William Zinsser says that to be a good critic you should to
love the medium they’re reviewing—not be in love the one author
you’ve read.
EDIT: though is it kinda tragic that Aronson gets himself all
pity-partied with Pinker over the latter’s bad reviews: “As I read this
sort of critique, the hair stands on my neck, because the basic
technique of hostile mistranslation is so familiar to me. It’s the
technique that once took a comment in which I pled for shy nerdy males…”
;_;
So, there is also a pretty stellar [comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3654#comment-1759689)---I'm being serious here, I am very pleased to see Enlightenment empiricism applied to Pinker turning so skillfully into the obvious assessment that his popular work is bunk (I can even appreciate how cutting the "charity" is):
> **Pinker’s reasoning on AI was so horrifically bad** (as reasoning qua reasoning, not to mention as elementary scholarship; angry and dismissive and failing to consider the opposite or try steeling the imagined argument, as well as ignorant of the Bostrom book that even outsiders who’ve heard of the field have heard is the basic literature), **that I’m disinclined to believe anything Pinker says about topics I don’t already know about**, lest that just be Gell-Mann Amnesia on my own part. I frankly worry he’s gotten old and run out his supply of precision.
Golden.
Aronson, on the other hand, [exposes his hand early](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3654#comment-1759723):
> The thing is, if I banned any author who I ever caught deploying weak arguments as soldiers for a predetermined conclusion, I think my bookshelf would be completely emptied! **I’ve taken too much from Pinker’s collected works that I think is true and important for me** to throw out the whole meal over one piece of gristle—though I do understand that for you, this particular piece of gristle causes rather more choking than it does for me.
Tisk tisk---postmodern relativists!
----
[We've been called out!](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3654#comment-1759803) "Intellectually lazy"? cf. what Aronson thinks "is true and important" for him.
Sure it's that. But on some level I feel (and this may just be my bias, *feelings* that is) that Yudkowsky has a degree of public earnesty, that in no way compares to Pinker's grifterness. I think Yudkowsky genuinely believes the things he says (one could say that the whole ideology of being "less wrong" is about how genuinely "unknowable" the things *want* to believe are---like AI apocalypse). Pinker, by the very tone and nature of his work, has nothing morally or practically "on the line." Truth might be the most difficult of hunt for the Yudkowskian rationalist, but for the Pinkerite "truth" is a means to a political or economic end.
Sure, they are both mostly wrong, but they are wrong in different ways. But I would be much happier talking to Yudkowski about history than entertaining any time with Pinker.
I mean, the main issue here is that Pinker's adherence to massive modularity prevents the concept of artificial general intelligence from being possible whereas Big Yud just dismisses this because Pinks hasn't injected enough singularitarian kool-aid directly into his brain.
I imagine the only difference in trying to talk to them about something like history is that Yud would be easier because he would just keep repeating "But Whig history is just obviously true because science" whereas Pinker would spend hours bloviating and going "Look at this graph! And this graph! And this graph!"
Um, while I don't worry about AI the way that Yud does---I'm unworried about everything being paperclipped---I think that at least the worry is categorically right (in the comment, he cites a book by Bostrom, which I don't know really anything about). AI are dangerous in important ways, as they interact with human systems---system of justice, systems of communication, etc. So maybe I am giving Yud too much credit in claiming we share a common concern there (I don't think MIRI is working on *my* concerns, but I at least think they'd indulge my concern if not understand it).
But if I'm reading Pinker correctly, his assurances towards optimism are kinda straw-manny (again, if I give Yudkowski and his peers steel-credit). Pinker says we're ostensibly supposed to be worried about omniscient machines---and then reads omniscience as perfect: "Devouring the information on the Internet will not confer omniscience either: big data is still finite data, and the universe of knowledge is infinite." Or that, we shouldn't be worried about complex intelligence (is this the massive modularity?) because... ahem... "we know of one highly advanced form of intelligence that evolved without this defect. They’re called women." I think these are insultingly trivial arguments---probably not even worthy of SneerClub.
I actually don't really know anything Yudkowski has said on the topic of history or stuff like that. I guess I imagine the subject is as troubled as would be of any contemporary consumer of popular science/history writing. I guess the difference I see is that Pinker is clearly trying to promulgate lies about history, Yudkowski at worst may just be complicit in some. Basically: I am making the distinction between naivete and duplicity between Yud and Pink. Or, I'm giving Yud the benefit of the doubt, where I'm confident that Pinker is writing in bad faith.
[Algorithmic bias](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608248/biased-algorithms-are-everywhere-and-no-one-seems-to-care/) is a real thing, but Yud doesn't care about the real kinds, he cares about Skynet. In fact, addressing algorithmic bias would be against his own interests because it would undermine the credibility of the Siliconian masters of mankind. Yud also wouldn't bother with it because "politics is the mindkiller." If anything, the hyperventilating over Skynet distracts from real existential risks (i.e. nukes, global warming) as well as algorithmic bias.
Pink doesn't think Skynet is possible because of [massive modularity](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modularity-mind/), as that thesis implies there is no such thing as a general intelligence or domain-general learning mechanism. So Pinker is right for the wrong reasons.
