Talk:The Better Angels of Our Nature

Should the historical forces within the thesis be reduced?

The five Historical Forces are repeated, in the thesis, and in the outlining of the book. This seems stupid. They are certainly part of his thesis, but whether they should be in a bulleted format that is an exact replica as the text below is worth considering. Should they be reduced to a few sentences instead?

removed phrase

Removed phrase "especially in the western part" from the opening sentence, because that is not in fact part of the book's thesis or its argument - Pinker takes pains to argue that it's also true in the non-Western part.Brozhnik (talk) 03:45, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

In-Depth Book discussion by Pinker

• "Steven Pinker: The Decline of Violence". The Agenda with Steve Paikin. TVO.
• Steven Pinker (November 12, 2011). "The Better Angels of Our Nature". CSpan2 BookTV. {{cite episode}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Missing or empty |series= (help)

--Javaweb (talk) 04:06, 2 December 2011 (UTC)Javaweb

resource per Talk:Steven Pinker

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_global_thinkers_20_most_recommended_books?page=0,4

5) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011) by Global Thinker No. 48 Steven Pinker Recommended by Gareth Evans and Andrew Sullivan

99.181.139.130 (talk) 10:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

File:StevePinker.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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why is John Zerzan review needed in this article?

Are there major sources that think there are readers clamoring to know his opinion? My initial reaction is no. --Javaweb (talk) 01:16, 30 December 2011 (UTC)Javaweb

Since no one has presented those type of sources, I'm removing it. --Javaweb (talk) 05:21, 6 January 2012 (UTC)Javaweb

resource

A Cheerful View of Mass Violence JANUARY 12, 2012 The New York Review of Books by Jeremy Waldron 99.181.147.68 (talk) 03:17, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Review resource

War No More; Why the World Has Become More Peaceful by Timothy Snyder January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs 99.19.44.155 (talk) 16:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

potential Foreign Policy resource

Think Again: War; World peace could be closer than you think. by Joshua S. Goldstein Sept./October 2011 99.181.131.215 (talk) 00:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Massive Data

This book relies on massive amounts of well researched and represenattive data to support the arguments and conclusions made throughout the book. I belive this should be highlighted in the article. --Lbeaumont (talk) 11:25, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Replaced paraphrase with original

Removed a paragraph paraphrasing Pinker's views on forces that lead to reduced violence (taken from a review) with a para giving these views not in paraphrase but in his own words, from the book. The paragraph I replaced read "Social changes Pinker discusses as bringing about the ascendancy of our "better angels" include:

• the emergence of strong government/authority claiming a monopoly on violence
• the interconnectivity of cultures through trade
• increased literacy, urbanization, mobility and access to mass media—all of which have exposed individuals to other people's inner experiences and different cultures to each other
• the spread of democracy

That's been replaced with Pinker's own, as I said.Brozhnik (talk) 14:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

References

See also

I added a link to the An Lushan Rebellion section on death toll which also mentions a part of Pinker's book, to the see also section. The addition meets the criteria given by WP:ALSO: " The links in the "See also" section do not have to be directly related to the topic of the article because one purpose of "See also" links is to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics. The links in the "See also" section should be relevant, should reflect the links that would be present in a comprehensive article on the topic, and should be limited to a reasonable number. As a general rule, the "See also" section should not repeat links that appear in the article's body or its navigation boxes. " While a good article would discuss the An Lushan Rebellion death toll, clearly linking to it in the see also section has a direct relevance and is better than not mentioning it at all. Second Quantization (talk) 21:20, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Translations

Does anyone have a list of languages into which the book was translated? --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:28, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Reception

The current reception section is unfortunate on several counts:

1. The critical responses by Nassim Taleb and Stephen Corry are singled out and follow after the "Criticism" part. They should be incorporated into it, since they are exactly that: Criticism of Pinker's book.
2. The current depiction of Taleb's criticism has several issues:
   1. "Pinker doesn’t have a clear idea of the difference between science and journalism, or the one between rigorous empiricism and anecdotal statements. Science is not about making claims about a sample, but using a sample to make general claims and discuss properties that apply outside the sample" is not found in the PDF that is given as a reference.
   2. "Statistician and philosophical essayist Nassim Taleb coined the term "Pinker Problem"" You do not just "coin a term" by making something up. This term has no spread beyond the Taleb-Pinker debate itself (718 google hits in total, most of which refer to "Pinker's problem", many remaining ones are based on this Wikipedia article).
   3. "Taleb with statistician and probabilist Pasquale Cirillo went on to publish a formal refutation in the journal Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications" has an inter-text link (undesirable) that links to the wrong paper. The correct one is currently referenced in footnote 43.

