Graphs!

From Alan Alda’s Clear + Vivid conversation with Steven Pinker, June 2020. Alda asks Pinker how he convinces someone that there’s less illness, less poverty, less violence, that things are getting better. Pinker’s response: “The answer is: I use graphs.”

Sigh.

If you are without access to proper medical care, if you are hemmed in by poverty or violence, graphs don’t mean a thing. No one lives life in the aggregate.

Pinker’s perky answer (which, of course, he elaborates on) has been stuck in my head for some time. I realize now that it sounds to me like the thought of a twenty-first-century Dickens character. Yes, everything is getting better. Look at my graphs!

Related posts
Jeffrey Epstein and Steven Pinker on overpopulation (yes, really) : Pinker on Strunk and White : A (withering) review of Pinker’s The Sense of Style

[The full exchange between Alda and Pinker may be heard at the 13:03 mark.]