@wozzek22 You think Pinker, Dr. also uses the type of market driven numbers that police use to lower crime rates and Wall St uses to justified their rarefied excesses?
Seems like this pseudo-scientist needs some evolving to do. But how could he in his comfy Ivy League bubble? Natural selection will take care of the unsustainable system that led to his clueless attributes.
I'm not saying he's right but a lot of the things I believed in the past were proved wrong and had caused me, and others, a lot of unnecessary suffering. I produced an uninteresting supply of negative bravado BS talk which allowed me to avoid working on a solution. I prefer throwing out the trash no matter how much I feel the need to cling to it-especially if I get a better life because of it. violence for me is the product of a distracted and busy mind. I can produce one of those in a minute
To have an informed response It would probably help to look at the whole presentation: "Steven Pinker on the myth of violence" From TED.com (20 minutes) or even read his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He has spent a lot of his life working on this-We on the other hand often write after a few minutes thought.
@wozzek22 what are you talking about? While I might concede the point about the atomic weapons, it is known that more people died in fire bombing and regular bombing during the war then the atomic bombs did combined.
As to drones: drones radically decrease the chance of being killed. War has been sanitized, not just for the killer, but for the innocent. A drone can hone in and kill a single man, or destroy a single building- something that is incredibly new.
OK! Now take that "male deaths due to warfare" chart and use absolut number of deaths instead of percentages and see how the chart gets inverted!!
Yes, maybe we are "living the most peaceful time in our species' existence in relative terms"... so what? Should we keep making wars since "in percentages" even when other 1.9 Billion ppl die due to war we still be doing well "living in the most peaceful time"?
Personally I don't care about what those percentages say: a human life is a human life, and if you take the absolute numbers of people that have died due to war since the past century the numbers surpass by far the numbers of lives lost due to war since humans appeared!! We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!!
@jrvillela He is not saying we shouldnt do everything in our power to stop violent deaths, by showing the decline in the percentage it becomes possible to feel optimistic
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! HTF is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
@jrvillela Well consider this scenario, a city of 1 mill people has 20 murders a year, then a century later that same city has 6 million people and and there are 28 murders a year, this clearly means that the city has become safer. You must consider scale. Its like you are saying that NYC is as dangerous as Detroit since they both have about 400 murders per year, when in reality NYC is a much safer place to be then Detroit when you consider the size difference
@johndoe77774444 I do get that: these times are "relatively" safer, so what? Based on information like the one of Ur example U can decide if to live in Detroit or in NYC, but U can't choose to live in this time or in prehistoric times, so really: what's the use of that info? Maybe U should give it to the U.S. government so they finally cut down their damn military spending down to zero! Do U think they will say:"yah, right we live in much more safer times, hence we are getting rid of the army!"
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! How the heck is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
Science has not to date answered one basic question. It is quoted in the Bible, but everyone thinks of doctrine: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD This has rarely been explained or advanced. There is something which creates human intelligence and it is not a subjective being any more than these words you are reading have conscious intelligence.
@AndroidPolitician Perhaps a handful of tribes throughout history were devoid of violence, but most tribes were extremely violent. For example, the Aztecs would sometimes make tens of thousands of blood sacrifices in a single year, usually on captured prisoners, and often involving torture before the heart was ripped out to complete the sacrifice and appease the gods.
I'm not sure about most but even in tribes that were violent it was usually symbolic and based on ritual similar to governments today. For instance, the Mae Enga attack in large groups based on grievances after a long ritual process.
My point is that Pinker is essentially trying to prove violence is an innate human function and so that war is just a part of "human nature".
@AndroidPolitician He is absolutely correct. Cultural norms and values that have been modified over the centuries cause humans to disdain violence, but it is very much a part of our primal nature.
It's not "human nature" in the sense that there is no biological predisposition to war, wars and violence are based on the environment which is why some tribes in dangerous environments were violent while others were incredibly peaceful.
@AndroidPolitician There are biological predispositions to war. Anger, greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, aggression etc. are all innate human emotions that predispose to violence and war. Our intelligence allows us to wage war at a much more sophisticated level than other animals.
That's about as accurate as saying there's a biological predisposition for government based on the human capacity to create and organize.
The fact is, there has never been a spontaneous war that's just based on human anger just like how there has never been a spontaneous government, it's a long planned event done for environmental purposes.
Plus it would mean many early societies as well as contemporary such as Anabaptists and kibbutzes are "inhuman".
@AndroidPolitician There is a biological predisposition for government based on human capacity to create and organize. Humans are biological machines. The line where biology ends and culture begins is very not well demarcated.
Well then I don't think you understand what "human nature" means because by that logic anything is within human nature and all those civilizations thousands of years ago where actually inhuman since they didn't have governments or war.
Human nature is how people "naturally" act or gratitude towards etc. without any planning or environmental cause. So yes, anger and creation are human nature, violence/war and government are not.
@AndroidPolitician Just because something is part of human nature doesn't mean that every human has to practice it to a high degree. There is great variation among humans and the complexity of our species leads to many exceptions.
And planning and environmental interaction are part of human nature. You cannot separate them. Humans are not isolated entities. We react to our each other and to our environment. It is human nature.
Human nature is what's universal and innate, for instance everyone feels happiness, anger etc. but not all societies have governments or war or even violence.
Saying that something like governments etc. are "human nature" is equivalent to if there were societies of thousands of people who didn't feel emotions since emotion is part of human nature.
We were actually talking about a lot of things but sure.
Violence is using force to cause damage injury or death and in some societies it's essentially non-existent, like in modern Anabaptists or some Amerindian tribes who didn't understand the concept of combat and aggression when the settlers arrived. People universally have anger but it's not universal to express it through violence.
This is opposite what the Zeitgeist movie says. Some professor in Zeitgeist says that hunter-gatherer groups had almost no violence. So which one is correct? I'm gonna go with extreme violence in hunter-gatherer groups from what I've read about the native americans and aztecs sacrificing themselves on altars to their many gods. And everyone knows that the Aztecs were a very blood-thirsty people.
Planet has finite capacity to support humans.Violence was natural outcome of competition over limited resources.Fossil fuel energy has temporarily freed us from natural limits on growth & allowed us to be peaceable.Soon we will be out of fossil fuels & fall off cliff.Each gram of fossil carbons burnt damages earth's capacity to sustain future humans.If we continue to burn fossil carbons for 4 more years, we doom planet to venus syndrome;all life incinerated within few centuries.Nuclear,yes pleas
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightenment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightenment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
Sexual promiscuity? God's 'orders' included murdering faithful, loving wives who had only ever 'known' one man. Also, killing their children and leaving alive only some young girls who were fresh for the fucking.
The orders didn't come from God. They came from a man. That's obvious to any neutral observer.
First of all, while this presentation was super convincing, I would argue that the appropriate rebuttal to this very specious and believable fallacy is readily available in the form of the movie 2001 a space odyssey. If that is not sufficient, one could read the book "violence" by slavoj zizek. He makes a great argument, which is that violence today is invisible: It exists implicitly in social systems, so that the relationship between the agent of violence and the victim becomes convoluted.
@happyjack6string I see your point about "invisible violence", I think an example would be how a corporation can open a sweatshop in an impoverished country and actually increase work-related stress and injuries, and damage the environment and community, etc. in a way that is comparable to war. HOWEVER, I would suggest that a cruder form of this kind of organized exploitation also prevailed in the ancient world - in addition to the "visible" violence.
It's funny how people think that atheist lack morals. Most atheist especially ones that believe in evolution understand that we are only products in our environments and that everyone deserves to be happy. I know i believe that no one is better than anyone else, and that we are beautiful expressions of the universe, life is amazing and should be cherished. I care about others and have great empathy.
@Mikeofdundee1987 OK let's suppose his analysis of hunter-gatherers is wrong. What about the historical evidence? An examination of ancient history clearly shows that violence was much more prominent in at least Western societies. We have murder statistics from the late Middle Ages in England, showing appalling murder rates. We have Ancient Greek graveyards in the Mediterranean almost devoid of male burials. Clearly there has been a stark decline since the beginning of agriculture.
@Vincentaneous or a more effective way of doing it. Have you seen the US military budget? Have you seen the dictatorships the US funds? What Pinker should include is the number of deaths as a result of American policy in his stats. Then we'd have latin america, the middle east and europe included in that list rather than the poor list of stats he offers. I mean in the 1950s america overthrew democracy after democracy to install dictatorships yet pinker elsehwere called that aiding people. lol.
