The World Is Not Falling Apart (2014)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.single.html

by tdurden • 11 years ago

93 70 11 years ago

slate.com

torusaurus• 11 years ago

I have become a big fan of Pinkerton as of late. Not only for his views described in this article, which are well-documented and refreshingly logical, but for his views on religion. A lot of my extended family will lament about the days news from time to time, reacting to the eye-catching headlines of death and destruction. Forwarding Pinkerton's book and this article tends to assuage these tendencies quite handedly. I definitely recommend this strategy to those who may relate to my family as well.

taliesinb• 11 years ago

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who calls him Pinkerton. It was Deadwood that did it.

AnonNo15• 11 years ago

Same could be said in 1913. It is probably true in the long term, but local maximas of human suffering are no joke.

iQuercus• 11 years ago

Even into the summer of 1914, post-assassination, there were articles like this coming up. The fact is we can't predict the future. Just because less people are dying in battle today doesn't mean 180,000,000 won't die in one year in a possible war in the near future.

mcphage• 11 years ago

The point isn't that things can't get worse—it's that there's a strong media message that things are really bad right now, and that isn't supported by the evidence.

denim_chicken• 11 years ago

The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent".

Violence among humans is only one of many metrics to gauge the state of the world. Other metrics show trends that are not as rosy. Let's not forget, for example, that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event, exhibiting a rate of species extinction 10x greater than during any other extinction event.

If we especially ignore our anthropocentric biases one can make a convincing case that the world is falling apart.

smtucker• 11 years ago

Even that view is Biocentric. Furthermore, the language of "the world is falling apart" is quite Geocentric, I mean c'mon, what year is it 2015 or 1515?

AndrewKemendo7• 11 years ago

This is certainly not a popular view, and I might be wrong, but I don't think the current state of technology allows you to increase democracy, standard of living as we define it now, without the climate tradeoff, and I think that's ok.

Industrialization and the internal combustion engine has been one of the greatest drivers of prosperity in human history, and largely to drive subsistence farmers into less manual work and into cities. These shifts improve access to health services, networks etc... for all involved and has been the biggest driver of for example Chinese productivity growth and PPP improvement in the past 20 years. The downside is increasing carbon emissions. The biggest impacts of these emissions, in the climate sense, dis-proportionally affects groups like pacific islanders, current subsistence farmers and other groups on the boundaries.

Very few people look at this issue in terms of what we gain from industrial processes that cannot be cheaply implemented to reduce carbon emissions, and the gains in quality of life for the groups implementing them.

It's definitely preferable for emerging countries to generate power, do water processing, transportation etc... in a clean way, but right now the cheapest way to do that is through burning fossil fuels. If the alternative is to slow progress in these nations to prevent a few million pacific islanders from having to move, I think it would be more efficient for nations to assist those who are impacted from the climate externalities.

tonyedgecombe2• 11 years ago

That would be fine if the problems caused by climate change are limited to "a few million pacific islanders", the reality is likely to be much worse.

QuantumCookie• 11 years ago

It's not just rising sea levels caused by climate change [0]: extreme weather will likely become more common, and will disproportionately impact the societies least prepared to cope with it.

[0]: Though just try searching for "Climate Change Map" and see the likely effects in your parts of the world. Florida? Gone in some predictions, along with major European cities like Hamburg and vast swathes of the Netherlands, low lying land on the African coast and countless examples the world over. "A few million pacific islanders" this is not.

littletimmy3• 11 years ago

What about the poor animals who suffer? Are they to go extinct so that a couple billion more of this filthy chimp species can have a good life?

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I would make this argument slightly differently. The industrialization of the world has allowed us to support more humans per square mile of land, at a standard of living (health, welfare, education, and longevity) than would be possible without that industrialization. This has allowed us to develop technologies that should, if utilized, allow humans to survive the extinction event[1] that would have otherwise killed them off.

[1] that includes the set anthropogenic climate change, 'natural' climate change, asteroid strike, super volcanic eruptions, solar immolation, and plague.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

we are also having more people climb out of poverty, health care is more prevalent in the third world, and some major diseases are on their way to being history.

So there are just as many other metrics to show improvement, not to suggest there aren't other areas we can improve. As for the mass extinction event, while some claim it they eventually call out numbers showing the previous five so swamped what is happening now that we are just simply better are recording events and it may not be as dire. It would take over two centuries at current and project rates to equal any previous mass extinction event and that is only if the dire projections are correct.

vox_mollis• 11 years ago

The article should be titled, "The World is Not Becoming More Violent"

Moreover, I've seen some convincing analyses that suggest the world actually IS becoming (slghtly) more violent, but that advances in trauma medicine are minimizing the fact by reducing the death toll.

I will round up citations when I can.

schizoidboy• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, what's the evidence for 10x extinction rate?

jacobdawson• 11 years ago

Yet another article that glosses over the fact that the civil war in Syria is also a Russian/US conflict and could spiral into a full on proxy war in the same vein as Korea and Vietnam.

