(part 1) so pinker's argument is basically that as the poors have been adopting moralities of the rich, violence decreased, and then he's zooming in to 60s-90s period to say that violence increased because The Elites™ have become less culturally influential. first, it reads a lot like a priest getting all worked up at sunday school about these infidels and how they are all without morality and if you're becoming atheist, then you'll kill people!! so you have to keep these moralities of current elite, lest you slip into murderous barbarism. and second, it's lead, it's always been lead (and things like restricted access to abortion, and later invention and rollout of effective antipsychotics and fuckton more things. people are complicated, that's what makes them people)

this shit must have been infuriating to get in contact with when you're expert in the area (i'm not)

[–] excerpta@zirk.us 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@skillissuer @swlabr To judge from the pod's summary, it's specifically *classically liberal philosophers* who lead the rest of the elites to virtue, with the masses following after

[–] excerpta@zirk.us 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@skillissuer @swlabr Which might be why he's so comfortable dismissing every current area of ethical contention: the proponents for change are mainly not classically liberal philosophers, the font of every blessing. Betterment doesn't come from vehemence and demonstration and action, nor from injured parties asserting their own humanity. It comes from a disinterested nerd writing a treatise, followed by comfortably slow and unconscious improvement over the next two to twenty generations

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 7 months ago

“A hope for progress based on the desire to really be considered to have been a great thonker in, like, 3 centuries” (and thonker there isn’t a typo)

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