@Mikeofdundee1987 Entirely misses the point. Has the mortality rate due to violence fallen significantly over the court of human history? Of course. This is obvious to anyone, but it is interesting to see a comparison of primitive vs. more modern society.
@SYingling but it has risen. that's the point. The american government erases people so they don't count as deaths. look at operation condor for example. Its going up. Be blind or smug if you want to be but you have no evidence and pinker is discredited in many corners of science and politics now.
@SYingling actually five quick points, a study of 20th century violence begins in 1900 not 1945. The UK (which isn't even representative of Europe) & USA are not a good sample of the worlds pop, Asia for ex: makes up 60% of the worlds population, and Africa 14%. (which due to U.S policy suffer massive poverty with latin america.) Violence is not just blood sheding, it can be military, political or economical. what about nuclear and chemical warfare? This study includes none of these points.
@Mikeofdundee1987 You should have seen the Roman military budget! Or the despots that Rome funded. Consider the number of deaths as a result of the policies of countless kingdoms and empires in the ancient and medieval worlds: The Welsh, the Picts, the various central Asian nomads, etc. - other peoples who are usually overlooked in the history of oppression in the ancient world. Rome put down countless democratic uprisings to maintain their power. America's oppression is an improvement also.
@Vincentaneous what was the roman military budget? can you produce that figure? By the way Romans killed their total over 1000 years, european history post-rome was from 0bc to 1900bc is 1900 bc, we are talking about the death toll in only one hundred years (from modernity and post-modernity) 1900-2000. not 1000 or 1900 years but 100 years. And as I said already, a study of 20th century violence starts in 1900 and should include Africa and Asia since they make up most of the worlds land mass.
@Mikeofdundee1987 The Roman Empire lasted about 700 years and it spent most of its GDP on its military - much more than us. If you compare the deaths caused by war and exploitation from 100 BCE to 1 CE, based on our best historical estimates, the per capita death toll would be worse than the 20th century. When the Romans sacked Syracuse, they literally killed about half the entire population in one day. [continued]
That's about 400,000 people. Scaled up to the world population in 1945 that's more than 2X the deaths caused by the Hiroshima blast! And yes the death toll of Hiroshima stretched over decades after - but so did the deaths caused by disease and starvation and the deprivations of slavery in the wake of the Roman conquest. Most deaths in ancient warfare were caused by disease, and civilian populations were not spared. You can dig through these numbers all day and they only paint a bleaker picture.
@Vincentaneous "Most deaths in ancient warfare were caused by disease", much of that disease could not be controlled for, as in the plague. Modern day, we have people in labs making chemical and biological warfare. You still have not answered my point about the small sample used (excluding the two biggest continents) or American and IMF policy in africa, latin america and asia.
@Mikeofdundee1987 I DID answer the point about American and IMF policy: They are benign compared to the policies of imperial powers in the past that abused weak or indigenous peoples. Also, let's suppose that the small sample size only shows 1/4 of all the violence in the world because it leaves out Asia, Africa, etc. The numbers are still not on your side. The various forms of homicide in the ancient were so prevalent and extreme that even tripling the modern figure still shows an improvement.
About chemical and biological warfare: Humans are showing astonishing restraint in the use of chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. The events where they have been used have been critically examined, banned, or condemned - e.g., World War I, the American nuclear attacks on Japan, Saddam Hussein's use of nerve gas on Kurdish civilians. When you compare the terrifying capacity we have now to wipe out entire nations to our actual history of using them, it gives one great hope.
@Vincentaneous astonishing restraint? Are you aware that because of the volume of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons used by the American army, cancer and other diseases in the Iraq are significantly higher than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the USA used nuclear weapons in Japan? Do you know children are being born with parts of their faces or body missing? That America spends about $4.4trillion a year on this stuff? Do you research anything or just use someone elses ignorant arguements?
@Mikeofdundee1987 Let's suppose that disease related to NBC weapons in Iraq and Japan are 100 times the normal rate, and one out of every 4 children in Japan is born without any arms and legs. That is still remarkable constraint since the use of these weapons has been so localized and isolated. It's a matter of proportion, comparison, and relative judgments. Having 10,000 children born with deformities is a good thing, compared to 100,000 children being born with deformities.
@Vincentaneous Instead of thinking only 10,000 children born with deformities is a good thing why don't get involved and try to stop children being born like that in the first place?? The mask slipped of there didn't it? I still stand by the facts that Pinker used a poor sample, didn't mention foreign policy, the investment to improve chemical warfare. I also believe he is an inductivist in this clip only looking for things that support him, this is a very poor example of science and enquiry.
@Vincentaneous Also, I have to reject your $4 trillion figure: The total federal spending budget is $3 trillion dollars, and the bulk of that goes to non-defense spending. I think you may have meant to say $4 BILLION dollars, which sounds more correct. And even this is astonishingly low: North Americans spend half a billion dollars on chewing gum every year.
@andrewelf yep it is. Aside from not mentioning foreign policy and thinking propaganda equals peace, his data is discredited. Google, steven pinker stinker psychology today and also get the book sex at dawn.
Mr Pinker is just another modern day sophist and his pseudo-explanations are a whole lot of hooey that befuddle other people by constructing false data and presenting them as a scientific fact that is seemingly irrefutable. Who is he really? Not a philosopher or a scientist but only a linguistic maven who uses rhetorical gimmicks to dismiss ideas that he does not like.
@AquaticApe1 Structural violence is real and a real problem, but structural violence has ALSO decreased. Examine the social systems of ancient Rome or pharaonic Egypt, and you will see structural violence that would make Henry Kissinger or Donald Rumsfeld or any CEO cringe.
Pinker is a moron. A liar too. His data is skewed and some of it made up, and his take of the bible verses is absolutely bonkers. A lot of people will hate on me for saying this, but that is because many atheists or general Christian haters love their misconceptions of the Bible, and will defend them to the end, because they seemingly do the arguing for them by making the bible seem barbaric. But the virgins were not kept alive to be raped, they were not raped, and there is no proof they were.
@rabidfox1 Concubinage and the taking of women as war prizes in the ancient Semitic world is well documented both in sources contemporary to it (including but hardly limited to the Bible) as well as independent anthropological studies. You're in denial and I doubt you've ever seriously investigated the topic. Taking off the blinders would probably implode your tiny world.
@rabidfox1 So your imbecilic take is that *perhaps the virgins weren't raped, so that makes the rest perfectly acceptable? The bible IS barbaric, and I would add absurd, misogynistic and chocked full of total irrational bullshit...as is the Koran, The Book of Mormon, and every other cult that uses the fear of retribution to keep their sheep in line. It IS possible to be a good and moral person WITHOUT living in fear of a vengeful imaginary deity...ask any Atheist.
@rabidfox1 "But the virgins were not kept alive to be raped, they were not raped, and there is no proof they were."
Prove that they weren't based on the fact that orders to slaughter everyone but a small group defined by their stating of not having had sex were spared.
@rabidfox1 what if jesus was actually indoctrinated with buddhism and various eastern faith elements during his missing years from age 14 to i think 29? the asians accept science as part of the balance and harmony of nature, as theories such as evolution coincide very well with reincarnation
I ask where is your proof that Jesus was "missing" for 15 years? People always talk about this time when Jesus was "missing", and they like to pretend He went off to learn Buddhism, but there is no real evidence that He was "missing" from 14-29. The Bible says little about His childhood, it skims through it, and some time is skipped over in His young adulthood, but we know He studied the Law -the Jewish Law. He never mentioned any Buddhists, but He did mention prophets in Israel.
With an early comment about the enlightenment being England and Holland I would say that he is wrong as the enlightenment is reputed to have been started in Edinburgh Scotland.
People who pick up sticks on the sabbath deserve to be stoned to death. I have patience for all kinds of immoral behavior, but one thing I just cannot tolerate is people who pick up sticks on the sabbath.
How does the "fractal phenomenon" relate to the "decrease of violence"? Someone explain this to me, because im starting to feel that he is just trying to sound smart at the expense of actually making sense.
Fractals, as I'm sure you're aware, can be looked at on different levels and show a very similar (not necessarily exactly the same) pattern at those dfferent levels. He's just using it as a piece of poetry to show what he sees as a decline in levels of violence over differing levels of time.
I think :)
Incidentally, & poss not coincidentally there's a nice song about social fractals called 'Hey Syd' on my page. (Sorry for spamming)
He must live in a gated community. His numbers by his own admission only include those of the 1st and 2nd World Wars. He does not take into account the millions slaughtered by Colonial Wars and Policy. The millions murdered, raped and beaten in the 20th Century. His numbers are so far off as to be irrelevant.
