Hacker News Books

(Also Sapiens :)

Range - David Epstein

Life is better than it ever has been, and there’s an embarrassing amount of data backing up that claim.

We’re depressed because our brains didn’t evolve to live in this kind of society, but that doesn’t mean our civilization is falling apart.

Enlightenment Now is different. Taleb might also have opposed that book (he likes to pick fights) but that's not what your link describes.

In most places, in most ways, the world is getting massively better than it even was 20 or 30 years ago...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073TJBYTB/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

TL;dr - Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now

The Newcomers by Helen Thorpe (refugee students learning English and American culture)

Intuitively this makes great sense: when you're eking out a subsistence living you're not going to care about the environment, but when resources are plenty you can afford to consider other living things too.

Nothing is wrong with that. But he is just not a primary source on this data. So there is no refutation to be made in this context. Go to the bibliography, find the citation for the statistics that he used, and those can be discussed. I don't have the book and can't quickly obtain it, so I cannot provide that information.

>To think of this book as any kind of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. The purpose of Pinker’s laborious work is to reassure liberals that they are on “the right side of history”.

>Judged as a contribution to thought, Enlightenment Now is embarrassingly feeble. With its primitive scientism and manga-style history of ideas, the book is a parody of Enlightenment thinking at its crudest. A more intellectually inquiring author would have conveyed something of the Enlightenment’s richness and diversity. Yet even if Pinker was capable of providing it, intellectual inquiry is not what his anxious flock demands. Only an anodyne, mythical Enlightenment can give them what they crave, which is relief from painful doubt.

How the Internet Happened (2018) by Brian McCullough is a fantastic read about the history of the internet from first internet bubble to the iPhone.

Educated (2018) by Tara Westover is an amazing autobiography.

Enlightenment Now (2018) by Steven Pinker is pretty good, even if he doesn't know that much about the actual enlightenment.

Autonomy (2018) by Lawrence Burns about self-driving cars is well worth a read.

Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff is good about the very strange world inside the Trump administration.

Indeed. Thanks for plugging the inimitable Rosling (I'd also strongly recommend his excellent book, "Factfulness") and Pinker. Rosling has incredible anecdotes from the real world, and Pinker is methodical and rigorous. Each book is a companion to the other.

(Me brags: A few months ago I've had the pleasure of meeting Steven Pinker in person and even have a small chat about his book, the late Rosling, and other topics.)

And I hope Hans Rosling's exhilarating enthusiasm rubs off on many folks. I was so enthralled with Rosling's work that when I was in Sweden earlier this year, I took a train to Uppsala (where Rosling lived and worked) and spent a day there just to breathe some inspiring air. Rosling was a force of nature.

PS: Yes, for all the "positivity bias" that Rosling and Pinker are accused of, they repeatedly acknowledge that there's still a long a way to go, and never claim that everything is hunky-dory. As Rosling puts it: "Things can be both bad and better".

All joking aside this is a pretty well-known phenomenon that folks like Hegel and Nietzsche have discussed. The Enlightenment has had its tentacles on formalized religion for over 300 years in the Western World.

Nietzsche’s mad man who runs about the town telling people that “God is Dead” is not meant to be taken as a positive or light statement. Nietzsche posited that many of the key elements of modern society would cease to have meaning. Why then, if man is not created in the image of God, should man treat fellow man in any which way? What justification does one have for not harming fellow man if his fellow man is but ape?

Books I loved with perspectives on this are “Enlightenment Now” by Steven Pinker and “The Rise of the Modern Self” by Carl Trueman.

“You gotta serve somebody.” -Bob Dylan

> A second key to deep decarbonization brings up an inconvenient truth for the traditional Green movement: nuclear power is the world’s most abundant and scalable carbon-free energy source. Although renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind, have become drastically cheaper, and their share of the world’s energy has more than tripled in the past five years, that share is still a paltry 1.5 percent, and there are limits on how high it can go. The wind is often becalmed, and the sun sets every night and may be clouded over. But people need energy around the clock, rain or shine. Batteries that could store and release large amounts of energy from renewables will help, but ones that could work on the scale of cities are years away. Also, wind and solar sprawl over vast acreage, defying the densification process that is friendliest to the environment.

Some thoughts:

1. Much like how the entire centrist media machine feeds off the insanity of the current US administration, somehow this article is at the top of HN. We put it there. (Well, 42 of you did, as of the time I wrote this.)

2. Perhaps the best-kept secret in the world is that it is getting better by almost every measurement. The late, great Hans Rosling was superb at breaking down these dimensions in video form (eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo ) but if you want the real deal, I recommend Steven Pinker's excellent "Enlightenment Now".

