You are less likely to die by violence today than at any point in human history.

How to Judge a Book Without Even Reading It

Do you think librarians read all those books they buy?? Heck no. Yes, collection development librarians rely heavily on library review journals, but you can pretty successfully judge a book before you even read the intro. And how!

1. Try a Little Intellectual Snobbery

Basically with this you need to try to smell out the people who are saying “I’m not a historian but…” when they start their books. Who wrote this thing and why? Is this a historian going for tenure, is this maybe a historian trying to write more popular history, is this a historian at the end of their life putting out a magnum opus, is this a journalist? Who published it, academic press or regular press? Does this person have Something to Prove with this history book?

Now, I’m a little leery of recommending this method first, because I’ve seen some pretty shitty books published by big academic houses from heavily degreed people, and I’ve seen some very nice historical work put out by tiny publishers you’ve never heard of or self-published, and written by people who just decided to write a book because they cared deeply about the history of something that few others cared about. Good work absolutely stands on its own merits, and independent scholars are important animals in the academic ecosystem. But there is a correlation here, and not necessarily a causation, between academics working with academic publishing houses and the production of rigorous history, and you can lean on it a little.

2. Give it the Vulcan Citations Pinch

Flip to the back of the book. Where does the actual book stop and the endmatter start? Basically the more endmatter the better. You want maybe a good solid half centimeter of paper between your fingers, preferably more. If you start seeing appendices in addition to citations and index that’s very good.

3. Scope-to-Cred Ratio

This one’s hard to quantify but basically, the more modest the book’s scope the more modest of arguments and credentials the author needs to pull it off. So a book about say the importance of paperback books for soldiers in WWII, this is a pretty modest scope, and it’s not making any very bold claims, there’s no real reason to be suspicious about the arguments made in this book, although it’s absolutely a popular history work. A book trying to explain the history of everything, get suspicious.

4. Read the Intro

Okay after the first three bits you’ve decided this book has merited your attention enough to open the thing. The intro to a book should give you the outline of the major argument and you can decide whether the argument passes a basic smell test of not being total bullshit. If you find the argument compelling and you want to see how they are going to argue it in the knitty gritty, it’s time to commit to checking out/buying the book and seeing what’s up. (Intros are usually available for new books on Google Books or Amazon previews.)

4b. Read the Acknowledgments

You can tell a lot about a person from their acknowledgments section. I’ve seen books where the author specifically thanked the ILL staff of their local library. They should ideally be thanking an archives or two if it’s a modern history book, because that means they’ve done Real Research.

5. Have a Good Idea of How One Does History

This one takes a little time investment, but having a basic idea of what makes a good historical argument and what makes a bad one will serve you well for judging any history book, from any topic. Maybe just spend some time on the logical fallacies section of Wikipedia. Just knowing to run away when you hear someone start yammering about glorious progress or indulging in extended hero-worship will serve you remarkably well in the history section at Barnes and Noble.

6. Nothing Wrong with Reading a Bad Book

Okay, so you did all this pre-judgement and you still managed to read a real turd. Ah well. You always can learn a lot from something done poorly. They’re a certain grim joy in hating a bad book, especially if you get to feel smarter than an author, so just treat yourself to a really firm critical dismissal of the work. Maybe leave a real stinker of a review here on a Saturday or /r/badhistory.

US vs European police killings is examined and explained very convincingly by Steven Pinker, who is an experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist and linguist. His theory is covered in his book written for us non-scientists, The Better Angels of our Nature - Why violence has declined.

(For the scientists, the book is full of proper references.)

He is very interested in what works to drop murder, crime, genocide and war death rates overall. The book covers pre-history and ancient history right up to the present day. The issue is somewhat complex and multi-faceted so I won't try and explain it.

One strand is that when people trust their governments to administer justice more, and people take justice into their own hands less, violence and murder rates drop. Then of course, what leads to people trusting their governments more is examined.

I have to warn Christians that one of the historical documents that Steven Pinker uses to look at the difference at the rate of violence in the present compared to the rate of violence in the past is the Old Testament. He looks at it from a social science point of view, cataloging from a purely modern viewpoint as to what constitutes a crime according to modern morals and law.

I must say that Pinker challenges both progressive and conservative worldviews. He is strictly trying to get at the facts, and the facts of what leads to long-term dropping violences rates.

It's important to note that this is still the most peaceful century in the history of humanity when you take into account the larger population. Yes, more people died, but we also had way more people. It's still the tiniest proportion of people getting killed. And by a very large margin.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1491518243

Yep baloney. They have it set up so either way they can claim " the end is near!" Governments proclaim we are in the most peaceful period in human history? The end must be close!