@SHIBBYiPANDA No. The basis of the analysis is a Millennium Theory shown in the huge graph one can see behind the speaker. academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html would be good start to see the violence he is leaving out. Not included in the link is the European Colonial Wars of the 20th Century(Algeria, French Indochina, Dutch East Indies etc). Then there is the remote slaughter. The sanctions imposed on Iraq that killed millions is an example of that.
@SHIBBYiPANDA errr.... I watched the vid? His graph does not include it? He specifically equates the levels of violence as those only caused by War in the utterances from his mouth?
@BuckRushisGOP PInker points out that modern wars kills more people (of course) but the percentage is drastically lower. All evidence suggests that our ancestors warred constantly, killing (and eating) others regularly. Marxism slaughtered up to 100 million but populations were barely affected.
Ancient violence was on a scale like that of Armenia, Cambodia or Rwanda. As for colonial "wars", from 1850-1950 Africa's population increased 110% - more than Asia or Europe.
@smb12321 There are many causes of violence. Pinker leaves many out. Again, his numbers are irrelevant as to total number of victims due to violence. His "study" is based on levels of violence. Yet only here he is focusing on the numbers from War.
@BuckRushisGOP What is your point? Violence is low today no matter how you slice it. From 1900 - 2000, pop increased 4.3 Billion. 190 million died from war - ~ 4% (over half civilians).
Including all violence, approx 1.6 million folks die each year (out of 6 billion +). Half are suicides. US slavery killed ~18 mil, Arab slavery ~19 mil. Genghis Kahn slaughtered approx 75% of north China, the 30 years war took 1/4 Germans. Not sure what your point is about "other" violence
@BuckRushisGOP im surprised such statistics ranging from 10000 years to present can even be found. not saying i disagree with him but i question his sources from that graph.
@BuckRushisGOP Colonial exploitations, genocides, and deliberate starvation was a normal occurrence in the ancient world. Yes, those are problems today, but even this kind of "remote slaughter" has dramatically decreased.
Peace and prosperity at the centre of an empire - say, like ancient Rome - often involves perpetual war at the frontier, for a great range of reasons. Pinker may be right about the species, but we would not know it from the statistics he uses. He only talks about the countries that controlled the rest of the planet openly a hundred years ago, and which continue to control most of it. Much of the warfare in the 3rd world, and the poverty and violence of its slums, has this dynamic behind it.
I lik pinker for his work but he seems rathr uncomfortable and awkward with public speaking it almost makes me feel bad for him just watching, kind of detracts form his points a little.
I can easily see how murder and less so violence within society may have declined, but what of violence of one society against another? I'm interested in seeing how he accounts for the wars of the twentieth century? And what of the threat of violence, as in that of totalitarian society? Is less violence always a good thing? I hope his argument is more then a feel-good exercise pretending we're at some 'end of history' pinnacle in human social development; cause society's got a long way to go...
@Tuathalful About 6,000 people died the first day of the Normandy invasion - and this is considered a bloodbath. Hannibal killed at least 10,000 Romans in one day (some sources inflate this to 40,000 - straining credulity), and population sizes were tiny compared to now. War between societies is much, much, much less violent now than in the ancient world. And fewer people live under oppressive governments and threats of violence now than ever in history. Ancient history is extremely brutal.
@wozzek22 You think Pinker, Dr. also uses the type of market driven numbers that police use to lower crime rates and Wall St uses to justified their rarefied excesses?
Seems like this pseudo-scientist needs some evolving to do. But how could he in his comfy Ivy League bubble? Natural selection will take care of the unsustainable system that led to his clueless attributes.
I'm not saying he's right but a lot of the things I believed in the past were proved wrong and had caused me, and others, a lot of unnecessary suffering. I produced an uninteresting supply of negative bravado BS talk which allowed me to avoid working on a solution. I prefer throwing out the trash no matter how much I feel the need to cling to it-especially if I get a better life because of it. violence for me is the product of a distracted and busy mind. I can produce one of those in a minute
To have an informed response It would probably help to look at the whole presentation: "Steven Pinker on the myth of violence" From TED.com (20 minutes) or even read his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He has spent a lot of his life working on this-We on the other hand often write after a few minutes thought.
@wozzek22 what are you talking about? While I might concede the point about the atomic weapons, it is known that more people died in fire bombing and regular bombing during the war then the atomic bombs did combined.
As to drones: drones radically decrease the chance of being killed. War has been sanitized, not just for the killer, but for the innocent. A drone can hone in and kill a single man, or destroy a single building- something that is incredibly new.
OK! Now take that "male deaths due to warfare" chart and use absolut number of deaths instead of percentages and see how the chart gets inverted!!
Yes, maybe we are "living the most peaceful time in our species' existence in relative terms"... so what? Should we keep making wars since "in percentages" even when other 1.9 Billion ppl die due to war we still be doing well "living in the most peaceful time"?
Personally I don't care about what those percentages say: a human life is a human life, and if you take the absolute numbers of people that have died due to war since the past century the numbers surpass by far the numbers of lives lost due to war since humans appeared!! We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!!
@jrvillela He is not saying we shouldnt do everything in our power to stop violent deaths, by showing the decline in the percentage it becomes possible to feel optimistic
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! HTF is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
@jrvillela Well consider this scenario, a city of 1 mill people has 20 murders a year, then a century later that same city has 6 million people and and there are 28 murders a year, this clearly means that the city has become safer. You must consider scale. Its like you are saying that NYC is as dangerous as Detroit since they both have about 400 murders per year, when in reality NYC is a much safer place to be then Detroit when you consider the size difference
@johndoe77774444 I do get that: these times are "relatively" safer, so what? Based on information like the one of Ur example U can decide if to live in Detroit or in NYC, but U can't choose to live in this time or in prehistoric times, so really: what's the use of that info? Maybe U should give it to the U.S. government so they finally cut down their damn military spending down to zero! Do U think they will say:"yah, right we live in much more safer times, hence we are getting rid of the army!"
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! How the heck is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
Science has not to date answered one basic question. It is quoted in the Bible, but everyone thinks of doctrine: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD This has rarely been explained or advanced. There is something which creates human intelligence and it is not a subjective being any more than these words you are reading have conscious intelligence.
@AndroidPolitician Perhaps a handful of tribes throughout history were devoid of violence, but most tribes were extremely violent. For example, the Aztecs would sometimes make tens of thousands of blood sacrifices in a single year, usually on captured prisoners, and often involving torture before the heart was ripped out to complete the sacrifice and appease the gods.
I'm not sure about most but even in tribes that were violent it was usually symbolic and based on ritual similar to governments today. For instance, the Mae Enga attack in large groups based on grievances after a long ritual process.
My point is that Pinker is essentially trying to prove violence is an innate human function and so that war is just a part of "human nature".
@AndroidPolitician He is absolutely correct. Cultural norms and values that have been modified over the centuries cause humans to disdain violence, but it is very much a part of our primal nature.
It's not "human nature" in the sense that there is no biological predisposition to war, wars and violence are based on the environment which is why some tribes in dangerous environments were violent while others were incredibly peaceful.
@AndroidPolitician There are biological predispositions to war. Anger, greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, aggression etc. are all innate human emotions that predispose to violence and war. Our intelligence allows us to wage war at a much more sophisticated level than other animals.
That's about as accurate as saying there's a biological predisposition for government based on the human capacity to create and organize.
The fact is, there has never been a spontaneous war that's just based on human anger just like how there has never been a spontaneous government, it's a long planned event done for environmental purposes.
Plus it would mean many early societies as well as contemporary such as Anabaptists and kibbutzes are "inhuman".
@AndroidPolitician There is a biological predisposition for government based on human capacity to create and organize. Humans are biological machines. The line where biology ends and culture begins is very not well demarcated.
Well then I don't think you understand what "human nature" means because by that logic anything is within human nature and all those civilizations thousands of years ago where actually inhuman since they didn't have governments or war.
Human nature is how people "naturally" act or gratitude towards etc. without any planning or environmental cause. So yes, anger and creation are human nature, violence/war and government are not.
@AndroidPolitician Just because something is part of human nature doesn't mean that every human has to practice it to a high degree. There is great variation among humans and the complexity of our species leads to many exceptions.
And planning and environmental interaction are part of human nature. You cannot separate them. Humans are not isolated entities. We react to our each other and to our environment. It is human nature.
