Join Steven Pinker, Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author, as he challenges nostalgic views of the past, arguing we live in the most peaceful era yet. He explores the potential of Universal Basic Income in an automated workforce and highlights media's role in skewing our perception of progress. Pinker advocates for rationality in understanding reality and navigating challenges, emphasizing the need for critical thinking in education amidst rising misinformation. His insights promise a refreshing perspective on optimism in contemporary society.
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insights INSIGHT
Things Were NOT Better 'Back Then'
Older generations often claim things were better in their time, but data disagrees.
Objective indicators like poverty, war, crime, and mortality rates have improved over time.
insights INSIGHT
The Great Stink
Historical anecdotes reveal the harsh realities of the past.
London's streets overflowing with horse manure and cholera outbreaks illustrate how far sanitation has advanced.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Boiled Beverages
Boiling water for tea and beer had the unintended benefit of killing bacteria.
These beverages became popular partly due to their relative safety compared to other drinks at the time.
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In 'Enlightenment Now', Steven Pinker presents a comprehensive argument that the values of the Enlightenment—reason, science, and humanism—have been instrumental in the progress of human society. He challenges the prevailing pessimism in modern discourse by presenting empirical evidence that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise globally. Pinker uses data and graphs to illustrate improvements in various aspects of human life, such as increased life expectancy, reduced child and maternal mortality, and advancements in medicine and technology. He also addresses the psychological biases that lead people to underestimate these improvements and emphasizes the importance of continuing to uphold Enlightenment ideals to ensure further progress.
The better angels of our nature
Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker
In this book, Steven Pinker presents a detailed argument that violence has significantly decreased over the course of human history. He uses extensive data and statistical analysis to demonstrate this decline in various domains, including military conflict, homicide, genocide, torture, and the treatment of children, homosexuals, animals, and racial and ethnic minorities. Pinker identifies four key human motivations – empathy, self-control, the moral sense, and reason – as the 'better angels' that have oriented humans away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism. He also discusses historical forces such as the rise of the state (which he terms 'Leviathan'), the spread of commerce, the growth of feminist values, and the expansion of cosmopolitanism, which have contributed to this decline in violence[1][4][5].
Why, by most metrics, older generations are mistaken when they proclaim: "Things were better back in my day!"
Alternatives we might consider if Universal Basic Income can't sustainably solve the problem of housing and feeding a workforce increasingly unemployed by automation.
Why nostalgia is overrated, and how criticizing the present is very often a way of criticizing your rivals.
If we're really living, as Steven says, in "the most peaceable era in our species’ existence," how does he explain why we still have wars, famines, uprisings, and genocides?
What sentiment mapping shows us about the power of the media to manipulate us into seeing the world in a heavily negative light even as it's improving constantly on every measurable level.
The Jordan Harbinger Show 