I'm surprised that the reviews have been so lukewarm to negative. Stevie Pinks has been the darling of people who think the non-fiction Pulitzer Prize actually means something forever.
It may very well be that all the reviewers, not matter how dear Pinker is to them, have to start nearly every review saying "have you read *Better Angles*? well..." I imagine reading essentially the same book twice can't carry on gushing endearment. And I also imagine, the weight implied with the philosophically sounding title makes Pinker's poverty in that area jarring. People that already know the wikipedia entry for Bacon probably find nothing else new ([which, is something the *Harvard Magazine* basically says](https://harvardmagazine.com/2018/03/steven-pinker-enlightenment-now)). Pinker mentions "Montesquieu, Hume, Smith, Kant, Nicolas de Condorcet, Denis Diderot, Jean-Baptiste d’Alembert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Giambattista Vico" in the introduction, and leaves most of these name drops basically at that. (Funnily enough, J. K. Rowling gets mentioned as much as Rousseau, by measure of the index.)
(And there is certainly something unsettling about Pinker's "don't worry" thesis coupled with the "I've spent, like what, a decade of *serious* work telling people that things are looking up." No matter how many good things are inevitably coming, and how ostensibly huge Pinker's genius, it seems weird to hammer on about optimism when optimism seems to come cheap... No serious reviewer fails to mention global warming, and that Pinker is using his universal key (Evo-psych) to resolve popular pessimism and not actual real world problems is just in general annoying. "Get a real job, hippy," is what I keep thinking....)
If you’ve read anything else by Pinker, then you more-or-less know
what to expect: an intellectual buffet that’s pure joy to devour, even
if many of the dishes are ones you’ve tasted before.
Well, the review might as well end here then, huh? Like, what’s the
fucking point of reviewing a work like this if you are just going to
engage with it like you’re a fanboy of some fantasy author and not
interrogating the ideas in the work?
If you’ve read Better Angels, to which Enlightenment Now functions as
a sort of sequel, then you know even more specifically what to expect: a
saturation bombing of line graphs showing you how, despite the
headlines, the world has been getting better in almost every imaginable
way—graphs so thorough that they’ll eventually drag the most dedicated
pessimist, kicking and screaming, into sharing Pinker’s sunny
disposition, at least temporarily (but more about that later).
BUT IT HAS GRAPHS!!!
I’ve found that Pinker is the ultimate litmus test for distinguishing
people who think critically about numbers from people who are impressed
by anything vaguely sciencey looking.
So what’s SneerClub’s beef with Pinker? I haven’t read either of his
books yet, and I reserve the right to be unpleasantly surprised, but the
couple of interviews I’ve heard from him have been reasonably sane.
Based on the summaries his new book doesn’t really sound like it’s
trying to be about the actual historical enlightenment, but Moldbug
is Wrong About Everything might not have been a title with broad
mainstream appeal.
His books are only positively reviewed by evo psychs and the upper-middle brow press. [Everyone else thinks he's a hack](https://www.reddit.com/r/BadSocialScience/comments/82j4u7/are_sam_harris_steven_pinker_and_jordan_peterson/dvaoa95/).
[He doesn't understand how data works.](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2d7o8p/historians_ignorance_of_the_most_important/)
[He doesn't read books.](https://www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/comments/7z8aln/the_enlightenment_of_steven_pinker/duod2ur/)
I wanna mention Zera Yacob here because I don’t think a lot of folks
(even in philosophy) know about him. He was an Ethiopian thinker who
precursored many Enlightenment ideas. One popular article I could find
on him (and Anton Amos) was this
along with this short video.
Though I’d also like to see a scholarly article about his work.
Off to a good start…
William Zinsser says that to be a good critic you should to love the medium they’re reviewing—not be in love the one author you’ve read.
EDIT: though is it kinda tragic that Aronson gets himself all pity-partied with Pinker over the latter’s bad reviews: “As I read this sort of critique, the hair stands on my neck, because the basic technique of hostile mistranslation is so familiar to me. It’s the technique that once took a comment in which I pled for shy nerdy males…” ;_;
Well, the review might as well end here then, huh? Like, what’s the fucking point of reviewing a work like this if you are just going to engage with it like you’re a fanboy of some fantasy author and not interrogating the ideas in the work?
BUT IT HAS GRAPHS!!!
I’ve found that Pinker is the ultimate litmus test for distinguishing people who think critically about numbers from people who are impressed by anything vaguely sciencey looking.
So what’s SneerClub’s beef with Pinker? I haven’t read either of his books yet, and I reserve the right to be unpleasantly surprised, but the couple of interviews I’ve heard from him have been reasonably sane.
Based on the summaries his new book doesn’t really sound like it’s trying to be about the actual historical enlightenment, but Moldbug is Wrong About Everything might not have been a title with broad mainstream appeal.
I wanna mention Zera Yacob here because I don’t think a lot of folks (even in philosophy) know about him. He was an Ethiopian thinker who precursored many Enlightenment ideas. One popular article I could find on him (and Anton Amos) was this along with this short video. Though I’d also like to see a scholarly article about his work.