Trolling with optimism

[kmo]

I recently shared a Facebook post in which SF writer David Brin excerpted some happy talk from Steven Pinker about how the world is growing less violent with far fewer people dying in wars than was the norm just 50 years ago. Not only are fewer people dying in wars, but violent crime statistics in the USA are on a decades-long downward trend

Comments

[peristaltor]

I would object to the claim that much of the improvement has been due to mere rationality. The physical conditions that encourage rationality need to be optimal before we can credit good thinking that avoided disastrous irrationality.

I'm thinking here of the research into tetraethyl lead in gasoline, and how concentrations of this in soils could serve as a pretty good predictor of success and failure for those who grew up on the dirt.

One who cannot control short-term impulses to do bad things, after all, generally fair worse than those who can exhibit such control.

And with this, I would cast myself in the camp of people who do agree that things seem to be getting better, but realize that only one unseen and unexpected environmental fuck up by some future or present fuck is enough to undo the goodness right quick.

Ultimately, though, I do agree that some are drawn to the flame of a promised conflagration like little flapping doom moths in need of a bit of warmth amidst the cold and vacuous rationality optimists spew.

Who can blame them? One gets tired of smiley faces, especially the forced ones so desperate to smile at anything.