite i’ve read all week at least
(image: edgy banner from a political protest in poland. it says “god you have taken the wrong Kaczyński”. Jarosław Kaczyński is leader of major conservative party that formed government at this time)
seriously how did it happen that he didn’t found a pipebomb in his mailbox during 90s
I’m like 40% sure you’ve replied to the wrong comment but in case you didn’t:
it’s all deliberate
and also antidepressants don’t work like that, at least most of these currently used. except ketamine. aren’t you thrilled to get mysteriously timed ketamine shot?
Not mysteriously timed, timed by your boss, by remote. Like in the famous book, “don’t build the torment nexus”.
@skillissuer @swlabr To judge from the pod’s summary, it’s specifically *classically liberal philosophers* who lead the rest of the elites to virtue, with the masses following after
@skillissuer @swlabr Which might be why he’s so comfortable dismissing every current area of ethical contention: the proponents for change are mainly not classically liberal philosophers, the font of every blessing. Betterment doesn’t come from vehemence and demonstration and action, nor from injured parties asserting their own humanity. It comes from a disinterested nerd writing a treatise, followed by comfortably slow and unconscious improvement over the next two to twenty generations
“A hope for progress based on the desire to really be considered to have been a great thonker in, like, 3 centuries” (and thonker there isn’t a typo)
I am not an expert, but I did take a couple of semesters of history, and I find him rather annoying.
Somebody who should have been infuriated was Manuel Eisner, who wrote the paper Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime. It’s a really good paper, and I have seen Pinker misquote it, so he can’t claim ignorance.
Eisner’s argument, which I find persuasive, is that it was not the state power increase as such that decreased private violence. Because if that was the case, southern Europe wouldn’t have lagged as much as it did. Rather it was the transformation of the nobility from personally very violent knights and lords, to officers and bosses who wields state violence. And that happened at different times, matching the decline in private violence. With the nobility no longer needing personal violence, it goes down. Quite different from Pinker’s take.
And then there is the question of where that state capacity for violence was wielded. I don’t think Pinker includes Queen Victoria in his rouge gallery, yet the famines in India killed about as many as the ones in the Soviet Union and Communist China, and those are usually counted as state violence.
On the rise and fall of violent crime in the west during the 70ies and 80ies, there has been many candidates, but most fall away because they can’t explain it both in western Europe and the US. One good candidate is leaded gasoline leading to lead poisoned babies growing up and becoming more violent in the crucial young adult age. It matches, but I haven’t seen any proper attempts to really test it, by for example comparing cities to the countryside.
I am not an expert, but I did take a couple of semesters of history, and I find him rather annoying.
I am not an expert, I didn’t take any history, and I find him a twat.
