No Wonder So Many People are Depressed

[Pies4shaw]

OK, I think he goes well enough on a half-back flank, provided he isn't playing on a super-quick forward. Schaz playing on quick forwards does depress me, though.

Evil is putting Wayne Johnston in the Hall of Fame. Suffering is Sheedy elevated to legend status.

[K]

Well, strange though it is to say, that is actually a good illustration: Clearly, in former times Scharenberg would not have had the chance he currently has, because even one of his foot or knee problems would have been career-ending; many people, swept up by the cult of personality, as well as their own ideological yearnings, seem to believe it's reasonable to take little facts like that and conclude that humanity as a whole is intrinsically less evil now.

[K]

I attach below Pinker's wars graph (from the link on the previous page). [Note: I wish I could find a way to rescale images included in posts, so you don't have to either scroll the browser window left and right or make it full-screen. Does anyone know if this is possible?]



Modifying previous words on the homicides graph, I'd say:
"These do not support a long-term trend. Presumably you're happy to concede the interstate wars rate is not budging. But the civil wars line is basically a few mountain peaks on a horizontal horizon. Sure, the top of the mountain peak is higher than the end of the mountain range to the right. But that's also true of the end of the mountain range to the left."


Now look at Pinker's homicides graph:



Repeat:
"Presumably you're happy to concede the England and Wales rate is not budging. But the US line is basically a few mountain peaks on a horizontal horizon. Sure, the top of the mountain peak is higher than the end of the mountain range to the right. But it looks like that's also true of the missing end of the mountain range to the left."


Question:

If you were forced to guess what the light blue US line looks like as you extend it backwards from 1967 for a few years,
what line would you draw??

[Pies4shaw]

Pinker has a slight mind. Why engage?

[David]

[K]

Quick question (response later): You read the first book, though. Isn't a version of that graph in there? Okay, make that two questions: In the second book, it should be Fig 12-2, p.171. Is it basically the same? (I'm guessing it's the same graph in all three instances, just with the end-year advanced to 2015 in the last version.)

[David]

I'm not denying that the graph is in the book (I understand that to be the case); I'm just not sure it's being used for the purposes you're presuming.

Either way, it seems that, despite that major spike in the mid-20th century, the broader trend holds up. I've screenshotted a couple of graphs from this Google Books listing of The Better Angels of Our Nature at the bottom of the post:

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=c3cWa-GnsfMC

The full text isn't available there, so I can't (at least while not at home) find the 1965–2011 homicide rate graph in question, or, therefore, the context it's being used in. I'm also not sure if Pinker addresses the reasons for the brief, rapid increase in violence in the US and elsewhere that began in the 1960s and ended in the mid-1990s. But what seems clear to me is that both short-term and long-term trends are apparent, and lend weight to his argument – the short-term data reassures us that those upticks on the far right of each graph below are blips, not a sign of centuries of progress being undone.

[Mugwump]

In an age when medical technology (esp recovering injury trauma) has advanced dramatically, does the hockey stick at the end of each of these graphs not shock you ? I think about the many deaths that jump represents ina peaceful society, and I am deeply depressed by what it signifies and foretells.

Look at GBH and attempted murder and murder, as these help to net out the effects of medical technology. The better angels of our nature are in rebellion. Whether you ascribe this to consumerism, capitalism, to multiculturalism or to liberalism, as your ideological preference wishes, it is truly shocking.

[K]

There are so many things to say about so many topics that I don't know where to start...

First, David, you make it sound as if you did not read the Better Angels book, when in fact you have. I realize you may not have an eidetic memory, but really...

Second, apart from the two books, the author has had his views published in many stand-alone newspaper articles, which include graphs. The Guardian page with those light-blue graphs says at the top (under his name): "... showing that every form of violence is in decline" [emphasis mine]. In the opinion piece that goes with that page of graphs, he writes: "But in 2007 I took the bait and ventured that every form of violence, when measured objectively, was in decline – a claim I buttressed with 100 graphs in my 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature." If that statement is not outright wrong, it's saved from being so only by being really imprecise; clearly, people are going to read that as meaning that all graphs are showing a decline in violence across their full time scales.
Likewise, his Slate article, co-authored with Andrew Mack, proclaims "We’ve never lived in such peaceful times" [emphasis mine]. If a graph suggests by some measure the 60s (for example) were equally peaceful, that's already undermining their claim. This Slate article does show the 1967-2013 homicides graph, but of course the authors choose not to talk about the left-hand end. On the other hand, they call that tiny worm that claims to be the world rate "heroic guesstimates". That's just politician-speak, which in common language translates to "made-up bullsh**".
[It's also alarming how often he accuses his enemies of faults he himself is glaringly guilty of. For example, in this article, the authors write, "We also have to avoid being fooled by randomness." But more on that later.]

