{"id":110,"date":"2020-06-11T14:04:15","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T18:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-fall-2020\/?page_id=110"},"modified":"2020-11-08T17:30:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T22:30:53","slug":"steven-pinker-thinks-the-future-is-looking-bright","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/world-politics-fall-2020\/steven-pinker-thinks-the-future-is-looking-bright\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Pinker Thinks the Future Is Looking Bright"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Harvard psychologist says he is no starry-eyed optimist. It\u2019s just that the data don\u2019t lie.<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, maintains that by objective measures the world is heading in the right direction. <\/span>Credit<\/span>Credit<\/span>Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By Karen Weintraub, New York Times, <\/em><\/span>Nov. 19, 2018<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, has been known to take provocative positions. He has argued that women are intrinsically different from men, that we are more driven by our genes than academics like to acknowledge, and that society is getting less violent over time \u2014 despite the mass shootings and other atrocities we hear about daily.<\/p>\n

The thesis of his latest book, \u201cEnlightenment Now,\u201d is that life on Earth is improving. By every major measure of human well-being, from personal safety to longevity to economic security to happiness, people everywhere are far better off today than they were before the start of the Enlightenment in the 17th century.<\/p>\n

I sat down with Dr. Pinker to talk about how science has made life better, and what humanity needs to do to keep the good times rolling. This is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.<\/p>\n