Re:The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism
by chongli on Sunday February 25, 2018 @11:34PM
(#16463153)
We've already had plenty of dystopias: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, North Korea today... As for a utopia? Nobody can agree on what that would look like. When somebody claims to have a plan for a utopia, my first question is: "for whom?"
How does any ideological utopia work without excluding anyone? I have yet to see a satisfactory answer. The paradox of tolerance would suggest that utopias are impossible, at least with human beings.
Re:The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism
by truculation on Monday February 26, 2018 @01:11AM
(#16463496)
I suspect your dystopias have in common that they all had utopian visions. Instead of focusing on real problems and making gradual progress they kept talking about building heaven on earth. Apparently they just needed to tear down existing institutions and kill a few people first...
Re:The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism
by chongli on Monday February 26, 2018 @08:38AM
(#16465132)
Instead of focusing on real problems and making gradual progress
That's a protopia [0], not a utopia. A utopia is a radical, top-down, planned society based on some ideology.
Re:The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism
by vadimberman on Monday February 26, 2018 @12:30AM
(#16463330)
> How does any ideological utopia work without excluding anyone?
https://www.amazon.com/Polystate-Thought-Experiment-Distribu...
Re:The limitations of Steven Pinker’s optimism
by ghostcluster on Monday February 26, 2018 @02:52AM
(#16463832)
don't count modern day China out.
supposedly they're maintaining 120,000 person concentration camps for their stubborn ethnic minorities in the western region.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/25/at-least-12000...
Describing pinker's thoughts on linguistic descriptivism:
Steven Pinker's 1994 "The Language Instinct" is a good and fairly literate example of this second kind of Descriptivist argument, which, like the Gove-et-al. version, tends to deploy a Jr.-high-filmstrip SCIENCE: POINTING THE WAY TO A BRIGHTER TOMORROW-type tone...
I think it's a lot closer to the truth to say that humans tend to be human throughout history, for both good and ill, and that this alone is why neither anyone's idea of utopia nor dystopia will ever really happen. We're always somewhere in the middle.