And let's not forget that in the new book, he says (in reference to the old book), “I had thought that a parade of graphs with time on the horizontal axis, body counts or other measures of violence on the vertical, and a line that meandered from the top left to the bottom right would cure audiences." Do you see a line meandering from top left to bottom right in that 1967-2013 homicides graph?? Again, if that statement is not outright wrong, it's saved from being so only by being really imprecise --- it's clear what message readers will take from it. He's also wrong to suggest it's "body counts" on the vertical axis; it's only by myopically sticking to relative numbers (percentage of population) that he can even hope to have a line that decreases with time --- the absolute numbers of bodies, which surely the word "counts" implies, invariably rise with time.

[David]

Why do you think we should be measuring by absolute rather than relative numbers? Rapid population increases necessitate that any relative decline in crime will likely be matched either by some kind of increase, a plateau or a less acute slide in absolute numbers. So, what’s your point? If you’re going to sift through this one guy’s public statements looking for any (careless or opportunistic) misstatements he’s committed, then good luck, but I don’t really see what purpose that serves. Personally, it seems pretty obvious to me that if a lower percentage of people are being murdered, and a lower percentage are killing, then society is clearly improving, even if a greater absolute number are dying than they were in 1625 because the population is ten times bigger. Feel free to point out why I’m wrong on that.

I note you haven’t addressed the graphs I’ve posted.

[K]

David, do I really need to say in every post that I'm going to get round to everything eventually? I already signalled it implicitly in the first sentence of my previous post (re-read if you don't believe)... i.e. the fact that I was just going to have to pick one thing to talk about at a time. It's a bit weird if every post I make has to reassure everyone that more are to come.

I was going to discuss the relative vs. absolute numbers issue later. The merit or otherwise of each was not what I was noting here. I just noted, as no more than a footnote at the end of my post, that his sentence is wrong, unless someone can show that "body count" means something I don't think it means. That is not a verbal statement. In talks, interviews, etc., all sorts of wrong words can come out. I get that. This is something in a book. If he cannot be bothered getting simple things right in his book, maybe he or his publisher should hire a sufficient number of sufficiently competent editors to do his dirty work for him. I didn't "sift through" his statements. I just noticed glaring errors in stuff I casually read, just as I see many glaring errors in a majority of the graphs I see. And words like "all" or "every" or "never" are splattered many times throughout the books, articles, interviews, etc. Your implicit claim that I'm searching for these errors, which in reality are just popping up in my field of vision like flies at a BBQ, is also in considerable tension with your other claim that I really have no idea what he's said and so cannot judge anything at all.


[A BB question:
How do you include those plots you attached that you so urgently wish me to address? I didn't see them at all initially and wondered what was going on, but eventually discovered that I was not logged in and needed to be to see them. That is actually a convenient feature. I used the "img" bbcode command. I wasn't sure if the "add attachment" option would actually display pictures in the comment.]

[David]

I could be wrong, but I’m not aware of any BB feature that prevents you from seeing attachments if you’re not logged in – it might be a browser issue (sometimes images are a bit slow to load). The [img] tag and attachments each work interchangeably; the advantage of the latter is that you don’t need to upload the images first elsewhere, but the downside is that you don’t get to choose where they appear in your post.

As I said in my previous post, I think it’s a bit of a tiresome exercise to just pick holes in individual sentences. Maybe he means “relative body count”, maybe it’s a careless slip of the tongue, or maybe he’s using language manipulatively. You’ve said from the beginning that you’re trying to discuss the actual data presented and not merely attempting to discredit Pinker; so why bring such a trivial thing up?

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

^ thanks PTID, I wasn’t aware of Cardiff UNiversity’s work on this.

Their data clearly moves around a lot, and it is surprising to see very large year on year swings (oddly, the era of supposed “austerity” seems to have hosted a dramatic downturn in violence at ED departments).

The main thing I noted was their comment that “the majority of violent injuries are not inflicted by weapons, but by hitting, shoving, kicking and pushing.” I suspect that the majority of the incidents they are measuring are real, but not necessarily life changing civic violence that indicates civil disintegration. They do say that they will be able to identify “GBH”-style violence better in coming years, as new data classes are made.

My hypothesis would be that the government, under conditions of austerity, abandoned the target of having all ED check-ins seen within four hours, and many minor injuries have baulked at the very long wait in triage. But of course that can only be a hypothesis.

[K]

Quick comment out of order in my train(s) of thought but following the last couple of posts:

Eisner claims that
"For present-day societies, homicide appears quite adequately to reflect variation in overall violence. In the United States and Great Britain, for example, trends in assault, as measured by the National Crime Victimization Survey, are highly correlated with fluctuations in homicide rates (Langan and Farrington 1998). Moreover, cross-national homicide rates are also significantly correlated with levels of robbery, assault, and sexual violence as measured by the International Crime Victimization Survey (Eisner 2002a)."