Was 2017 really the "worst year ever," as some would have us believe? In his analysis of recent data on homicide, war, poverty, pollution and more, psychologist Steven Pinker finds that we're doing better now in every one of them when compared with 30 years ago. But progress isn't inevitable, and it doesn't mean everything gets better for everyone all the time, Pinker says. Instead, progress is problem-solving, and we should look at things like climate change and nuclear war as problems to be solved, not apocalypses in waiting. "We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one," he says. "But there's no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing."
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Thank you for this video – from a student paramedic
2OrdinaryGuys same!
“When was the last time the world wasn’t falling apart?”
Stone Age
65 million years ago wh n the asteroid hit because the world completely fell apart.
When women weren’t voting.
when the usa was still a premodern country if that makes yet , i cant really explain what i mean lol im tired dont kill me
May 28th 2016 death of Harambe aka worst day in human history.
u do nut no de wey!
Anyone can be Harambe. Long live harambe.
Or when SJWs took Star Wars in the completely wrong direction.
That was even a bigger tragedy than The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise
LOL your right! Someone needs to bring that to the attention of the speaker!
As the world progresses and becomes safer we find new reasons to be outraged and create danger, and I only think this will cause some sort of crash in the future.
Pessimist ehh?
We lived in that reality, except we are straying further and further becoming more authoritarian because of manufactured outrage.
Frautcres
I think your right.
We are coming to a convergence to where resource scarcity will cause massive conflicts.
Right now we made recent breakthroughs that allows us to use natural gas and fresh
water to extract oil deposits.
This has slowed the scarcity and hence curbed the unmitigated conflicts but humanity is
balanced upon its own arrogance.
Yet the west still uses the war on terror to exploit the resources of the east.
Inequality increases in the US, jobs are being replaced by automation and technocracy.
All these that are supposed to be advancements end up being a detriment.
But I do agree for the time being aggregate progress has increased over the centuries.
If this should change I would not be surprised in the least.
I don’t know…I feel we need the creativity of negativity to survive and progress. We need problems to solve and issues to address to remain relevant and have an esteem of purpose. In reality, extreme Utopia just as extreme Dystopia only leads to a different type of depression and apathy. The essence of order and peace is only forgot without chaos and conflict, as diabolical as it sounds.
*you’re (contraction of “you are,” not possessive)
How can we feel good with this progress
10:10
May be it’s not you, or me, or anyone who need it yet. But stay strong.
It’s pretty easy, have you tried?
77Night77Shade77 maybe its different from person to another but lately depression has been increasing ,i think that we suffer with sadness more then we enjoy with happiness the solution in my opinion is focusing on changing that if its poosible
Depression has increased because we started to diagnose it more than before
People really are scared of the idea to be different and years ago people with psychological problems were called Lunatics and given Straightjackets an image that the field suffers from greatly.
People with Depression don’t seek help for it because they can hide it Perfectly well even though they suffer greatly while doing so- i can attest to this since i did that.
You have to just imagine what it’s like to be Depressive Ana – Your limbs are like lead its hard to find a good reason to enjoy something wich in turn just means you get worse and worse. You also have to know that “Depression” is not what it was called before Melancholia has been around for ages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melencolia_I) it was just thought people were born that way or choose to be like that wich even nowadays some people believe- annoyingly so.
Maybe you suffer from Depression too i can’t know until you say but from someone who has it please listen when i tell you it’s not been increasing but that its starting to be accepted.
chadoftoons your comment is amazing I am actually suffering from depression and am all ready on medicine and its getting better the only thing that am still willing to know is if the progress of science has affected us in a bad way .
This is ironclad proof that all the apologists on the religious Right, who, for decades, prognosticated doom and gloom due to an increasingly secular society, are completely wrong when they try to correlate increasing lack of belief in religion with a decline in societal well being. Despite the fact that people are abandoning religion at increasing numbers, society has not become more homicidal, bellicose, criminal, ignorant or impoverished. Just like a lot of other things that Christian conservatives like to peddle – this notion that a secular society is one that is not conducive to happiness is a myth. Statics are corrosive to sacred cows.
Andrew Williams not today. They sure did 500 years ago.
What do you think all those witch hunts were?
But also proof that all the apologists on the religious Left, who, for decades, prognosticated poverty and misery duo to an incresingly gab between individual’s wealth. Don’t you agree that both sides are dumb AF? Be a individualist, quit political tribalism.
