> Pinker avoids addressing the social breakdown of families

Is it really a problem that families aren’t together? Previously (with some hold outs) there wasn’t much choice and families had to stay together due to issues around control through money, religion and social pressures. Go back further (hopefully, though this is still pretty grim in many areas) and domestic violence was also legal. “Breakdown” of families is a considerably better option than what was previously available.

> the increased polarization and technology-driven personal atomization in the current mileau

I don’t understand what this means, could you give an example?

> Is it really a problem that families aren’t together?

if you care about the epidemic of loneliness, the negative medical consequences of social isolation, and the demographic sustainability of developed countries, yes.

Research shows having a roommate is enough to combat feelings of loneliness.

Marriage in and of itself isn’t shown to automatically increase happiness; most folks reported having maintained their baseline mood after the wedding

Maybe this is just old definitions needing to be updated, but “family” in the traditional mom-dad-kids all visit grandma and the like, isn’t essential to the species.

Socializing is, but not the traditional structures

>Is it really a problem that families aren’t together?

Apparently yes. But it's one of those issues modern culture has blinders on.

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/scientists-think-loneliness-is-...

https://hbr.org/cover-story/2017/09/work-and-the-loneliness-...

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42031799/why-an-e...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/01/29/17...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/us/opioid-crisis-public-h...

https://www.amazon.com/Haven-Heartless-World-Norton-Paperbac...

Random, mostly substance-free articles is hardly convincing evidence that this is a problem. Notably, none of the crappy articles mention whether this "problem" is even new.

Blinders help even less. And whether the problem is "new" or a few decades old is really irrelevant.

There's some trend to have huge issues, felt and experienced by tens of millions, studied by tons of different groups, admitted by experts, pointed at by tons of different statistics, etc, and people wanting to have some definitive "this is the final 100% statistical proof with n confidence" on it, or else it doesn't exist.

It's more lalala hands in the ears denial than actual science. Same thing for the environmental change deniers.

See the difference there is that you don't need shallow feel-bad articles about climate change. There's hard science there; it's incontrovertible.

In contrast, neurotically wringing our figurative hands about imagined problems like the link between vaccines and autism, the link between video games and school shootings, or disintegration of traditional values in modern times; all without hard science backing it up; will continue to fail to convince all but the most blinded.

And whether the problem is "new" or a few decades old is really irrelevant.

Why should we think it's not tens of thousands of years old?

>Why should we think it's not tens of thousands of years old?

Because we weren't born yesterday, and we now how it was in the 80s and 70s, compared to the 60s and 50s and 40s...

https://goo.gl/images/JBJk2D

You have to be joking. Rates of divorce? Would it even have been possible to pick an issue with more confounding factors?

Pinker also looks at relative numbers a lot, to me this seems disingenuous given for example that every day an equivalent number of people as a fully loaded 747 die to car accidents alone. We have been on the brink of complete nuclear annihilation at least once, to say we're very far from another such incident would be almost mad. Pinker avoids the giant elephants in the room so sure, the fast that we're still here makes his arguments look good, but they could be very shortsighted specially if there is no one to talk about them.

vehicle death rates have cratered over the decades.

http://blog.fusedgrid.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/VKM-Fata...

I guess engineering-related safety regulations actually work.

Interesting curves.

Half the reduction occurred from 1912 to about 1922, the first decade of large-scale auto use. Bt 1940, it halved again. The next halving gets you to the eary 1970s.

The present rate looks to be about 1 death per 100 million vehicle miles travelled (VMT), or roughly 1/5 the rate in 1970.

My main takeaway is diminishing marginal returns, and a fairly consistent trend of halving the rate every 20 years or so, after the first decade.

i do wonder if driving with smartphones has caused any sort of bump in the last 7 years

They're attributed to 9% of MVA deaths, and 16% of MVA injuries as of 2016, though trends seem relatively flat (or declining) since 2010.

Overall accident instances tend to scale with miles driven, which are a pro-cyclical economic factor. That is: as economic activity increases, people drive more, for both commuting and recreation.

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/#/

I’m not convinced Brooks actually read Pinker, as Pinker addressed at length many of the things that Brooks mentions.