3. I couldn't care less that Intel has "stalled" since you can now buy a Raspberry Pi that pwns my first computer by an order of magnitude or three and costs less than $25. Meanwhile, Apple is refocusing on Mac hardware again because so many "poor" people have phones now that they can see a sales ceiling... this means that a huge percentage of the planet has a significant computer on them all of the time.

4. Not only does age and wisdom allow you to observe tech over many cycles, but the older I get the more I realize that tech is nothing outside of its relationship to politics, culture, and ourselves. Look at how young children just assume everything is a screen, now. Tech is now an important aspect of the daily political conversation. In just 15 years we've gone from a society that rents VHS movies to one that feels entitled to comment, upvote and subscribe to everything they watch. It's fucking crazy how much tech has reprogrammed everything from the way we find love to the way we get from A to B.

Finally, to the author: sorry a lot of the comments here are negative. They aren't wrong, but we're still working on chilling out and defaulting to presuming that in any given moment, people are generally trying their best in this community. The good news: there's lots to be excited about in this "worst possible timeline" we've fallen into.

People generally don't want to live in smog/pollution if they have a choice but will do whatever it takes to survive even if that means harming the environment.

For example, no amount of lecturing or rainforest protests are going to stop people that depend on slash & burn for survival. Best option is to open up trade, provide GMOs & fertilizer, and provide economic opportunity so they have options other than slash & burn.

You also see this with China, they've made huge progress environmentally, mostly because they can now afford to.

"Stoner" by John Williams; fiction; this book knocked me on my butt and I read it all in almost one sitting; about an English professor who refuses to relinquish his integrity in the face of great adversity

"Light Years" by James Salter; fiction; inexpressibly beautiful novel that takes place largely on the Hudson River above New York

"Narcissus and Goldmund" by Hesse; fiction; a fun yet literary adventure novel about the importance and fun of living life with integrity

"When Things Fall Apart" by Chödron; non-fiction; Chödron proposes that leaning into suffering, experiencing it as directly and fully as possibly and without resistance paradoxically leads to profound relief from suffering

"Enlightenment Now" by Pinker; non-fiction; proposes, convincingly, that life nhas drastically improved for nearly everyone on earth due to a shifting philosophical orientation towards enlightenment values; proposes that although much is problematic, there is reason for great hope, too

The short version is that in a society where justice relies on the strength of the individual, there is more conflict, more injury, and more murder. In areas of the USA with more of an honor culture, the murder rate is 10x what it is in areas without one.

The problem is that in an honor culture, people have a need to demonstrate how capable they are so that they will not be considered potential targets. This demonstration takes the form of proving that you will be willing to seek to right any perceived injustice, and are capable of doing so. But these demonstrations tend to involve violence, and lead to conflict. Up to and including murder.

In a law and order society, by contrast, people's safety is based on the continuation of law and order. Which means that justice is available to all, regardless of strength.

Consider. The strength difference between the average man and average woman is the difference between the average NFL linebacker and the average man. Do you think it right that the average woman's ability to obtain justice is dependent on whether some man stands up for her? And yet that is how things tend to work out in an honor culture.

I want to live in a law and order society. A place where potential rapists are deciding whether to worry about the police, and not whether to worry about me.

> The basic position - and I think the data supports this - is that it really doesn't matter what the top 1% are doing so long as the bottom half are seeing improved living conditions.

This is whataboutism and justifying means to ends and it makes no sense to me. How could this be? Many of the top 1% in our world are murderers and killers and so greedy they are set out to hurt the poor as much as possible. This matters. It does matter who they are. Their character matters. Their actions matter. Their words matter. Due in part to their wealth, the world listens to them for better or worse, and they hold a responsibility that the current 1% batch (and perhaps none in history, I don't know) are not holding up.

Yes, overall the poor are seeing vastly improved living conditions. This does not mean that it should not be better. It is offensive to a population to tell them that they have it better than before and to basically not worry about it or complain that the inequality is so intense, because their parents or even ancestors had it worse.

No, the attitude should be that it is still really bad for a lot of people, and that state of affairs should be unacceptable. That much human suffering is unnecessary. It should not be happening in a world of surplus like today's.

The top 1% matter immensely - who they are, what they do, how they act.

Still, his main point stands that elites should feel bad about their concentrations of power and that the link between money and political power should be weakened.

It's a bit sad because Pinker's older books are great. I recommend "The Blank Slate" and "The Language Instinct".
In "The Better Angels of our Nature" he already started to stray away from his expertise.

Here is the current breakdown of the world's emissions as of 2018:

1. heavy industry (29 percent)

2. buildings (18 percent)

3. transport (15 percent)

4. land-use change (15 percent)

5. the energy needed to supply energy (13 percent).

Livestock is responsible for 5.5 percent, mostly methane rather than CO2, and aviation for 1.5 percent.

