The basic fact is that the world is by virtually any objective measure of human well-being in the best place since the start of the recorded history. And still there are people (even in this thread) who see the sky falling and the world ending tomorrow if not today. Somehow it became a mark of an ostensibly grounded and serious person to be cynical and pessimistic about the world's affairs. The only thing that Pinker tries to show, is that this cynicism is not backed by the facts.

Interestingly, the very people the "social justice warriors" claim to fight for reaped the most benefits of the social and economic progress. Well-deserved, of course, since they started way behind. But it makes you wonder, why the SJWs are as unhappy about the state of our society as they ever were? A cynic would say, they are afraid of losing their metaphorical jobs. I'd rather believe that they just lack the insight into just how much worse the life was not so long ago.

Isn't well-being subjective? It's for me to decide if I'm happy (although some people like to tell others how they should feel).

I've heard from friends with mental health problems that one of the hardest things to deal with can be other people telling them that objectively their life is good ("you have family, friends, success in work - what have you got to be unhappy about?")... so on top of feeling depressed they're also emoting wrongly.

Surely if a person feels that the sky is falling that would be a measure of low well-being. In which case the 'objective measures of human well-being' are badly chosen or (more realistically, and something that will cause massive cognitive dissonance in lots of readers here): not everything can be measured objectively. Experience happens subjectively, behind the eyes, and can never be usefully measured. Which is why when someone tells you they're unhappy you have to decide whether to believe them, or just tell them that they're wrong.

Personally I think trying to objectively measure how good life is now compared to other times is embarrassingly futile. Your internal philosophy makes a huge difference to how you handle life, it's perfectly possible for a person to have a non-miserable life in a society with high infant mortality rates and a life expectancy of 40, with hostile tribes nearby who might need to be fought at any time. Expectations (norms) along with cultural and psychological frameworks would make the experience for someone native to that time and place very different than it would be for somebody who was dropped from the modern Western world into a similar situation. Of course the same example native person might also live unhappily. But to presume that their subjective life experience should be ruled by abstract measurements is... unimaginative.

I can never find any reference to it online but years ago I remember Gordon Brown (UK PM at the time I think) talking on TV about quality of life, saying "one thing we've found is that people report being happier when they hear birds singing... so we're looking into using recordings of birdsong to increase happiness levels". LOL it's like, dude... you're really not getting it are you?

Human well-being? Yes, probably.

Overall well-being of the planet? Hell no.