Human nature is what's universal and innate, for instance everyone feels happiness, anger etc. but not all societies have governments or war or even violence.
Saying that something like governments etc. are "human nature" is equivalent to if there were societies of thousands of people who didn't feel emotions since emotion is part of human nature.
We were actually talking about a lot of things but sure.
Violence is using force to cause damage injury or death and in some societies it's essentially non-existent, like in modern Anabaptists or some Amerindian tribes who didn't understand the concept of combat and aggression when the settlers arrived. People universally have anger but it's not universal to express it through violence.
This is opposite what the Zeitgeist movie says. Some professor in Zeitgeist says that hunter-gatherer groups had almost no violence. So which one is correct? I'm gonna go with extreme violence in hunter-gatherer groups from what I've read about the native americans and aztecs sacrificing themselves on altars to their many gods. And everyone knows that the Aztecs were a very blood-thirsty people.
Planet has finite capacity to support humans.Violence was natural outcome of competition over limited resources.Fossil fuel energy has temporarily freed us from natural limits on growth & allowed us to be peaceable.Soon we will be out of fossil fuels & fall off cliff.Each gram of fossil carbons burnt damages earth's capacity to sustain future humans.If we continue to burn fossil carbons for 4 more years, we doom planet to venus syndrome;all life incinerated within few centuries.Nuclear,yes pleas
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightenment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightenment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
Sexual promiscuity? God's 'orders' included murdering faithful, loving wives who had only ever 'known' one man. Also, killing their children and leaving alive only some young girls who were fresh for the fucking.
The orders didn't come from God. They came from a man. That's obvious to any neutral observer.
First of all, while this presentation was super convincing, I would argue that the appropriate rebuttal to this very specious and believable fallacy is readily available in the form of the movie 2001 a space odyssey. If that is not sufficient, one could read the book "violence" by slavoj zizek. He makes a great argument, which is that violence today is invisible: It exists implicitly in social systems, so that the relationship between the agent of violence and the victim becomes convoluted.
@happyjack6string I see your point about "invisible violence", I think an example would be how a corporation can open a sweatshop in an impoverished country and actually increase work-related stress and injuries, and damage the environment and community, etc. in a way that is comparable to war. HOWEVER, I would suggest that a cruder form of this kind of organized exploitation also prevailed in the ancient world - in addition to the "visible" violence.
It's funny how people think that atheist lack morals. Most atheist especially ones that believe in evolution understand that we are only products in our environments and that everyone deserves to be happy. I know i believe that no one is better than anyone else, and that we are beautiful expressions of the universe, life is amazing and should be cherished. I care about others and have great empathy.
@Mikeofdundee1987 OK let's suppose his analysis of hunter-gatherers is wrong. What about the historical evidence? An examination of ancient history clearly shows that violence was much more prominent in at least Western societies. We have murder statistics from the late Middle Ages in England, showing appalling murder rates. We have Ancient Greek graveyards in the Mediterranean almost devoid of male burials. Clearly there has been a stark decline since the beginning of agriculture.
@Vincentaneous or a more effective way of doing it. Have you seen the US military budget? Have you seen the dictatorships the US funds? What Pinker should include is the number of deaths as a result of American policy in his stats. Then we'd have latin america, the middle east and europe included in that list rather than the poor list of stats he offers. I mean in the 1950s america overthrew democracy after democracy to install dictatorships yet pinker elsehwere called that aiding people. lol.
@Mikeofdundee1987 Entirely misses the point. Has the mortality rate due to violence fallen significantly over the court of human history? Of course. This is obvious to anyone, but it is interesting to see a comparison of primitive vs. more modern society.
@SYingling but it has risen. that's the point. The american government erases people so they don't count as deaths. look at operation condor for example. Its going up. Be blind or smug if you want to be but you have no evidence and pinker is discredited in many corners of science and politics now.
@SYingling actually five quick points, a study of 20th century violence begins in 1900 not 1945. The UK (which isn't even representative of Europe) & USA are not a good sample of the worlds pop, Asia for ex: makes up 60% of the worlds population, and Africa 14%. (which due to U.S policy suffer massive poverty with latin america.) Violence is not just blood sheding, it can be military, political or economical. what about nuclear and chemical warfare? This study includes none of these points.
@Mikeofdundee1987 You should have seen the Roman military budget! Or the despots that Rome funded. Consider the number of deaths as a result of the policies of countless kingdoms and empires in the ancient and medieval worlds: The Welsh, the Picts, the various central Asian nomads, etc. - other peoples who are usually overlooked in the history of oppression in the ancient world. Rome put down countless democratic uprisings to maintain their power. America's oppression is an improvement also.
@Vincentaneous what was the roman military budget? can you produce that figure? By the way Romans killed their total over 1000 years, european history post-rome was from 0bc to 1900bc is 1900 bc, we are talking about the death toll in only one hundred years (from modernity and post-modernity) 1900-2000. not 1000 or 1900 years but 100 years. And as I said already, a study of 20th century violence starts in 1900 and should include Africa and Asia since they make up most of the worlds land mass.
This is promising to hear, looks like there may be hope for man kind. I would also be interested in hearing the rest of this lecture
enlightenoneself 2 weeks ago
@wozzek22 You think Pinker, Dr. also uses the type of market driven numbers that police use to lower crime rates and Wall St uses to justified their rarefied excesses?
malkooth 2 months ago
Seems like this pseudo-scientist needs some evolving to do. But how could he in his comfy Ivy League bubble? Natural selection will take care of the unsustainable system that led to his clueless attributes.
Evolving001 2 months ago
So if you knowingly design an economic policy that leads to the deaths of millions of people, does that count as violence?
Alimantado91 3 months ago
@Alimantado91 I believe, yes.
aeiou99999 3 months ago
Damn, amongst our daily headlines, this is the best news I've heard in awhile!
ouluvme2 4 months ago
I'm not saying he's right but a lot of the things I believed in the past were proved wrong and had caused me, and others, a lot of unnecessary suffering. I produced an uninteresting supply of negative bravado BS talk which allowed me to avoid working on a solution. I prefer throwing out the trash no matter how much I feel the need to cling to it-especially if I get a better life because of it. violence for me is the product of a distracted and busy mind. I can produce one of those in a minute
roton89 4 months ago
To have an informed response It would probably help to look at the whole presentation: "Steven Pinker on the myth of violence" From TED.com (20 minutes) or even read his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He has spent a lot of his life working on this-We on the other hand often write after a few minutes thought.
roton89 4 months ago
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roton89 4 months ago
Oh those evil Pick-up-a-stick-on-Sunday people - they shall burn in hell for eternitayyy!
tokotokotoko3 4 months ago
Give me violence over inequality any day.
TommyMarxable 4 months ago
@TommyMarxable
I presume you mean violence against other people, not yourself
RachelLesbianGarland 3 months ago
@wozzek22 what are you talking about? While I might concede the point about the atomic weapons, it is known that more people died in fire bombing and regular bombing during the war then the atomic bombs did combined.
As to drones: drones radically decrease the chance of being killed. War has been sanitized, not just for the killer, but for the innocent. A drone can hone in and kill a single man, or destroy a single building- something that is incredibly new.
Ariancaldon 5 months ago
OK! Now take that "male deaths due to warfare" chart and use absolut number of deaths instead of percentages and see how the chart gets inverted!!
