Your comment would be fine with just the last paragraph.
These two statements do not contradict each other, at all.
It is possible for two things to simultaneously be true: things are awful for many people, AND things overall are better than they used to be.
People seem to hate Pinker because they interpret his words as saying their suffering doesn't matter. There is absolutely nothing about his argument that suggests this. It is exactly because suffering is so terrible that it is a good thing that there is less suffering now than in the past.
Bill Gates gets lumped in with Pinker here, and Gates is literally putting his money where his mouth is on this. He wouldn't invest his massive fortune into improving the world if his position was "things are great now, stop complaining."
I'm pretty sure Pinker doesn't use average income as a metric. I'm not really sure where you're getting that from. The relevant metric is number of people living below the poverty line, which is a metric which doesn't have the same issue.
The point isn't that things aren't awful, but that used to be more awful and continue to be less awful, despite popular perception to the contrary.
> You just prefer the cozy illusion that it's all getting better.
It is getting better.
> Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition.
Again, that's not the point.
> But sure, "on average things are better" -- and even this outlandish claim is proven wrong by this article, with hard data.
No it isn't. The article actually cites data showing that poverty is going down, just not as fast as "extreme poverty". On average, things are getting better. It's not an outlandish claim. By almost any measure of human welfare, things are getting better, on the average.
Hickel's issue isn't so even so much arguing that poverty isn't going down, but that "neoliberalism" had nothing to do with it. Make of that what you want, but that's Hickel's pet peeve, not Pinker's.
> Again, that's not the point.
If that's not the point then any other discussion is tragically irrelevant.
The "global average is better" is a meaningless assertion. Everybody in the world has roughly one testicle. How useful is that piece of info?
And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?
Let's say I point to improved cancer mortality (on average, of course) as a result of human progress, are you going to argue that it's all irrelevant since some people still die from cancer? You're simply straying from the topic.
> And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?
Not useful at all, obviously. Kids can't eat statistics. They also can't eat your HN comments, for that matter.
Very much so. Those same people in the past, instead of worrying about feeding their kids well, would be worrying about feeding their kids anything at all, they'd be worrying if the kids even have a chance at survival.