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Progress in Human Well-being
- Pinker's book 'Enlightenment Now' documents the often-overlooked progress in human well-being.
- He highlights improvements in poverty, life expectancy, education, safety, and leisure time.
The Negativity Bias in News and Cognition
- Journalism focuses on negative events, not positive trends, creating a skewed perception of reality.
- Our cognitive biases, like the availability heuristic, further reinforce this negativity.
The Ideology of Decline
- The ideology of decline, prevalent among intellectuals, fuels pessimism despite positive trends.
- This stems from competition for status and a reverence for the past.