Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong

Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by n4r9 on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @01:33PM (#28528018)

I agree, but I get the sense that Pinker is desperate to avoid having to tackle the difference between mental (subjective?) suffering, and physical suffering. Whilst I appreciate physical suffering such as hunger is easier to measure, mental suffering somehow seems more important; one can easily imagine being slightly hungrier but much happier if you practise a certain attitude.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by mechE321 on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @03:34PM (#28529879)

The lower down a bit of suffering is on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the easier it is to measure on a societal scale.

Everyone's starving to death? Easy to measure. Everyone's living in an economically precarious situation? A bit more difficult to measure. Everyone's living life with a vague sense of listlessness and ennui? Much more difficult to measure.

Tackling the easily measured physical suffering both takes priority and has the most obvious means of feedback.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by n4r9 on Friday September 17, 2021 @05:45AM (#28563216)

Sure, it's the obvious thing to try. I'm challenging Pinker's implicit assertion that because physical suffering has decreased, overall suffering has necessarily decreased.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by bko on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @01:52PM (#28528258)

That's in a large part cultural. I don't know what you can say about it apart from don't consume so much social media and stay away from the news cycle.

For some reason its fashionable to be doom and gloom. You see it pretty much everywhere. People think the world is going to end and everything is corrupt. I can't imagine growing up as a child today doing active shooter drills despite the fact that US schools are one of the safest places to be in the world.

Unfortunately with raising children you have less options since most Americans are confined to public schools in their immediate geography.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by n4r9 on Friday September 17, 2021 @05:51AM (#28563267)

There's definitely a lot more that governments could try to alleviate mental suffering. Making psychological healthcare cheaply available, for example. Or teaching cognitive therapies as part of the national curriculum.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by peakaboo on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @02:24PM (#28528702)

I don't think fashionable is the right word since doomers really don't care about what's popular.

For me personally, I just watch society and i think we are on our last chapter as a species.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by prepend on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @03:49PM (#28530089)

I think they do care about what’s popular and are so doomy, in part, because it’s fashionable.

It’s easier to destroy than to create beauty. And easy things seem to me to be popular. It’s much easier to shit on an idea than work on something and I think there’s an aspect of selfishness that it just so happens to be easy to be part of a pointless and helpless system than to get out of bed, etc.

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Re:Steven Pinker thinks your sense of imminent doom is wrong by KorematsuFredt on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @03:49PM (#28530087)

Humans have survived this long because of that constant paranoid behaviour. I think we are programmed to love doom and gloom predictions.

But more importantly, it is an excellent tool in the hands of academicians and politicians to demand more of other people's money. It is like when you go to a Car mechanic he will find 100 faults with the car.

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