Or, Leftists/SJWs/Marxists/Deep State/Lying Media… who insisted it was all over when God-emperor Trump got in.
first name *you’re (contraction of “you are,” not possessive)
Lucas Soares *due to an increasing gap
*an individualist
The world used to be “Safer” because people were stupider. No social media. No CNN/Fox News Bias.
“Safer”!? When? Like ancient times? Medieval Europe? The 40s? 50s? When has the world been a safer place?
Backwood707 you did not understand what he sais read it again
The quotes are there for a reason..
Oh yes, this world called the United States of America, where everyone has this CNN/Fox News bias.
Nope, they are more stupid now because Social Media and CNN/FoxNews
He has such a symmetrical face.
Whatsername True wow
Going by the numbers and statistics the world definitely seems like a better place.Then why are we more disconnected as a family,as a society,more angry,more dissatisfied,more unhappy,more critical,more discontent.When everything seems to be in place the human race seems to be falling apart.
chadoftoons *Which
*that’s
Lucas Soares *we tend to pay more attention
*it results in a larger audience
*shot a gun near you
*high school
*improve
*In summary
*misinformation
*every kid nowadays wants to be a star without making the effort
*drug of dopamine that makes us
*turns us into narcissists
*also makes
*disconnects
*your parents that are always yelling at you
That is easy, we are not what you claim. Simple as that. Fixed.
Shawn John maybe your experience with the Internet is far different from mine. I’ve met amazing people, im in constant contact with my family and friends and i get informed about important movements happening in my hometown.
People spending too much time in social media.
Humans need to take a step back and understand that not everything is fine, but many things are. And the fact we can make progress makes things that aren’t fine less scary and bad. Stop saying things are bad and change them. Just acknowledging issues is not making things progress. Action needs to be taken as well. And we can’t act based off emotion. We need to act based on fact, reason and logic as well. As all true liberals/progressives should.
Exactly
Great talk. It’s so frustrating to see how many people ignore the good of the world in favor of fatalism.
Goku Also frustrating how many people do it for the sake of pushing a political agenda
Maybe it’s about looking at each thing individually. Technology is getting wickedly awesome, but human psychology is regressing badly.
The Fuzz Is it tho? Crime is down across the board across the developed world and violence is at an all time low for all of human history.
Great points. We need to further subdivide in to the West, and the rest. We here are regressing in certain parts, particularly cuz we’ve gotten so far ahead. But I agree, I just don’t see any negatives for the 2nd and 3rd world, besides the to-be-expected political turns in places such as Venezuela.
Say what you want but globalism is providing a standard for a safer world
Sure. If average pay in China goes up from “slave” to “eastern europe” then yes, we on average are making great leaps and bounds.
The are pros and cons. If you only see the pros then you will have a nasty surprise sooner or later.
i think social media has amplified everything. things may not be as bad as 30 years ago but with social media people just love to complain, hate and voice their negative opinions.
Agree, they love to yell the problems and preach the solutions. Social media is a cancer, we should be working to fix this.
Social media is the reason for me to quiting my Computer Science course and try Pedagogy and Andragogy. I want to be a teacher and change at least a couple hundreds of minds.
A true genius.
Were making *great* progress
to downfall?
ran van i guess yeah
*We’re
From a life or death perspective, it’s statistically better. Less people die young or are murdered. But from a societal standpoint, the family is being obliterated and the rich are richer than they’ve ever been, which destroys the middle class. So even though we’re living longer, things are actually getting worse.
you didn’t watch the video did you? The middle class is shrinking because they are moving into the upper class. Even the poor are getting richer. Its easier than ever to get a free education. You can learn new skills and even careers on Youtube. Most chores can be automated even by the very poor: washing dishes, washing clothes, etc.
Family being obliterated is inevedable.
+Earthbjorn Nahkaimurrao THANK YOU! Was just about to reply the same… 🙂
Earthbjorn Nahkaimurrao
Its called inflation bro, the costs of things continue to skyrocket, yet wages stay relatively stagnant. Wages HAVE to go up because of inflation, but that does not mean a higher wage in an inflated economy means prosperity.
MajkaSrajka *inevitable
it’s getting better because we work so much, and that’s why it feels worse..
In fact working hours per person decreases drastically worldwide in average.
This very video shows that that’s not the case, and that working hours are decreasing on average.
because people lose their jobs more than jobs are created. 🙂 + not official jobs but black money jobs
Work hours have nothing to do with it. Pinker explains clearly what the main factors are behind the improvement we see.
Were you not listening? The speaker clearly stated that in 1960 we worked on average 60+ hours per week, and today it is less than 40.
Can anyone define Poverty & extreme Poverty without Googling it? Because statistics without explanation are useless.
