The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker

I better admit up front that I don’t have any intuitive or educated grasp on statistics, and without actually sitting down with the data sets, I haven’t the least idea of whether they’re appropriately chosen, correctly delineated, etc, etc. I do note, though, that Steven Pinker is a respected academic, Penguin are a respected publisher, and I was directed to reading this by another academic. Where he talks about history, he seems to be broadly correct, and his explanation of his graphs and statistics makes sense to me.

Some aspects gave me serious pause, though, equally. The fact that somehow he manages to endorse all his own views and the views of contemporary Western society as the civilising effect, for example. The fact that he dismisses the issues of hate crimes as decreasing, without much examination. (For example, could the fact that trans* people can now pass much better, due to improved medical procedures for transition, be part of the reduction in transphobic violence?) Colonialism gets a pass because it reduced violence, without looking at the economic problems it can cause, etc, etc. I think sometimes Pinker dismisses serious areas of violence based on fairly spurious data like police reports.

I’m not sure if this is a kneejerk feeling in myself — “colonialism can’t be an unalloyed good!” — or whether it’s an actual issue in the data. The problem with reading pop psychology is that you just have to take the author’s word for it, at times. I did laugh at his overly optimistic depiction of the fall of homophobia, though. Apparently queer people no longer have anything to fear, and there’s no difficulty in coming out! Um. I need to have a word with you, Mr Pinker.

The overall thesis that violence is declining, I’m inclined to accept, on balance. When people immediately cry, “look at the events in Paris recently!”, Pinker would have an answer for them about the origin of that violence (it might’ve taken place in Western Europe, but where does the motivating ideology stem from?), and when people say that crime is clearly on the rise based on reportage, that’s definitely an example of the availability heuristic at work. Also, he is talking specifically about violence, not about crime in general — which surely means that non-violent thefts, white collar crime, etc, are not included in his dataset.

While I’m not ultimately sure how much to believe this, I enjoyed Pinker’s discussion of the issues, his potential explanations of the data, and his deconstruction of the violent bases of things like the Bible and the code of chivalry. It’s a heck of a tome, but fascinating, even if you disagree. There’s a lot of criticism out there, but again, because it’s not my field I’d be taking that as much on faith as I have to take this book, so I’m not heading down that rabbit hole.

Rating: 3/5

At the Edge of Uncertainty, Michael Brooks

I picked this up after attending the New Scientist “instant expert” workshop on consciousness. Michael Brooks introduced the lecturers and such, and chaired the Q&A session, and it was mentioned one of his books mentions epigenetics. Well, that’s possibly even more my thing than a workshop on consciousness, so of course I picked it up.

It’s an overview of the parts of science where we don’t quite know what’s happening. Where the story becomes blurred and you definitely don’t teach it in GCSE Physics, because even eminent scientists aren’t sure what to believe. It makes things we take for granted — the Big Bang, hereditary diseases mostly through DNA itself — a little shakier. So Brooks’ account is understandably speculative, just giving us a look at current thought in the field — the big ideas which could change the way we look at the world.

It’s reasonably easy to read, despite the big concepts, and I quite enjoyed it. If New Scientist works for you, then this is about the same level, to my mind. It covers a lot of areas of science and goes in-depth on none, so you certainly don’t need to be an expert. If you are finding the concepts a little difficult, I would suggest reading one chapter at a time and giving yourself time to digest the ideas — I did that with a couple of chapters.

Rating: 4/5