Reports of more and more wars? This means the end is near too! It's just more doublethink.

By the way statistically we are living in the most peaceful, non violent time period in human history, see the Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker.

You get that that's an incredibly good thing, right?

Humans are becoming less brutal and more civilized. Go back a few hundred years and ISIS wouldn't be considered particularly brutal, let alone the most brutal government in the world by a wide margin.

You should read this book.

After reading The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, I have been touting the gospel of Steven Pinker in church at every opportunity. A fantastic meta study of the reduction of violence, and commentary on how much better things are now than ever before.

steve pinker: the better angels of our nature

Humans aren't the only intelligent life on this planet. We share that distinction with some species of whales and dolphins (which are as smart or smarter) and some other primates (which are perhaps not as smart but still "intelligent" in my mind) and possibly even some parrots (very smart). In none of these cases do we have an example of a species destroying itself.

Granted, we've got just a handful of species to draw conclusions from. But it's a small sample size with no examples to demonstrate your thesis.

On humans specifically - we've had the capacity to wipe ourselves out for over half a century and haven't done it yet. And decade over decade, the odds of that happening seem less, not more. If it's our nature to destroy ourselves, we're bad at it.

And in fact the long arc of history is that humans have gotten less violent, fought fewer, and become better at cooperation (aka, economics). You mention Darwinism, but this is actually what evolution would predict. Cooperation is the better survival strategy for all involved, and over time it's the societies that were more insular and more war-like that have fell in the dustbin of history. (See: [The Better Angels of Our Nature](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491518243/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1491518243&linkCode=as2&tag=musingofthegr-20&linkId=N2J6U5BTXNOCEFA7">The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined</a><img src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=musingofthegr-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1491518243)).

It's also flawed to think that all intelligent life will have followed the same evolutionary path as us. Others could have evolved under different evolutionary pressures leading them to be instinctually cooperative - hive minds or collective intelligence, for example. Or AI - it's not unreasonable to think that robots will explore the galaxy rather than biological humans (since we're not really evolved to survive in space), but there's no reason to think an artifical intelligence would have any propensity for destroying itself.

There are plenty of other potential answers to the Fermi paradox that don't assume self annihilation. My personal belief is simply that we don't have the technology to detect other civilizations, nor the technology to make ourselves known. Our radio signals are undetectable after a few light years, and the same is likely for any other radio based civilization. My gut says we'll start to find signs of extra-solar civilization once we have the technology to physically visit other stars, and not sooner.

>And you might say morality comes from reason and someone else says its from revelation.

There are excellent reasons to think that reason and not religion is the source of morality. Namely the fact that we have made enormous moral progress, especially in the secular West, which went through The Enlghtenment.

Hard for me to sum up all of this in one reddit comment, so instead I'll direct you to this short TED talk by the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein and her husband, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker:

The Long reach of Reason

You should also check out the books, The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker (again) and The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer.

If you want to see where revelation gets you then perhaps you could read some articles about ISIS, or read about the history of Christianity in the centuries before The Enlightenment. Not pretty.

And others think the decline was caused by the availability of abortion, or by the decline of the drug cartels and still others point to a downward trend in violence in all of western civilization that's been apparently going on for centuries.

Oh Jesus on a stick.

Those are what we call outliers. Mass conflict, and violence, has been decreasing. ISIS is small potatos; it might seem otherwise due to the political and religions impact. Their actions might barely qualify as a small genocide, in a historical perspective.

I assumed I was talking to someone as informed as I am. I see now that is not the case. So, for starters you should go read that book.

For more on this : Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

LOL, no, its a good book but there are many better recommendations.

For example, if you wanted to understand the tools of state/religious oppression and its consequences in modern context I may recommend; Why Nations fail

Or if you desired to have greater understanding of the consequences of inventing money; Debt, the first 5000 years

Or if you felt that religion was cool but the idea of God was wrong you could read; Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao

Or if you wanted to read about the decline of world wide violence; The Better Angels of our Nature

I agree with you.

We have better angels in our nature.

Adam Smith wrote a book called Theory of Moral Sentiments that described human nature in a way that would be familiar to many socialists. We are altruistic, compassionate, cooperative, and loving. Humans don't act like homo economicus in our daily lives. All of this is complementary to and compatible with Smith's description of man as a self-interested being, which most people are familiar with because of his much more famous book, Wealth of Nations. These aspects of human nature are, in fact, what make capitalism work so well.

Good books on the subject:

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness by Russ Roberts. This book is brand new and excellent.

The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation by Matt Ridley

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

1. So instead of addressing the problems with the regimes we're discussing, you launch into 'whataboutism' and divert the discussion to discuss America's supposed failings; and every example is more than 25 years old.
   