Here is the estimated sacrifice needed to bring carbon emissions down by half and then to zero:

It would require forgoing electricity, heating, cement, steel, paper, travel, and affordable food and clothing.

Both of these are taken from Enlightenment Now by Pinker, and I have not seen the numbers or his conclusions refuted. I'm open to someone trying to change my mind, but with these numbers, I do not see how that is possible.

-Educated By Tara Westover

-Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think — Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Ronnlund

-The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World — Melinda Gates

See https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/62787798-bill-gates?sh...

Pinker's book was a little bit bizarre: upset that people had not been persuaded by the deluge of graphs in Better Angels of Our Nature, he decides to provide us with yet more graphs.

What the analysis seems to miss is that life does not happen in the aggregate. While the story around the world has been one of improving health, wealth and prosperity, there are individuals around the world who have not felt the benefit.

Pinker and Rosling's solution seems to be to call these people ungrateful, whining, or "social justice warriors".

* Enlightenment Now (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35696171-enlightenment-n...): Offers a defense that our current institutions have delivered the goods and should be defended. The left doesn't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should continue improving the system we've got -- especially urgent today as they're under seige.

* Your Money or Your Life (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/78428.Your_Money_or_Your...): Philosophy masquerading as personal finance. Challenges the reader to ask "What is enough?" and honestly evaluate whether they are living an integrated life that is consistent with their values. Lays out one way to help answer these questions and course correct as necessary.

* Stand Up! (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35989237-stand-up): A hand book and call to action to answer the "knock at the door" and step up to address "a world on fire". Especially useful for those interested in or actively leading volunteers.

If, like me, you're upset about the current state of affairs and unsure where to go from here I recommend the above as a small tonic and, hopefully, stepping stone.

Book recommendation that can dispel cynicism about the future: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker. Few years old at this point but still relevant and worth reading.

The miner, it was said, “went down to work as to an open grave, not knowing when it might close on him.” . . . Unprotected powershafts maimed and killed hoopskirted workers. . . . The circus stuntman and test pilot today enjoy greater life assurance than did the [railroad] brakeman of yesterday, whose work called for precarious leaps between bucking freight cars at the command of the locomotive’s whistle. . . . Also subject to sudden death . . . were the train couplers, whose omnipresent hazard was loss of hands and fingers in the primitive link-and-pin devices. . . . Whether a worker was mutilated by a buzz saw, crushed by a beam, interred in a mine, or fell down a shaft, it was always “his own bad luck.”

A railroad superintendent, justifying his refusal to put a roof over a loading platform, explained that “men are cheaper than shingles...There’s a dozen waiting when one drops out.”

* Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester

* Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder-A Journey into the Wild World of Nuclear Science by James Magaffey

* Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

* Vulcan 607 by Rowland White

* Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

* Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen by Brian Raftery

* A Fabulous Creation: How the LP Saved Our Lives by David Hepworth

* 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink by Taylor Downing

* The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why by Amanda Ripley

* In Your Defence: Stories of Life and Law by Sarah Langford

* Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons by Mike Reiss

* Working Actor: Breaking in, Making a Living, and Making a Life in the Fabulous Trenches of Show Business by David Dean Bottrell

* Becoming by Michelle Obama

* Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

* Rush Hour by Iain Gatel

* Tamed: Ten Species that Changed our World by Alice Roberts

* The Next American City: The Big Promise of Our Midsize Metros by Mick Cornett

Please. What a joke.

Read the IPCC reports. They are projecting massive increases in the wealth and health of the whole world in all future emissions scenarios.

Some scenarios are just worse than others, but all are better than today.

The world has been improving for centuries. The idea that we need to "enjoy what time we have left" is absolutely insane. It's pseudo-science

Yes, human impacts on the environment cause problems. No, they aren't going to cause human extinction.

Read "Enlightenment Now" or "The Rational Optimist" for some perspective.

I can't understand this line of thinking.

Human civilization has been around for ~10,000 years, and in the past two centuries nearly every metric related to human well-being has improved (see The Rational Optimist or Enlightenment Now).

And this isn't coming at the expense of the natural world, which is better protected as the world gets more technologically advanced and wealthier (More From Less by Andrew McAfee and numerous other sources).

Why would all of this reverse so rapidly in the next 80 years?

Just started reading it after having finished another one of Mr. Gates' favorite -- Factfulness, by Hans Rosling -- which, btw, he's distributing at no cost to college students in the United States. [0]

Insofar, I could observe Enlightenment Now to be a book that ties the loose ends of all of Mr. Pinker's previous works -- The Better Angels of our Nature, The Blank Slate etc. Would definitely recommend checking them out before starting with this to get an idea of the intellectual depth of the man.

[0] http://time.com/money/5303143/bill-gates-free-book-graduates...