Yes, maybe we are "living the most peaceful time in our species' existence in relative terms"... so what? Should we keep making wars since "in percentages" even when other 1.9 Billion ppl die due to war we still be doing well "living in the most peaceful time"?
jrvillela 7 months ago
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jrvillela 7 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Personally I don't care about what those percentages say: a human life is a human life, and if you take the absolute numbers of people that have died due to war since the past century the numbers surpass by far the numbers of lives lost due to war since humans appeared!! We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!!
jrvillela 7 months ago
@jrvillela He is not saying we shouldnt do everything in our power to stop violent deaths, by showing the decline in the percentage it becomes possible to feel optimistic
johndoe77774444 7 months ago
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! HTF is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
jrvillela 7 months ago
@jrvillela Well consider this scenario, a city of 1 mill people has 20 murders a year, then a century later that same city has 6 million people and and there are 28 murders a year, this clearly means that the city has become safer. You must consider scale. Its like you are saying that NYC is as dangerous as Detroit since they both have about 400 murders per year, when in reality NYC is a much safer place to be then Detroit when you consider the size difference
johndoe77774444 7 months ago
@johndoe77774444 I do get that: these times are "relatively" safer, so what? Based on information like the one of Ur example U can decide if to live in Detroit or in NYC, but U can't choose to live in this time or in prehistoric times, so really: what's the use of that info? Maybe U should give it to the U.S. government so they finally cut down their damn military spending down to zero! Do U think they will say:"yah, right we live in much more safer times, hence we are getting rid of the army!"
jrvillela 7 months ago
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! How the heck is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
jrvillela 7 months ago
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jrvillela 7 months ago
Science has not to date answered one basic question. It is quoted in the Bible, but everyone thinks of doctrine: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD This has rarely been explained or advanced. There is something which creates human intelligence and it is not a subjective being any more than these words you are reading have conscious intelligence.
martenlander 8 months ago
There are lies, bloody lies & statistics
auriculi 8 months ago
Well it seems like Pinker forgot about various Native American tribes where violence was essentially non-existent.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician Perhaps a handful of tribes throughout history were devoid of violence, but most tribes were extremely violent. For example, the Aztecs would sometimes make tens of thousands of blood sacrifices in a single year, usually on captured prisoners, and often involving torture before the heart was ripped out to complete the sacrifice and appease the gods.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
I'm not sure about most but even in tribes that were violent it was usually symbolic and based on ritual similar to governments today. For instance, the Mae Enga attack in large groups based on grievances after a long ritual process.
My point is that Pinker is essentially trying to prove violence is an innate human function and so that war is just a part of "human nature".
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician He is absolutely correct. Cultural norms and values that have been modified over the centuries cause humans to disdain violence, but it is very much a part of our primal nature.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
It's not "human nature" in the sense that there is no biological predisposition to war, wars and violence are based on the environment which is why some tribes in dangerous environments were violent while others were incredibly peaceful.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician There are biological predispositions to war. Anger, greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, aggression etc. are all innate human emotions that predispose to violence and war. Our intelligence allows us to wage war at a much more sophisticated level than other animals.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
That's about as accurate as saying there's a biological predisposition for government based on the human capacity to create and organize.
The fact is, there has never been a spontaneous war that's just based on human anger just like how there has never been a spontaneous government, it's a long planned event done for environmental purposes.
Plus it would mean many early societies as well as contemporary such as Anabaptists and kibbutzes are "inhuman".
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician There is a biological predisposition for government based on human capacity to create and organize. Humans are biological machines. The line where biology ends and culture begins is very not well demarcated.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
Well then I don't think you understand what "human nature" means because by that logic anything is within human nature and all those civilizations thousands of years ago where actually inhuman since they didn't have governments or war.
Human nature is how people "naturally" act or gratitude towards etc. without any planning or environmental cause. So yes, anger and creation are human nature, violence/war and government are not.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician Just because something is part of human nature doesn't mean that every human has to practice it to a high degree. There is great variation among humans and the complexity of our species leads to many exceptions.
And planning and environmental interaction are part of human nature. You cannot separate them. Humans are not isolated entities. We react to our each other and to our environment. It is human nature.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
Human nature is what's universal and innate, for instance everyone feels happiness, anger etc. but not all societies have governments or war or even violence.
Saying that something like governments etc. are "human nature" is equivalent to if there were societies of thousands of people who didn't feel emotions since emotion is part of human nature.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician We are talking about a predisposition to violence
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
We were actually talking about a lot of things but sure.
Violence is using force to cause damage injury or death and in some societies it's essentially non-existent, like in modern Anabaptists or some Amerindian tribes who didn't understand the concept of combat and aggression when the settlers arrived. People universally have anger but it's not universal to express it through violence.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
This is opposite what the Zeitgeist movie says. Some professor in Zeitgeist says that hunter-gatherer groups had almost no violence. So which one is correct? I'm gonna go with extreme violence in hunter-gatherer groups from what I've read about the native americans and aztecs sacrificing themselves on altars to their many gods. And everyone knows that the Aztecs were a very blood-thirsty people.
nonyanb09 9 months ago
Planet has finite capacity to support humans.Violence was natural outcome of competition over limited resources.Fossil fuel energy has temporarily freed us from natural limits on growth & allowed us to be peaceable.Soon we will be out of fossil fuels & fall off cliff.Each gram of fossil carbons burnt damages earth's capacity to sustain future humans.If we continue to burn fossil carbons for 4 more years, we doom planet to venus syndrome;all life incinerated within few centuries.Nuclear,yes pleas
jffryh 9 months ago
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightenment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightenment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
charles1952ify 9 months ago
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
charles1952ify 9 months ago
@MercifulKimJongIl
Sexual promiscuity? God's 'orders' included murdering faithful, loving wives who had only ever 'known' one man. Also, killing their children and leaving alive only some young girls who were fresh for the fucking.
The orders didn't come from God. They came from a man. That's obvious to any neutral observer.
taicleis 10 months ago
Just remember, the graph he show's are a PERCENTAGE, not ACTUAL male deaths
MrRudale 11 months ago
Badly titled video.
squizz222 11 months ago 23
First of all, while this presentation was super convincing, I would argue that the appropriate rebuttal to this very specious and believable fallacy is readily available in the form of the movie 2001 a space odyssey. If that is not sufficient, one could read the book "violence" by slavoj zizek. He makes a great argument, which is that violence today is invisible: It exists implicitly in social systems, so that the relationship between the agent of violence and the victim becomes convoluted.
happyjack6string 11 months ago
@happyjack6string I see your point about "invisible violence", I think an example would be how a corporation can open a sweatshop in an impoverished country and actually increase work-related stress and injuries, and damage the environment and community, etc. in a way that is comparable to war. HOWEVER, I would suggest that a cruder form of this kind of organized exploitation also prevailed in the ancient world - in addition to the "visible" violence.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
It's funny how people think that atheist lack morals. Most atheist especially ones that believe in evolution understand that we are only products in our environments and that everyone deserves to be happy. I know i believe that no one is better than anyone else, and that we are beautiful expressions of the universe, life is amazing and should be cherished. I care about others and have great empathy.
MsAgnosticatheist 11 months ago
Google "steven pinker stinker psychology today", everything pinker knows it wrong!! Most of his data of war torn society comes from the 1970s LOL
Mikeofdundee1987 11 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 OK let's suppose his analysis of hunter-gatherers is wrong. What about the historical evidence? An examination of ancient history clearly shows that violence was much more prominent in at least Western societies. We have murder statistics from the late Middle Ages in England, showing appalling murder rates. We have Ancient Greek graveyards in the Mediterranean almost devoid of male burials. Clearly there has been a stark decline since the beginning of agriculture.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous or a more effective way of doing it. Have you seen the US military budget? Have you seen the dictatorships the US funds? What Pinker should include is the number of deaths as a result of American policy in his stats. Then we'd have latin america, the middle east and europe included in that list rather than the poor list of stats he offers. I mean in the 1950s america overthrew democracy after democracy to install dictatorships yet pinker elsehwere called that aiding people. lol.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 Entirely misses the point. Has the mortality rate due to violence fallen significantly over the court of human history? Of course. This is obvious to anyone, but it is interesting to see a comparison of primitive vs. more modern society.
