Steven Pinker on the Past, Present, and Future of Optimism
The legendary scientist argues that things are getting better, not worse. If only he could get the world to believe him.
The rise of populism. The threat of domestic and international terrorism. The destruction of the environment. In recent years, you’d be forgiven for getting the feeling that the world was on a fast-accelerating slide.
But in two recent books — The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress — cognitive scientist Steven Pinker set out to demonstrate quite the opposite: that life is better now than it has ever been.
Armed with data encompassing everything from the tone of the news to the declining rate of violence worldwide to the potential for death by lightning strike, Pinker also argues that a culture of pessimism has rendered the very notion of progress unfashionable.
For this month’s forward-looking theme, we spoke with Pinker about Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment thinking, distortions of worldview, and reasons for not despairing about the state of the world.
