{"id":173045,"date":"2023-09-29T10:31:11","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T15:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/steven-pinker-shares-his-relentless-optimism-about-human-progress"},"modified":"2023-09-29T10:31:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T15:31:11","slug":"steven-pinker-shares-his-relentless-optimism-about-human-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/steven-pinker-shares-his-relentless-optimism-about-human-progress","title":{"rendered":"Steven Pinker shares his \u201crelentless optimism\u201d about human progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Steven Pinker shares his &quot;relentless optimism&quot; about human progress | GZERO World\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5CthTkZ3_Lw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Brilliant. News is about rare events, especially bad things. Massive amounts of raw data is boring \u2014 but tells a completely different story.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>If you follow the news closely, chances are your view of the state of the world is not super optimistic. From war in Ukraine to a warming planet to global poverty and hunger, there\u2019s plenty to get upset about. But what if things are actually getting\u2026better?<\/p>\n<p>Sign up for GZERO Daily (free newsletter on global politics): <a href=\"https:\/\/rebrand.ly\/gzeronewsletter\">https:\/\/rebrand.ly\/gzeronewsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you compare the number of wars and the number of people killed in wars in the sixties and the seventies and even the eighties, we\u2019re actually much better off today,\u201d Pinker argues. However, \u201cif you look at headlines, since as long as bad things haven\u2019t vanished from the face of the earth, which they never will, you can get the impression that things are unchanged or even are worse than ever, even when they\u2019re improving.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How does Pinker evaluate human progress? With data: \u201cIt\u2019s only when you count the number of wars, number of deaths in war, longevity, child mortality, extreme poverty, number of leisure hours, that you see that there actually has been improvement. \u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/09\/steven-pinker-shares-his-relentless-optimism-about-human-progress\">Continue reading \u201cSteven Pinker shares his \u201crelentless optimism\u201d about human progress\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brilliant. News is about rare events, especially bad things. Massive amounts of raw data is boring \u2014 but tells a completely different story. If you follow the news closely, chances are your view of the state of the world is not super optimistic. From war in Ukraine to a warming planet to global poverty and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-extension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}