SYingling 9 months ago
@SYingling but it has risen. that's the point. The american government erases people so they don't count as deaths. look at operation condor for example. Its going up. Be blind or smug if you want to be but you have no evidence and pinker is discredited in many corners of science and politics now.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@SYingling actually five quick points, a study of 20th century violence begins in 1900 not 1945. The UK (which isn't even representative of Europe) & USA are not a good sample of the worlds pop, Asia for ex: makes up 60% of the worlds population, and Africa 14%. (which due to U.S policy suffer massive poverty with latin america.) Violence is not just blood sheding, it can be military, political or economical. what about nuclear and chemical warfare? This study includes none of these points.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 You should have seen the Roman military budget! Or the despots that Rome funded. Consider the number of deaths as a result of the policies of countless kingdoms and empires in the ancient and medieval worlds: The Welsh, the Picts, the various central Asian nomads, etc. - other peoples who are usually overlooked in the history of oppression in the ancient world. Rome put down countless democratic uprisings to maintain their power. America's oppression is an improvement also.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous what was the roman military budget? can you produce that figure? By the way Romans killed their total over 1000 years, european history post-rome was from 0bc to 1900bc is 1900 bc, we are talking about the death toll in only one hundred years (from modernity and post-modernity) 1900-2000. not 1000 or 1900 years but 100 years. And as I said already, a study of 20th century violence starts in 1900 and should include Africa and Asia since they make up most of the worlds land mass.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 The Roman Empire lasted about 700 years and it spent most of its GDP on its military - much more than us. If you compare the deaths caused by war and exploitation from 100 BCE to 1 CE, based on our best historical estimates, the per capita death toll would be worse than the 20th century. When the Romans sacked Syracuse, they literally killed about half the entire population in one day. [continued]
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
That's about 400,000 people. Scaled up to the world population in 1945 that's more than 2X the deaths caused by the Hiroshima blast! And yes the death toll of Hiroshima stretched over decades after - but so did the deaths caused by disease and starvation and the deprivations of slavery in the wake of the Roman conquest. Most deaths in ancient warfare were caused by disease, and civilian populations were not spared. You can dig through these numbers all day and they only paint a bleaker picture.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous "Most deaths in ancient warfare were caused by disease", much of that disease could not be controlled for, as in the plague. Modern day, we have people in labs making chemical and biological warfare. You still have not answered my point about the small sample used (excluding the two biggest continents) or American and IMF policy in africa, latin america and asia.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 I DID answer the point about American and IMF policy: They are benign compared to the policies of imperial powers in the past that abused weak or indigenous peoples. Also, let's suppose that the small sample size only shows 1/4 of all the violence in the world because it leaves out Asia, Africa, etc. The numbers are still not on your side. The various forms of homicide in the ancient were so prevalent and extreme that even tripling the modern figure still shows an improvement.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
About chemical and biological warfare: Humans are showing astonishing restraint in the use of chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons. The events where they have been used have been critically examined, banned, or condemned - e.g., World War I, the American nuclear attacks on Japan, Saddam Hussein's use of nerve gas on Kurdish civilians. When you compare the terrifying capacity we have now to wipe out entire nations to our actual history of using them, it gives one great hope.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous astonishing restraint? Are you aware that because of the volume of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons used by the American army, cancer and other diseases in the Iraq are significantly higher than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the USA used nuclear weapons in Japan? Do you know children are being born with parts of their faces or body missing? That America spends about $4.4trillion a year on this stuff? Do you research anything or just use someone elses ignorant arguements?
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 Let's suppose that disease related to NBC weapons in Iraq and Japan are 100 times the normal rate, and one out of every 4 children in Japan is born without any arms and legs. That is still remarkable constraint since the use of these weapons has been so localized and isolated. It's a matter of proportion, comparison, and relative judgments. Having 10,000 children born with deformities is a good thing, compared to 100,000 children being born with deformities.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous Instead of thinking only 10,000 children born with deformities is a good thing why don't get involved and try to stop children being born like that in the first place?? The mask slipped of there didn't it? I still stand by the facts that Pinker used a poor sample, didn't mention foreign policy, the investment to improve chemical warfare. I also believe he is an inductivist in this clip only looking for things that support him, this is a very poor example of science and enquiry.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous Also, I have to reject your $4 trillion figure: The total federal spending budget is $3 trillion dollars, and the bulk of that goes to non-defense spending. I think you may have meant to say $4 BILLION dollars, which sounds more correct. And even this is astonishingly low: North Americans spend half a billion dollars on chewing gum every year.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
So based on the title of this video, everything Steve Pinker knows is wrong?
andrewelf 11 months ago 42
@andrewelf yep it is. Aside from not mentioning foreign policy and thinking propaganda equals peace, his data is discredited. Google, steven pinker stinker psychology today and also get the book sex at dawn.
Mikeofdundee1987 11 months ago
Mr Pinker is just another modern day sophist and his pseudo-explanations are a whole lot of hooey that befuddle other people by constructing false data and presenting them as a scientific fact that is seemingly irrefutable. Who is he really? Not a philosopher or a scientist but only a linguistic maven who uses rhetorical gimmicks to dismiss ideas that he does not like.
pawsoned 1 year ago
I wonder, has Pinker considered structural violence in this study? I would argue that he did not.
AquaticApe1 1 year ago
@AquaticApe1 Structural violence is real and a real problem, but structural violence has ALSO decreased. Examine the social systems of ancient Rome or pharaonic Egypt, and you will see structural violence that would make Henry Kissinger or Donald Rumsfeld or any CEO cringe.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
Pinker is a moron. A liar too. His data is skewed and some of it made up, and his take of the bible verses is absolutely bonkers. A lot of people will hate on me for saying this, but that is because many atheists or general Christian haters love their misconceptions of the Bible, and will defend them to the end, because they seemingly do the arguing for them by making the bible seem barbaric. But the virgins were not kept alive to be raped, they were not raped, and there is no proof they were.
rabidfox1 1 year ago
@rabidfox1 Uuuuh isn't slaughtering everyone but virgins still kinda barbaric, even if they weren't raped? lol
Pi11z3ury 1 year ago
@rabidfox1 Concubinage and the taking of women as war prizes in the ancient Semitic world is well documented both in sources contemporary to it (including but hardly limited to the Bible) as well as independent anthropological studies. You're in denial and I doubt you've ever seriously investigated the topic. Taking off the blinders would probably implode your tiny world.
TheElectricTurtle 1 year ago
@rabidfox1 So your imbecilic take is that *perhaps the virgins weren't raped, so that makes the rest perfectly acceptable? The bible IS barbaric, and I would add absurd, misogynistic and chocked full of total irrational bullshit...as is the Koran, The Book of Mormon, and every other cult that uses the fear of retribution to keep their sheep in line. It IS possible to be a good and moral person WITHOUT living in fear of a vengeful imaginary deity...ask any Atheist.
cos2mwiz 11 months ago
@rabidfox1 "But the virgins were not kept alive to be raped, they were not raped, and there is no proof they were."
Prove that they weren't based on the fact that orders to slaughter everyone but a small group defined by their stating of not having had sex were spared.
I'll be holding my breath.
strapingyounglad 11 months ago
@strapingyounglad Please read Deuteronomy 21:10-14 ; Deteronomy 22:23-29 ; Leviticus 15 ; Leviticus 19:20-22
they weren't too fond of sexual promiscuity.
MercifulKimJongIl 11 months ago
@rabidfox1 what if jesus was actually indoctrinated with buddhism and various eastern faith elements during his missing years from age 14 to i think 29? the asians accept science as part of the balance and harmony of nature, as theories such as evolution coincide very well with reincarnation
RaptorWizard 11 months ago
@RaptorWizard
I ask where is your proof that Jesus was "missing" for 15 years? People always talk about this time when Jesus was "missing", and they like to pretend He went off to learn Buddhism, but there is no real evidence that He was "missing" from 14-29. The Bible says little about His childhood, it skims through it, and some time is skipped over in His young adulthood, but we know He studied the Law -the Jewish Law. He never mentioned any Buddhists, but He did mention prophets in Israel.
rabidfox1 9 months ago
With an early comment about the enlightenment being England and Holland I would say that he is wrong as the enlightenment is reputed to have been started in Edinburgh Scotland.
charles1952ify 1 year ago
@charles1952ify The Enlightenment did not start in any one place.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
"Sex at Dawn" shows clearly Pinker's fallacious data.
bengal97 1 year ago
People who pick up sticks on the sabbath deserve to be stoned to death. I have patience for all kinds of immoral behavior, but one thing I just cannot tolerate is people who pick up sticks on the sabbath.
Kopernikus77 1 year ago
@Kopernikus77 Wouldn't you classify stoning someone as work to? If anything it's more work than picking up sticks.
Atheist616666 1 year ago
@Atheist616666 ha ha ha, very true! People who pick up sticks on the sabbath should not be stoned until Monday!
Kopernikus77 5 days ago
How does the "fractal phenomenon" relate to the "decrease of violence"? Someone explain this to me, because im starting to feel that he is just trying to sound smart at the expense of actually making sense.
triforcelink 1 year ago
@triforcelink
He explains the relevance in the same sentence.
Fractals, as I'm sure you're aware, can be looked at on different levels and show a very similar (not necessarily exactly the same) pattern at those dfferent levels. He's just using it as a piece of poetry to show what he sees as a decline in levels of violence over differing levels of time.
I think :)
Incidentally, & poss not coincidentally there's a nice song about social fractals called 'Hey Syd' on my page. (Sorry for spamming)
weavehole 1 year ago
i don't know if I'd say the Bible says to rape virgins of ur enemies but i guess that's kind of what it would be
SHIBBYiPANDA 1 year ago
He must live in a gated community. His numbers by his own admission only include those of the 1st and 2nd World Wars. He does not take into account the millions slaughtered by Colonial Wars and Policy. The millions murdered, raped and beaten in the 20th Century. His numbers are so far off as to be irrelevant.