I have therefore condensed the depiction into what is properly referenced and confirmed by sources and have merged the current sections 4.3 and 4.4 into the Criticism section 4.2. --SEM (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Before making wholesale changes (like removing NNT's critique of the book) you need to first post in the talk pages so it can be discussed. If you continue removing without first discussing, you will be reported. By the way, your account has been dormant for years, is there a reason you are now editing this page? VergilDen (talk) 14:42, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I haven't removed NNT's critique, I just have condensed it to the core of his peer-reviewed article. In the process of doing so, I had a look at the linked PDFs and found that in the two instances mentioned above they do not actually reference what is being said in the text, so I removed them (and then also Pinker's reply). I generally don't edit much on en-wiki. Sometimes when something catches my eyes when reading an article, I fix it. Here I found the structure and style of section 4 a bit incoherent.--SEM (talk) 14:58, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

You removed are large section (which was reverted) along with an anonymous account (which was reverted), all within a short period of time. You then went on to make wholesale changes without first discussing the changes. VergilDen (talk) 15:10, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

... and then I started the discussion here and gave my arguments on why I think the section could be changed. So can we now discuss this? --SEM (talk) 15:13, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm happy you acknowledge your mistake.

To your first point, Taleb's criticism is worthy of being called out separately from other criticism because Taleb and Pinker have publicly corresponded with one another regarding the matter and Taleb has gone so far as publishing a formal refutation of the underpinnings of BA. This refutation is orders of magnitudes more robust than the other critiques.

Second point: “Pinker doesn’t have a clear idea of the difference between science and journalism...”. The citation is incorrect and should point to http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf

Third point: Should read instead “Statistician and philosophical essayist Nassim Taleb used the term "Pinker Problem" to describe errors in sampling under conditions of uncertainty after corresponding with Pinker regarding the theory of great moderation..."

Fourth point: “Interext link”. It can be moved as a reference. VergilDen (talk) 16:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I am happy with your suggestions for points 2-4. As for the first point, I would still prefer all the criticism to be in one section, but I see your point that a criticism backed up by a peer-reviewed publication and having lead to public correspondence might deserve more space. Maybe a sub-section 4.2.1 could do the job? However, I would still suggest to move Corry's criticism into the main criticism section- it's only two sentences, so actually shorter than many of the paragraphs in that section. --SEM (talk) 16:24, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

A sub-section 4.2.1 makes sense. Agree with Corry's as well. It doesn't meet the standard and should be moved. VergilDen (talk) 16:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Perfect. Will you go ahead and change? Thanks. Happy that we managed to have a constructive discussion in the end. --SEM (talk) 16:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

I'll leave it for a few days to give other editors a chance to respond if the wish. VergilDen (talk) 17:58, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Recent critiques

Two important recent academic books have both at length discredited the main thesis of this book, Behave (book) and The Dawn of Everything if anyone is with more knowledge than me is interested in updating this section which has no recent sources. Mattximus (talk) 03:31, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Clarifications

I found this sentence towards the end of the "Criticism" section difficult to parse, and I'm not exactly sure what it's trying to say. It may just be missing some punctuation, or it might need to be reworded.

"David Graeber criticized Pinker's claim that visions of utopia would cause violence while the fear that things could be even worse that Pinker promotes would not cause violence merely because the latter semantically did not call its vision perfect for being just as much of a Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as the postmodernism that Pinker claims to be his adversary, as well as for being ignorant of history."

Wiki-enjoyer-98 (talk) 18:17, 27 August 2022 (UTC)