Pinker's "Enlightenment Now"

I've always been a fan of Steven Pinker. I read "How the Mind Works" and "The Stuff of Thought", two books on the fairly narrow subject of cognitive psychology, Pinker's original specialty and an area I studied in grad school as well.

On the broader, more politically relevant issues, I enjoyed his 2002 book "The Blank Slate" (reviewed <here>), especially its embrace of good evolutionary psychology and its criticism of left-leaning attacks on it and attempts to shut down debate. I also enjoyed the 2011 "The Better Angels of Our Nature", which argued that the world is becoming consistently less violent over time.

I recently read "Enlightenment Now", published just last year. In an important way, this is a generalization from the special case of violence treated in "Better Angels" to a great many aspects of well-being. These are discussed one by one in chapters titled: lifespan, health, sustenance, wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, safety, terrorism, democracy, equal rights, knowledge, the quality of life, happiness, and existential threats. Each chapter names an aspect of human welfare that he claims has improved, with the reasonable expectation that each will continue to improve. The embrace of enlightenment values (reason, science, humanism, and progress) starting 300 years ago has led to vast improvements in just about any measurable index of well-being.

He notes that a great many people reacted with incredulity to his argument in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" that things are getting better, and expects many will react the same way to "Enlightenment Now". He has an explanation for how popular perception can be so far out of line with reality. The structure of news biases us strongly to perceive the world as more negative than it is. News is about events, most of which are disasters. Good things happen slowly and quietly. The magnitude of this distortion is very large, so great that even thoughtful people can see an improving world as one that is getting worse and on the brink of worse disaster. I agree wholeheartedly with him.

I think it's important to understand the limits of his claim. "Enlightenment" as it is understood in religious traditions deals with total peace and harmony with all aspects of existence. In no way does Pinker address such fundamental questions as, "What's the purpose of my life?", "Why are we here?" and "How can I feel OK about dying?" He suggests we focus on what we can measure and improve. And I don't have any problem with that -- fix what you can, and have the wisdom not to worry about what you can't. But "enlightenment" is a word with at least two meanings, and when he focuses on the values of the Enlightenment he is not addressing spiritual enlightenment.

There were just a few of his claims of improvement that I had doubts about.

I wasn't so sure about "happiness", because it's <elusive>. The chapter explains that if you expand from the simple "How happy are you?" to consider meaning and purpose, evaluation of one's life, and life satisfaction, then it is in fact improving.

I wasn't sure about some elements treated in his "existential threats" chapter. He scoffs at the idea of some emergent super-intelligent AI taking over the earth. He thinks malevolently constructed computer viruses pose little threat. I agree with him completely on those two points. Turning to biology, he thinks a devastating pandemic from a superbug is very unlikely, whether occurring naturally or engineered by malevolent humans. I'm not so sure about that. He also mentions events that seem unlikely but to which we have little basis of assigning actual probabilities, including a burst of lethal gamma rays, a collision with a meteor, or the earth's magnetic field reversing. He also addresses the danger of nuclear war, and he is more worried about that possibility than I am.

He also acknowledges that "environment" could be an existential threat but treats it in a separate chapter. He argues that a moderate amount of pollution is acceptable. He notes reductions in oil spills, declining rates of deforestation, and increases in areas set aside for nature. He criticizes "sustainability", arguing that we find new solutions to old problems. For instance, wood, coal, oil, and natural gas form a sequence, and the later energy sources on the list came along to largely replace the earlier ones before they ran out. He introduces the concepts of "density" and "dematerialization" to show how we can often get more value while consuming fewer resources. I agree with him about all of that.

What he actually means by "existential threats" isn't clear. At one extreme, it would mean the literal extinction of humanity. But against his basic premise that the world is getting better, what he seeks to debunk is that we're in a position where "humanity is screwed". If something happens to kill half the human population, that is a serious setback to the idea that things are getting better and better. And on everything considered up to this point, I agree that the probability of such an event is very small.

But then there is climate change, which is part of his "environment" chapter. I consider it separately in the next post. I don't think that the probability of devastating consequences to interrupt the "things are going to keep getting better" narrative is very small at all. I think it is very large.