BuckRushisGOP 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP thwhat colonial wars are you talking about? the revolutionary war?
SHIBBYiPANDA 1 year ago
@SHIBBYiPANDA No. The basis of the analysis is a Millennium Theory shown in the huge graph one can see behind the speaker. academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html would be good start to see the violence he is leaving out. Not included in the link is the European Colonial Wars of the 20th Century(Algeria, French Indochina, Dutch East Indies etc). Then there is the remote slaughter. The sanctions imposed on Iraq that killed millions is an example of that.
BuckRushisGOP 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP how do u know he is leaving that out?
SHIBBYiPANDA 1 year ago
@SHIBBYiPANDA errr.... I watched the vid? His graph does not include it? He specifically equates the levels of violence as those only caused by War in the utterances from his mouth?
BuckRushisGOP 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP ya i see your point.
SHIBBYiPANDA 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP PInker points out that modern wars kills more people (of course) but the percentage is drastically lower. All evidence suggests that our ancestors warred constantly, killing (and eating) others regularly. Marxism slaughtered up to 100 million but populations were barely affected.
Ancient violence was on a scale like that of Armenia, Cambodia or Rwanda. As for colonial "wars", from 1850-1950 Africa's population increased 110% - more than Asia or Europe.
smb12321 1 year ago
@smb12321 There are many causes of violence. Pinker leaves many out. Again, his numbers are irrelevant as to total number of victims due to violence. His "study" is based on levels of violence. Yet only here he is focusing on the numbers from War.
BuckRushisGOP 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP What is your point? Violence is low today no matter how you slice it. From 1900 - 2000, pop increased 4.3 Billion. 190 million died from war - ~ 4% (over half civilians).
Including all violence, approx 1.6 million folks die each year (out of 6 billion +). Half are suicides. US slavery killed ~18 mil, Arab slavery ~19 mil. Genghis Kahn slaughtered approx 75% of north China, the 30 years war took 1/4 Germans. Not sure what your point is about "other" violence
smb12321 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP im surprised such statistics ranging from 10000 years to present can even be found. not saying i disagree with him but i question his sources from that graph.
Igneous01 1 year ago
@BuckRushisGOP Colonial exploitations, genocides, and deliberate starvation was a normal occurrence in the ancient world. Yes, those are problems today, but even this kind of "remote slaughter" has dramatically decreased.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
Peace and prosperity at the centre of an empire - say, like ancient Rome - often involves perpetual war at the frontier, for a great range of reasons. Pinker may be right about the species, but we would not know it from the statistics he uses. He only talks about the countries that controlled the rest of the planet openly a hundred years ago, and which continue to control most of it. Much of the warfare in the 3rd world, and the poverty and violence of its slums, has this dynamic behind it.
parhhesia 1 year ago
Yes, when the statistics are ballooned to present day, the Holocaust means next to nothing. Try telling that to Jews, Israelis and Zionists.
JohnnyRock2000 1 year ago
If the quote is correct the statement was "kill all the males that exist, and the women too, but keep the virgins."
JohnnyRock2000 1 year ago
Typical unthinking atheist.
jonesgerard 1 year ago
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It's a kind of guide to navigate future human evolution. I've described it in my video.
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TedDGPoulos 1 year ago
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PeeGeeBeeDee 1 year ago
I lik pinker for his work but he seems rathr uncomfortable and awkward with public speaking it almost makes me feel bad for him just watching, kind of detracts form his points a little.
dwaynedibbly 1 year ago
I can easily see how murder and less so violence within society may have declined, but what of violence of one society against another? I'm interested in seeing how he accounts for the wars of the twentieth century? And what of the threat of violence, as in that of totalitarian society? Is less violence always a good thing? I hope his argument is more then a feel-good exercise pretending we're at some 'end of history' pinnacle in human social development; cause society's got a long way to go...
Tuathalful 1 year ago
@Tuathalful About 6,000 people died the first day of the Normandy invasion - and this is considered a bloodbath. Hannibal killed at least 10,000 Romans in one day (some sources inflate this to 40,000 - straining credulity), and population sizes were tiny compared to now. War between societies is much, much, much less violent now than in the ancient world. And fewer people live under oppressive governments and threats of violence now than ever in history. Ancient history is extremely brutal.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
This is promising to hear, looks like there may be hope for man kind. I would also be interested in hearing the rest of this lecture
enlightenoneself 2 weeks ago
@wozzek22 You think Pinker, Dr. also uses the type of market driven numbers that police use to lower crime rates and Wall St uses to justified their rarefied excesses?
malkooth 2 months ago
Seems like this pseudo-scientist needs some evolving to do. But how could he in his comfy Ivy League bubble? Natural selection will take care of the unsustainable system that led to his clueless attributes.
Evolving001 2 months ago
So if you knowingly design an economic policy that leads to the deaths of millions of people, does that count as violence?
Alimantado91 3 months ago
@Alimantado91 I believe, yes.
aeiou99999 3 months ago
Damn, amongst our daily headlines, this is the best news I've heard in awhile!
ouluvme2 4 months ago
I'm not saying he's right but a lot of the things I believed in the past were proved wrong and had caused me, and others, a lot of unnecessary suffering. I produced an uninteresting supply of negative bravado BS talk which allowed me to avoid working on a solution. I prefer throwing out the trash no matter how much I feel the need to cling to it-especially if I get a better life because of it. violence for me is the product of a distracted and busy mind. I can produce one of those in a minute
roton89 4 months ago
To have an informed response It would probably help to look at the whole presentation: "Steven Pinker on the myth of violence" From TED.com (20 minutes) or even read his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He has spent a lot of his life working on this-We on the other hand often write after a few minutes thought.
roton89 4 months ago
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roton89 4 months ago
Oh those evil Pick-up-a-stick-on-Sunday people - they shall burn in hell for eternitayyy!
tokotokotoko3 4 months ago
Give me violence over inequality any day.
TommyMarxable 4 months ago
@TommyMarxable
I presume you mean violence against other people, not yourself
RachelLesbianGarland 3 months ago
@wozzek22 what are you talking about? While I might concede the point about the atomic weapons, it is known that more people died in fire bombing and regular bombing during the war then the atomic bombs did combined.
As to drones: drones radically decrease the chance of being killed. War has been sanitized, not just for the killer, but for the innocent. A drone can hone in and kill a single man, or destroy a single building- something that is incredibly new.
Ariancaldon 5 months ago
OK! Now take that "male deaths due to warfare" chart and use absolut number of deaths instead of percentages and see how the chart gets inverted!!
Yes, maybe we are "living the most peaceful time in our species' existence in relative terms"... so what? Should we keep making wars since "in percentages" even when other 1.9 Billion ppl die due to war we still be doing well "living in the most peaceful time"?
jrvillela 7 months ago
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jrvillela 7 months ago
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Personally I don't care about what those percentages say: a human life is a human life, and if you take the absolute numbers of people that have died due to war since the past century the numbers surpass by far the numbers of lives lost due to war since humans appeared!! We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!!
jrvillela 7 months ago
@jrvillela He is not saying we shouldnt do everything in our power to stop violent deaths, by showing the decline in the percentage it becomes possible to feel optimistic
johndoe77774444 7 months ago
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! HTF is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
jrvillela 7 months ago
@jrvillela Well consider this scenario, a city of 1 mill people has 20 murders a year, then a century later that same city has 6 million people and and there are 28 murders a year, this clearly means that the city has become safer. You must consider scale. Its like you are saying that NYC is as dangerous as Detroit since they both have about 400 murders per year, when in reality NYC is a much safer place to be then Detroit when you consider the size difference
johndoe77774444 7 months ago
@johndoe77774444 I do get that: these times are "relatively" safer, so what? Based on information like the one of Ur example U can decide if to live in Detroit or in NYC, but U can't choose to live in this time or in prehistoric times, so really: what's the use of that info? Maybe U should give it to the U.S. government so they finally cut down their damn military spending down to zero! Do U think they will say:"yah, right we live in much more safer times, hence we are getting rid of the army!"
jrvillela 7 months ago
@johndoe77774444 And that's exactly my point: there is no fckn reason "to feel optimistic" due to some deceiving percentages. Like I said: We are "living the most peaceful time in our species existence" AND YET WE ARE LOSING MORE LIVES THAN EVER DUE TO WARS!! How the heck is that a reason "to feel optimistic"?!
jrvillela 7 months ago
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jrvillela 7 months ago
Science has not to date answered one basic question. It is quoted in the Bible, but everyone thinks of doctrine: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD This has rarely been explained or advanced. There is something which creates human intelligence and it is not a subjective being any more than these words you are reading have conscious intelligence.
martenlander 8 months ago
There are lies, bloody lies & statistics
auriculi 8 months ago
Well it seems like Pinker forgot about various Native American tribes where violence was essentially non-existent.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician Perhaps a handful of tribes throughout history were devoid of violence, but most tribes were extremely violent. For example, the Aztecs would sometimes make tens of thousands of blood sacrifices in a single year, usually on captured prisoners, and often involving torture before the heart was ripped out to complete the sacrifice and appease the gods.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
I'm not sure about most but even in tribes that were violent it was usually symbolic and based on ritual similar to governments today. For instance, the Mae Enga attack in large groups based on grievances after a long ritual process.