Russia is supplying military assistance to the government of Syria, while the U.S. (and other NATO countries) are supplying assistance to moderate Syrian rebel groups (but not ISIS). This breaks it down clearly:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/the-sy...

This just happened recently:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/world/europe/turkey-syr...

Russia has repeatedly warned the US to not interfere directly in Syria (you might have seen this):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...

This is all interesting considering the Republicans are already talking about increasing the US presence in Syria (for the purposes of defeating ISIS).

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/16/politics/republican-isis-2...

Statistics are nice but the model is too simple and doesn't account for the complexities of geopolitics.

krisdol• 11 years ago

Title should have [2014] on it.

dang• 11 years ago

Thanks—missed that one.

Edit: turns out it's a dupe, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8791117.

CM30• 11 years ago

But that doesn't sell newspapers/bring website clicks, does it? Hence why the media likes to say 'we're all doomed!' at the first possible opportunity.

It almost makes me wonder what the internet, online 'journalism' and social media would have been like if it existed during the two world wars.

IanDrake• 11 years ago

The World Is Not Falling Apart

Or, why I don't read anything but industry news.

Reading headline news will quickly erode your soul. You have nothing to gain by reading it and just about everything to lose.

When I tell this to people, the typical response is: "But I don't want to be uninformed". Information that you can't act on is not information; it's distraction.

The only thing worse than distraction is thinking you CAN act on news from around the world. If news from 100's of miles away is changing your behavior, that's bad. We're not going to die in a terrorist attack, a shark attack, from climate change, a new flu, etc...

These are the things people worry about incessantly. But we are going to die of cancer, heart disease, in a car accident, of old age, etc... how mundane.

force_reboot2• 11 years ago

You do have some impact, as a voter. E.g. you might not be personally afraid of ISIS but the threat they pose to the region and Europe might be enough for you to think that the US should reverse its policy of trying to overthrow Assad.

tonyedgecombe2• 11 years ago

Which of the two US parties are promising a meaningful change in international policy towards Syria?

keithpeter• 11 years ago

"These are the things people worry about incessantly. But we are going to die of cancer, heart disease, in a car accident, of old age, etc... how mundane."

Yup - when I teach probability, I start with the idea that what gets into the news is novel. What will kill you will not be in the news unless you are amazingly unlucky.

hwstar3• 11 years ago

The US isn't a democracy and never will be until the rich and powerful are prevented from nominating our candidates.

kiba• 11 years ago

It's a democracy, alright, elected by the people for the people.

How big and fat a political campaign is irrelevant.

It's ultimately the voters' responsibility. They are the one who elect the lizards, and listen to thrash news, and be terrified of serial killers and terrorists.

cromulent• 11 years ago

Sure, it's a representative democracy, but many of those around the world are dysfunctional. Voters only get to influence their representative once every few years, whereas large donors and lobbyists influence them every day. This effectively makes it an oligarchy when these donors and lobbyists can influence both major parties.

Filligree• 11 years ago

I don't want the wrong lizard to get in.

hwstar3• 11 years ago

Those who nominate the candidates control who gets elected. Until the people can select candidates with public financing, the system is rigged, and the public will never get to vote for a candidate who is not tied to the money of the nominators.

Lets take a more blatant example: In Hong Kong, the slate of chief executives are preselected by the Chinese authorities, and then the people then get to vote for the pre-approved candidates. The Chinese government openly states the following: "I don't care how the people in Hong Kong vote so long as I get to do the nominating".

In the United States, there is a group of very powerful people who provide money for candidates which essentially "pre selects" them as well with a "green primary". The public is voting for candidates vetted by the rich and powerful. When faced with a decision which contradicts the interests of the rich and powerful it takes a lot of discontent by the electorate to get a controversial policy through the lawmaking process.

The political system in the US has been corrupted. The Citizen's United Ruling by SCOTUS was especially damaging.

littletimmy3• 11 years ago

The voters are not in their right state of mind, are they? The current media system doesn't really let them make rational choices. It plays politics like a team sport.

guard-of-terra• 11 years ago

Meanwhile, the number of refugees and asylum seekers is all time high - 60 mln.

Why kill people when you can just uproot them?

Synaesthesia3• 11 years ago

I'm afraid the world is falling apart. Global inequality and poverty are growing. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the top 1%. Areas of the United States are even resembling the 3rd world now. The Middle East situation is a quagmire from which is hard to see a way out of and getting worse. A superpower confrontation seems possible either with Russia or China. Arms trade is really massive and the threat of nuclear extinction still hangs over us. Lastly we're destroying hope for decent survival with global warming.

nabla9• 11 years ago

global inequality and poverty are growing.

Global poverty has decreased dramatically (halved in 20 years).

"Global income inequality peaked approximately in the 1970s when world income was distributed bimodally into "rich" and "poor" countries with little overlap. Since then inequality have been rapidly decreasing, and this trend seems to be accelerating. Income distribution is now unimodal, with most people living in middle-income countries."

http://www.voxeu.org/article/parametric-estimations-world-di...