   
2. The supposed evil West: led the charge for the UN (the first int'l organization to give smaller/weaker countries a voice & way to influence global governance); helped institute the Geneva Conventions which have imposed limits on military force and protections for POWs; guaranteed human rights and protections to all; have presided over the most peaceful period ever; and global capitalism provides people an economic system that doesn't require them all to be murdered.
   
   The West isn't perfect, and often doesn't follow its own ideals, but it sure doesn't fall to the level of starving prisoners to death, assassinations, or tearing its own country apart. Assad's men fired the first shots, as I'm sure you recall.
   
   
3. I'm not sure you want to compare per capita civilian deaths between the US and Syria over the past decade, even. Especially when Assad targets civilians on purpose. I doubt even you would try to claim the US does the same, since you'd have to explain how it benefits us.

Indeed. But 383 would not be far off from last year's total of 328. Murder, and crime in general, has dropped precipitously in the last 25 years. (There's a ton of evidence and discussion of this in Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of our Nature)

The death toll and scale of WWII was the greatest in absolute numbers of any war in world history. It wasn't the largest relative to the size of world population, but it was up there. This article and accompanying video demonstrate that while perceptions of worldwide violence have increased since 1945, absolute and relative fatalities have decreased drastically.

My point is, while Western Europe and N. America won't have a decisive victory, neither will ISIS, because the whole conflict is actually very small in terms of numbers. We'll never have to worry about ISIS taking over the world; it's not possible.

More information here and here.

Hard to tell. I believe today is one of the best times to be alive. I know some people detest his thesis, but I really enjoyed Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature.

However, I also think that the prosperity and peace we take for granted are very precarious, and we cannot take them for granted. Religious fundamentalism is resurgent around the world. The concern there is not necessarily violence, but their rejection of modernity itself, post-Enlightenment values, secularism, and science as the best explanatory method we have of the world. Science and rationality are fragile, with Sagan calling them a candle in the dark.

>Some people see our TV shows and movies as too immoral and violent and our society deserves to suffer because of it.

Our media isn't that violent. Compare it with Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus or other Elizabethan revenge tragedies. There has always been violent entertainment, and lowbrow entertainment as well. I think our modern culture goes too far in celebrating lowbrow culture, but I wouldn't call it exactly alarming. It's not the end of the world.

>Billions of people live in poverty.

Yes, but that has gotten better. Capitalism made the situation better, not worse.

>And the total world debt is staggering.

That is true, but the solution is to raise taxes to pay for the services people want. Debt is largely a political problem.

>So I believe at any moment of time, there will always be equal evidence of curses and blessings.

I think that's reasonable. We have problems, but also cause for optimism. I'm middle-aged (just turned 46) and it's normal to get pessimistic as you get older. But I find myself being optimistic about many things. Many things both excite and alarm me, like the promise (and threat) of automation and Artificial Intelligence.

I don't think things are going quite as badly as some gloom-n-doom enthusiasts warn, but neither are we headed (in my opinion) to a post-scarcity utopia. I have no idea. But my chances of dying of violence are the lowest they'e ever been.

> Both signs of the end-times and signs of a new renaissance exist equally

What concerns me is how many people we have rooting for end-times, though. An awful lot of people want the world to end. That freaks me out quite a bit. I'm not referring exclusively to religious end-timers. I encounter libertarian non-believers who want a "reset" to civilization. I've heard more than a couple Trump supporters enthuse that Trump's election would cause the system to just up and fail, so we could start over with a clean slate. I find myself so aghast at that that I can't even begin to communicate with them.

Steven Pinker articulates that, specifically, the monopoly is on legitimate use of violence. In Better Angels of Our Nature, he argues (IMHO) effectively that Hobbe's Leviathon theory is essentially correct, and is the nature of a state.

Some light reading:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1491518243

http://www.rakuten.com/prod/atrocities/243392473.html?listingId=-1&sclid=pla_google_rakuten.com&adid=29963&gclid=CKT13pfAvMICFQcxaQodNbMAjQ

Human society is evolving to be less violent. See this. Decreated religiosity may be part of it. But there are plenty of other reasons Pinker covers in his book.

You might be right about the media, but this is bullshit:

> So long as people are police this will ALWAYS happen, no amount of protest or technology will change basic human corruption.

We know how to prevent "basic human corruption". It's fucking called accountability. The problem is getting a system in place that has some. But we won't even have a chance if most folks are oblivious to its necessity, ergo protests.

> Good people die every day in horrible unjust ways. That is never going to change.

Except it does.

Rimends me of this