My point is that Pinker is essentially trying to prove violence is an innate human function and so that war is just a part of "human nature".
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician He is absolutely correct. Cultural norms and values that have been modified over the centuries cause humans to disdain violence, but it is very much a part of our primal nature.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
It's not "human nature" in the sense that there is no biological predisposition to war, wars and violence are based on the environment which is why some tribes in dangerous environments were violent while others were incredibly peaceful.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician There are biological predispositions to war. Anger, greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, aggression etc. are all innate human emotions that predispose to violence and war. Our intelligence allows us to wage war at a much more sophisticated level than other animals.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
That's about as accurate as saying there's a biological predisposition for government based on the human capacity to create and organize.
The fact is, there has never been a spontaneous war that's just based on human anger just like how there has never been a spontaneous government, it's a long planned event done for environmental purposes.
Plus it would mean many early societies as well as contemporary such as Anabaptists and kibbutzes are "inhuman".
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician There is a biological predisposition for government based on human capacity to create and organize. Humans are biological machines. The line where biology ends and culture begins is very not well demarcated.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
Well then I don't think you understand what "human nature" means because by that logic anything is within human nature and all those civilizations thousands of years ago where actually inhuman since they didn't have governments or war.
Human nature is how people "naturally" act or gratitude towards etc. without any planning or environmental cause. So yes, anger and creation are human nature, violence/war and government are not.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician Just because something is part of human nature doesn't mean that every human has to practice it to a high degree. There is great variation among humans and the complexity of our species leads to many exceptions.
And planning and environmental interaction are part of human nature. You cannot separate them. Humans are not isolated entities. We react to our each other and to our environment. It is human nature.
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
Human nature is what's universal and innate, for instance everyone feels happiness, anger etc. but not all societies have governments or war or even violence.
Saying that something like governments etc. are "human nature" is equivalent to if there were societies of thousands of people who didn't feel emotions since emotion is part of human nature.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
@AndroidPolitician We are talking about a predisposition to violence
CambridgeHeights 9 months ago
@CambridgeHeights
We were actually talking about a lot of things but sure.
Violence is using force to cause damage injury or death and in some societies it's essentially non-existent, like in modern Anabaptists or some Amerindian tribes who didn't understand the concept of combat and aggression when the settlers arrived. People universally have anger but it's not universal to express it through violence.
AndroidPolitician 9 months ago
This is opposite what the Zeitgeist movie says. Some professor in Zeitgeist says that hunter-gatherer groups had almost no violence. So which one is correct? I'm gonna go with extreme violence in hunter-gatherer groups from what I've read about the native americans and aztecs sacrificing themselves on altars to their many gods. And everyone knows that the Aztecs were a very blood-thirsty people.
nonyanb09 9 months ago
Planet has finite capacity to support humans.Violence was natural outcome of competition over limited resources.Fossil fuel energy has temporarily freed us from natural limits on growth & allowed us to be peaceable.Soon we will be out of fossil fuels & fall off cliff.Each gram of fossil carbons burnt damages earth's capacity to sustain future humans.If we continue to burn fossil carbons for 4 more years, we doom planet to venus syndrome;all life incinerated within few centuries.Nuclear,yes pleas
jffryh 9 months ago
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightenment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightenment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
charles1952ify 9 months ago
Just could not listen to screwy stuff ,you make premise from wrong point .
You pluck figures out of the air with no thought to there accuracy.Your first words on the enlightment are England and Holland wrong,Scotland and Edinburgh in particular was the start of the enlightment.So when you make that first mistake I know the rest will also be wrong.
charles1952ify 9 months ago
@MercifulKimJongIl
Sexual promiscuity? God's 'orders' included murdering faithful, loving wives who had only ever 'known' one man. Also, killing their children and leaving alive only some young girls who were fresh for the fucking.
The orders didn't come from God. They came from a man. That's obvious to any neutral observer.
taicleis 10 months ago
Just remember, the graph he show's are a PERCENTAGE, not ACTUAL male deaths
MrRudale 11 months ago
Badly titled video.
squizz222 11 months ago 23
First of all, while this presentation was super convincing, I would argue that the appropriate rebuttal to this very specious and believable fallacy is readily available in the form of the movie 2001 a space odyssey. If that is not sufficient, one could read the book "violence" by slavoj zizek. He makes a great argument, which is that violence today is invisible: It exists implicitly in social systems, so that the relationship between the agent of violence and the victim becomes convoluted.
happyjack6string 11 months ago
@happyjack6string I see your point about "invisible violence", I think an example would be how a corporation can open a sweatshop in an impoverished country and actually increase work-related stress and injuries, and damage the environment and community, etc. in a way that is comparable to war. HOWEVER, I would suggest that a cruder form of this kind of organized exploitation also prevailed in the ancient world - in addition to the "visible" violence.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
It's funny how people think that atheist lack morals. Most atheist especially ones that believe in evolution understand that we are only products in our environments and that everyone deserves to be happy. I know i believe that no one is better than anyone else, and that we are beautiful expressions of the universe, life is amazing and should be cherished. I care about others and have great empathy.
MsAgnosticatheist 11 months ago
Google "steven pinker stinker psychology today", everything pinker knows it wrong!! Most of his data of war torn society comes from the 1970s LOL
Mikeofdundee1987 11 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 OK let's suppose his analysis of hunter-gatherers is wrong. What about the historical evidence? An examination of ancient history clearly shows that violence was much more prominent in at least Western societies. We have murder statistics from the late Middle Ages in England, showing appalling murder rates. We have Ancient Greek graveyards in the Mediterranean almost devoid of male burials. Clearly there has been a stark decline since the beginning of agriculture.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous or a more effective way of doing it. Have you seen the US military budget? Have you seen the dictatorships the US funds? What Pinker should include is the number of deaths as a result of American policy in his stats. Then we'd have latin america, the middle east and europe included in that list rather than the poor list of stats he offers. I mean in the 1950s america overthrew democracy after democracy to install dictatorships yet pinker elsehwere called that aiding people. lol.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 Entirely misses the point. Has the mortality rate due to violence fallen significantly over the court of human history? Of course. This is obvious to anyone, but it is interesting to see a comparison of primitive vs. more modern society.
SYingling 9 months ago
@SYingling but it has risen. that's the point. The american government erases people so they don't count as deaths. look at operation condor for example. Its going up. Be blind or smug if you want to be but you have no evidence and pinker is discredited in many corners of science and politics now.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@SYingling actually five quick points, a study of 20th century violence begins in 1900 not 1945. The UK (which isn't even representative of Europe) & USA are not a good sample of the worlds pop, Asia for ex: makes up 60% of the worlds population, and Africa 14%. (which due to U.S policy suffer massive poverty with latin america.) Violence is not just blood sheding, it can be military, political or economical. what about nuclear and chemical warfare? This study includes none of these points.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago
@Mikeofdundee1987 You should have seen the Roman military budget! Or the despots that Rome funded. Consider the number of deaths as a result of the policies of countless kingdoms and empires in the ancient and medieval worlds: The Welsh, the Picts, the various central Asian nomads, etc. - other peoples who are usually overlooked in the history of oppression in the ancient world. Rome put down countless democratic uprisings to maintain their power. America's oppression is an improvement also.
Vincentaneous 9 months ago
@Vincentaneous what was the roman military budget? can you produce that figure? By the way Romans killed their total over 1000 years, european history post-rome was from 0bc to 1900bc is 1900 bc, we are talking about the death toll in only one hundred years (from modernity and post-modernity) 1900-2000. not 1000 or 1900 years but 100 years. And as I said already, a study of 20th century violence starts in 1900 and should include Africa and Asia since they make up most of the worlds land mass.
Mikeofdundee1987 9 months ago