Questions Oct 5-7

• Might McKibben and Steven Pinker ("None of us are as happy as we ought to be..." 2) both be right?
• Do you also live in a state of "engagement, not despair"? 3
• Are any parts of "the human game" (8) more vibrant or less threatened by climate change than others? 
• Does the depth, complexity, and beauty involved in creating something so prosaic as asphalt shingles reinforce for you our culture's confidence in "progress"? In economic growth? Are we on an "enlightened" path? 
• Are the recent fates of the baobab tree and the Seed Vault ominous harbingers? 12
• Does the fact that our civilization has only been here for "the blink of an eye" make you more, or less, optimistic? 13
• Is the American way of life up for negotiation whether we like it or not? 14
• Are robots and AI necessarily a "replacement technology" in a way that moots concern for the "human game"? 15
• Is the Earth's ultimate extinction "more philosophy than [you] can manage? 16 
• Do we need to keep our game human? Will it be less, or differently, human if we continue to develop robotics, AI, genetic engineering etc.? 17
•  Do you have any thoughts about "Rise," or about the power of the poetic imagination to move people and make them care?
• Add your questions please
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

by Steven Pinker Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species' existence...despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker

If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.

Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature–tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking–which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation... {Pinker] makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress. g'r

“As we care about more of humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen.”

“What is progress? You might think that the question is so subjective and culturally relative as to be forever unanswerable. In fact, it’s one of the easier questions to answer. Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony. All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.”

“Our greatest enemies are ultimately not our political adversaries but entropy, evolution (in the form of pestilence and the flaws in human nature), and most of all ignorance—a shortfall of knowledge of how best to solve our problems.”

“Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too.

Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don't confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baad,while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool But what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?”

W 7 

• "By the middle of this century the ocean may contain more plastic than fish by weight... since 1950 we've wiped out perhaps 90% of the big fish..." 46 COMMENT? Would you say we've been a bit self-indulgent, and imprudent (if not disrespectful) with regard to ocean habitats?
• Why do we take the oceans so much for granted? **
• "It was a bustling city, like in Finding Nemo. But now it just seems quiet..." Should restoration of damaged reefs and other ocean ecosystems be a priority? 
•  COMMENT: "The earth will be fine; its humans who are in trouble." 50
• Are you able to be "philosophical" about the prospect of something like the late-Cretaceous asteroid that ended the dinosaurs and made way for us, ending us? Or do you harbor higher hopes for humanity? 51
• "A suburb is designed to hide the natural world." 55 Can this be repaired?
• Do you feel guilt for the way your European forebears displaced and destroyed the indigenous native Americans? How should they be compensated?
• "If the economy doesn't grow larger each year, we now suffer as a result." 58 Are we in a Catch-22?
• "Nobody with a choice ventures outside." 61 Is that a world any human should want to live in?
• Will we "walk away methodically" or "flee in panic"? 62
• Are humans endlessly adaptable, as Rex Tillerson suggested? 63
• Does the prospect of rising tides "washing away history" sadden you? 64
• "Tomorrow was always a problem for tomorrow" 66 - Can we learn to think of tomorrow as our problem?
• What happened to the climate-woke Obama of 2008? 67
• In view of the problem with natural gas leaks, are you less comfortable with using it? 68
• COMMENT? "We've face problems from hell before." 70 
• Isn't it huge that "sun and wind are [now] the cheapest way to generate power on planet Earth"? 71
• Should we boycott Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Amoco,... ? 72ff.
• In 2017 90% of Americans didn't know there was a scientific consensus on global warming." 77 How do we fix that?
• Does the 1st amendment really preserve one's "right to lie"? 79 Or is that a matter of judicial interpretation?
• Both sides knew that global warming was "real" but we've still been debating it endlessly. How do we fix that?

**