Friday, April 1, 2016

The Better Angels

A review of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

I recently finished reading The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker, after hearing Bill Gates recommend it on the Ezra Klein Show.* This book argues that one of the strongest and most important trends throughout human history is a massive decline in violence. Pinker compiles a large number of studies to argue that this trend actually exists and then turns to psychology, sociology, and evolutionary biology to better understand it.

Pinker is Harvard Professor in the Department of Psychology, and a brief look at his bio shows that his work reaches across fields. His book is no way an argument that there are no injustices left or that humanity has achieved some mission to remove violence. Instead, he is coming at this topic as a social scientist with an eye towards history. He observed a phenomenon, one that he argues is frequently overlooked, and tries to explain it.



Once I heard the thesis of this book, I instantly found the topic compelling. At the highest level, it feels very right. My mind instantly went historical violence, such as the Slave Trade and the ransacking of medieval Europe Mongol Horde. I contrasted it with seemingly minor modern topics, such as microagressions.** I thought of depictions of historical violence, such as Gladiator, Game of Thrones, and the Revenant (well, historical-ish). At the very least, day-to-day life for most people in the modern world is far safer and less violent than it seems like it was 200, 500, or 1000 years ago.

On the other hand, I had my doubts. Obviously, the atrocities of the 20th century such as the Holocaust come to mind. Say nothing of the destruction caused by the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. I also challenged myself to think more broadly than the comfortable life I lead in the Bay Area; I wondered what women living in Syria for example might say about this claim. 

After reading the book, I am convinced...I think. In the first 400 pages of the book, Pinker painstakingly describes difference types of violence, from homicide, to rape, to war, to torture. With nearly 60 graphs, he makes the argument with a surprisingly rich volume. He demonstrates, that the best evidence we have shows general trend has been for many many types of violence to decline. 
This is particularly apparent when scaled for world population. Even World War I and World War II, while certainly some of the more extreme events in the observable record, are not the ridiculous outliers that they first seem when scaled for the human population.

I will say that each of the pieces of evidence when taken in isolation can feel awfully weak. Obviously, most data is biased towards the present day and towards the Western World. Pinker is aware of this and explains how some of the studies he cites to correct for these biases. Most of his evidence is simply shown in line-graphs; there is very little talk of statistical significance, And, he frequently to reverts to anecdote or even Bible stories as evidence of what the world used to be like. 

If I was reading one of the individual studies in a graduate economics class, I would have a field day picking apart the weaknesses in the evidence that this trend exists.
Yet, something happens when they are all presented together: the claim gains external validity. This vast set of weak evidence becomes stronger when put together. And it's not simply the sheer volume of evidence, but it's breadth. Violence covers everything from World Wars to individual skirmishes, from homicide to rape to bar; time and time again, Pinker shows little pieces of evidence that it has been on steady decline.

This section of the book is not simply historical evidence. He groups different types of declines in violence by type of violence, societal trends, and historical era. For example, he describes a civilizing process in the Middle Ages through the 20th century, where centralized states gained power and the world shifted from a feudal society. He contrasts this with a rights revolution, which has accepted individual differences and equality, that really began with the end of slavery but picked up steam through the 20th century (think civil rights).

Of course, I don't risk of losing my empirical Social Scientist credentials, so I will caveat this by saying, of course, it's still a lot of weak evidence. Each study has its flaws, obviously the sample if biased because Pinker likely only chose those that supported the main topic of the book. I am mostly afraid of a recency bias and what could simply be a lucky accident that the Cold War never erupted into a hot war. In particular, if we have had a good 70 year run of a decline in violence, it seems plausible that there have been other such runs in the roughly 200,000 year history of Homo Sapiens***

Pinker describes many individual, and interrelated causes for this decrease in violence, ranging from changing norms to the printing press and communication, but there are a couple big themes. The first is the "Leviathan", or the consolidation and monopoly of the use of force by the state. Another is trade and something resembling capitalism. He doesn't really mean this in the Tom Friedman McDonalds Theory**** sense. This theory functions at a more micro-level, with sufficient technological advancement, human's weren't simply fighting for resources from one another, but producing things, which cause win-win trades. It's much less useful be violent towards someone in a win-win situation than a zero-sum game. This trend seems to exist both at the highest level of nations and down to the interactions individuals have with one another. 

What I would have liked to see is more causal research in this area, measuring how specifically technology or a strong states impact levels of violence, some type of natural experiments. In fact, the analysis of the causes seems to be one of the weakest part of the book. For example, at one point in the book he provides a strong throated defense of the Broken Windows theory, as a reason why violence has decreased, and quickly dismisses the author of Freakonomics, Steven Levitt's, theory on legalized abortion decreasing crime in the U.S. I was under the impression that neither of this was proven, and both face substantial criticism. Seeing how one was given so much more credence than the other, led me to cast my doubt about other theories in the book.

Overall, I can't really say that I recommend the book. It's a bit of a slog and many parts of it require thinking deeply about the horrible acts of violence human's can commit. Frankly, I would have rather read a 20 page executive summary, and then read somebody I trust telling me whether the evidence passes muster. But on the other hand it's been fascinating food for thought. 

Everyday, in the news I am confronted with mass shootings, ISIS attacks, violence at political rallies, and police brutality. And each one of these is a tragedy, that either effects me emotionally or I try to detach from because I don't want to confront the emotional toll that it brings. And, a long time ago, I gave up any any concept that good wins over evil, because they are such relative terms. But, Pinker provided one way to characterize the arch of human history: a decrease in violence. Frankly, I had never even though to describe changes this way; Pinker provided me with language to language to characterize what progress looks like. And he convinced me that we are making some, I think.

* This one of my new favorite podcasts, check out the episode with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim
** I am actually quite sympathetic to the idea that this is a problem, but we can probably all agree that it is quite a step down when compared to slavery.
*** Maybe... the world is more interconnected than ever before, so peace in one area of the world could increase the likelihood of peace in another, in a way that simply wasn't possible when you had civilizations that couldn't interact with each other, or sparsely populated tribes.
**** Friedman argued that the country with a McDonalds went to War with another Country with a McDonalds was a sign of the virtue of free trade and capitalism... then NATO bombed Yugoslavia.

2 comments:

  1. Overall, I can't really say that I recommend the book. It's a bit of a slog and many parts of it require thinking deeply about the horrible acts of violence human's can commit. Frankly, I would have rather read a 20 page executive summary, and then read somebody I trust telling me whether the evidence passes muster.

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    This made me laugh as I just got to read your pretty interesting summary of the book. I forget, have you already read The Making of the Atomic Bomb? And did you finish The Path to Power?

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  2. Finished path to power, really great. Didn't read making of atomic bomb yet, on the queue for the year, but need some lighter fair after those two back to back. Reading Randal munroes what if

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