There are multiple definitions for the word “Poverty”.
That’s been shown to be a bogus statistic used to mask global inequality.
IIRC Extreme Poverty as global standard = less than 1.25$/day (including everything).
Timothy Hilditch if you want a 2 hour talk go elsewhere.
Poverty is the basic state of human nature and of any living being. It is the lack of resources for living. One individual getting wealthy doesn’t mean that other individual has to get poor.
But for international standarts, the poverty line is US$ 1.90/day.
Can we quantify what causes this progress? Is it technology, is it free markets, is it democracy, is it social programs?
Can we trend each of these for every country (maybe every city) over time and use a neural network or statistical analysis to determine how each of these effect progress? ie does a nations prosperity improve faster or slower with more or less economic freedom or with more or less govt spending on social program. etc.
Every thing you mentioned above causes it
Earthbjorn Nahkaimurrao neural networks I doubt will provide insights as they would be biased we can’t give feed them every thing not all countries will have data and considering the nature or NN they will be heavily biased if wrong data is provided
Earthbjorn Nahkaimurrao all those things were produced by one slither of humanity that worked best when our societies were homogeneous. The importation of the third world into the West is seeing increases in rape, knife crime, acid attacks, grooming gangs etc.
That’s precisely why Pinker doesn’t advocate for multiculturalism in Israel just in the West.
This is such an incredibly naive anthropocentric worldview. Look at the world from a non-anthropocentric worldview and you’ll see ecosystems collapsing everywhere, mass extinction of many species, and so forth.
Are we so dumb that we’ll insist on pretending we can survive without a stable environment? Do you think any of these statistics will matter once the environment can no longer support our absurdly unsustainable way of life, which this sort of attitude cheers unconditionally?
All of this “progress” we’ve made requires us to be unsustainable., and it’ll get much worse with a larger population and our constant drives to elevate the quality of life of everyone. This won’t work. Dismissing all of this by comparing this warning with religious doomsday scenarios of the past is ridiculous.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: this is NOT a Malthusian argument. It’s about environmental impact. Our civilization would already be completely unsustainable with a third of the people we have now if we all had the standards of living of European or North American countries.
Besides, why not show the statistics of the global rise of depression, the global rise of suicide rates in the mid 90’s that only managed to go down because of a huge global rise in anti-depressant use, and so forth?
We live longer and supposedly “better lives”, but none of us seem to be enjoying any of it. These statistics don’t capture any of it, and are usually used as a way for people to not think about the major problems we are facing today.
Max already brilliant responded about anti-depressions.
And about environment: eco technology is getting better and more popular. You proprably see a couple of videos of 3 world countries such as mine(Brazil), where people don’t have a tenable behavior and throw garbage on the streets, sidewalks and environment and think we getting worse on this aspect. One of the biggest problems in my country is basic sanitation, more than 80% of the population don’t have acess to that basic need. It comes from government and we can’t do that by ourselfs because the state will charge us to be out of law, they don’t do and don’t let the population do by thenselves.
Calm down dude, Steve said in his speech: we don’t live a miracle, we solve problems and than create other problems that we need to solve. He used a ambientalist problem(Climate change) as a example, of course environment polution is other problem. Stop expecting a perfect world to live, we are far away from that.
Jeez, what side of the bed do you get out of? 99% of all species were already extinct before man arrived on this planet. Lesson: Life and how it is expressed is fluid and existence is very precarious. Ecosystems collapse, its what they do.
World poverty was actually halved between 2000 and 2015. Africa alone could produce enough to feed the world. The US, China, Russia and Europe have been planting more trees than cutting for nearly half a century now. That growth is significant but the media does not want to know.
The world is not responsible for your happiness. If you cant calve out a meaningful life then whose problem is it exactly? Did you think people didn’t get depressed when half their kids were dead of infection before the age of five and you had a reasonable expectation of being dead yourself at 30?
I was very impressed with his speech, but as a medical doctor I was thinking the whole time “What about depression??? “
There is this group that wants to kill of a big portion of society to get better conditions themselves. We have not yet started to actively replant fish in our oceans. That will secure food for all and no livestock farming, only vegetables. Knowledge on production will increase crops tenfolds. Pollution will go down step by step. The poor countries have 7 children but developed countries do not. Take part in the human development and add your part.
I think you are right, It’s just a matter of wondering if as a species we’ll be able to overcome the newest challenges and as of right now it’s not looking good. But I like his perspective as well, it’s not all lost… YET. I guess we shall wait and see what happens and hope for the best.