Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers · Steven Pinker

The year 2016 was named as the worst year in our history… Until 2017. Is this perception really true? Steven Pinker analyzes with exhaustive data the fallacy of comparing the worst of the present with the best of the past. “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory”. Here is his TED talk.

Was 2017 really the “worst year ever,” as some would have us believe? In his analysis of recent data on homicide, war, poverty, pollution and more, psychologist Steven Pinker finds that we’re doing better now in every one of them when compared with 30 years ago. But progress isn’t inevitable, and it doesn’t mean everything gets better for everyone all the time, Pinker says. Instead, progress is problem-solving, and we should look at things like climate change and nuclear war as problems to be solved, not apocalypses in waiting. “We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one,” he says. “But there’s no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.”

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