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/04/17/re...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_inequality

Synaesthesia3• 11 years ago

Maybe because I live in South Africa, where poverty is really bad and has not really improved. In fact Africa Has actually regressed in poverty lebels since the 1970's. Yes there was massive improvement in poverty levels in Asia and the rest of the world too. However huge problems remain. Inequality has grown in the United States since the 1970's too and poverty has increased there since 2000.

bedhead• 11 years ago

People have never been wealthier or had more leisure time in spite of income inequality. If you genuinely think parts of the US resemble 3rd world countries, you clearly haven't been nor appreciate the meaning of "3rd world country." The mid-east has been fighting for centuries. Global warming is real but the alarmism about imminent catastrophe is and the effect of how the issue has become a pseudo-religion. In short, you're demonstrably wrong about everything. Frankly I don't know how folks like you make it through life with this constant misinformed dread.

codingdave• 11 years ago

I cannot help but notice that many of the charts used to show how we are getting so much less violent have a spike up over the last 5 years.

So if the argument that we are as safe as we have ever been is based on that data, it looks more like we were as safe as ever in 2010. And now we are going downhill.

ashwinaj• 11 years ago

The problem is the 24/7 news cycle. More often than not, everyday is a slow news day, but you have to fill up 24 hours since "Our advertisers demand it". So when there's worthwhile news the hyperbole increases exponentially. And even worse is opinionated journalism; I personally do not care what your opinion is, just report the damn news factually and without bias.

cespare• 11 years ago

It's nice to read an article with a bunch of charts that all have a y-axis minimum of zero.

ilaksh• 11 years ago

Realistically we have a long way to go as far as getting off of fossil fuel dependence.

Those supposedly isolated wars are really an extended campaign that supports the petrodollar.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/middleas...

But actually these middle east conflicts are basically tribal and go back hundreds of years including The Crusades and beyond.

We need a good alternative to clinging to the petrodollar's dominant position until it is pried out of our hands by a world war. Bitcoin looks like a good candidate.

codeshaman• 11 years ago

The world we live in now is good.. It's almost too good to be true, isn't it... And when you have something that good, you're bound to be afraid that you're going to loose it.

We wake up to the smell of fresh coffee. We have access to the most incredible food - from exotic fruit to deep-sea creatures.. We walk around with these incredible magical devices in our pockets, connected to this worldwide ocean of knowledge and we spend our days sharing and watching the shared stuff.

Then we go out on the weekends and we have lots of fun, we get drunk, we dance to great music, we get high, then we have great sex .. Or unlimited porn, of course.

It's like a good dream that we don't want to wake up from..

But guess what ?

You are going to loose it all.

There's this rule of the game - things change. Old stuff disappears (falls apart) and new stuff replaces it. It can be better or worse, but the rule is - it's going to change.

The consequence of this rule is - you're going to loose it all.

All this beautiful music, green pastures, bacon, pussy and cocaine ?

Enjoy it while it lasts, because you're renting it...

So yeah, our world is falling apart - either externally or internally, we're all going to the same place - out of here ;). No worries, this is the game, it's beautiful just the way it is, so don't forget to enjoy it :)

MisterBastahrd• 11 years ago

This article wouldn't have even needed to be written if it weren't for the influence of politically-minded religious evangelicals in the US. Their entire worldview is predicated around the idea that the world is destined to get worse because it was preordained to be so.

I'm not nearly as concerned with ISIS as I am the white gun nut next door who's off his meds... and I'm not nearly as concerned with THAT as I am the lack of No Entry and No U-Turn signs on my local highway. Because if someone near me is going to get killed, it will probably be when someone stops in the middle of the highway to turn where there's no lane to do so.

Animats• 11 years ago

That's a good article, especially when people are getting wound up about terrorism again. Terrorism in the US just isn't a big deal. It's down in the noise compared to routine mass shootings. See the Mass Shooting Tracker.[1] 351 mass shootings so far this year in the US. 447 deaths and 1292 injuries so far. This is the price we pay for the right to keep and bear arms.

[1] http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015

zxcvvcxz• 11 years ago

I'm surprised no one has mentioned anything about "Black Swans" yet. There's an alternative view point on why this optimism may be misplaced.

Basically, just because small effects (average levels of violence) are being smoothed out and minimized, does not imply that tail-end effects -- such as nuclear wars, large genocides, etc -- will not occur. Some people argue that the former may even raise the odds of the latter through artificial constriction until tensions reach a boiling point.

A big proponent of this type of thinking is Nassim Taleb, most notably in his book Antifragile.

Cirillo and Taleb also found no evidence that wars cluster together, as earthquakes and episodes of financial volatility are known to do. Rather, big wars follow no trend and simply occur with equal likelihood through time. Doing the statistics right, they argue, shows that the recent peaceful past is almost certainly causing us to seriously underestimate how much violent conflict we're likely see in the future. [1]

There's an interesting back-and-forth between Taleb and Pinker on this topic, here are some links:

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf http://stevenpinker.com/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker....

[1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-18/is-the-worl...

z92• 11 years ago

It's more about the trend and where things are going toward, rather than what's happening right now.

Like stock market, the perceived future is what effects our emotion in the present.

The World Is Not Falling Apart (2014)

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