Society through Pinker-Coloured Glasses

I spent from Christmas until now reading Stephen Pinker. First there was ¨How the Mind Works¨, then ¨The Blank Slate¨. It all gels. It feels right. This is required reading for Evidence Based Morality. He has data which he summarizes to make something readable by mere mortals. He takes apart the idea that people are naturally peaceful, replacing it with sobering statistics about primitive societires where about 40% of men were murdered (either personally or through tribal warfare) before reaching middle age. This contrasts with 2% in modern societies, a figure which includes both world wars of the last century.

Pinker says that, in contrast to what social scientists spout, societies are not all to be compared within themselves, and are not at all immune to comparison to an absolute scale. It is absolutely true that modern societies are more advanced on the role of Women. The more primitive the society, the more their treatment resembles that of chattel. It isn´t the sole indicator, but it is certainly a strong one. In Pre-history, groups of male humans would fight with those of neighbouring groups for females. It is true that males of low social rank & prospects may turn to rape as their best strategy for reproduction, because it worked for such males in the past. It is true that children used to die when they were young, that in women in primitive societies infanticide is not unusual, and that post-partum depression may be an evolutionary attempt to push women to infanticide if they have doubts about their ability to raise the newborn.

Pinker brings all sorts of data to the table and tries to apply reason to interpret them. He also shows, in his discussion about ¨Radical Scientists¨ the perils of taking results too literally, of trying to make things too simple. The trials of sociobioligists in the 70´s and 80´s is a warning: Scientists are people too. They gang up on each other, they get emotionally attached to ideas which could (like most ideas) be just plain wrong. Those experiences show us the value of humility, and strangely, of conservatism. We must be open to consider new things, but conservative in what we accept as true. If you hear a scientists say something, then it is probably open to debate. Wait twenty years when the folks in the field take it all for granted.

Even waiting is a poor heuristic. After all, the Blank Slate, which Pinker utterly dismembers, was around for a good fifty years, at the very least. so even when you wait, be cautious in what you accept. You cannot summarize his work in a few paragraphs. These are just tidbits. You need to see for yourself. Stephen Pinker is a wonderful read.