I agree that documenting empirical trends is valuable, but only as long as the limitations of the data are not forgotten. A neat graph often makes things look misleadingly simple.
For example, the historical murder figures are already problematic for Pinker’s thesis considering that the trend has, according to his own graphs, reversed at some point during the the 20th century—but they are absolutely devastating whey you consider that the present murder rate would be at least several times higher without the 20th century advances in medicine, thanks to which most of the once lethal wounds are now easily treated. (And all this is without even considering that what is expected as regular behavior nowadays when it comes to precautions against crime would have struck people from not so long ago as utterly paranoid siege mentality, and so on.) Generally, arguments based on simple plots of historical trends are likely to overlook all sorts of relevant confounding variables.
As for the particular cartoonish and bizarre historical and political claims by Pinker, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Most of his article would be deserving of a good fisking.
Edit: According to Murder and Medicine: The Lethality of Criminal Assault 1960-1999 by A.R. Harris et al. (ungated link here):
Compared to 1960, the year our analysis begins, we estimate that without these developments in medical technology there would have been between 45,000 and 70,000 homicides annually [in the U.S. for] the past 5 years instead of an actual 15,000 to 20,000.
Note also that the ceteris paribus assumption doesn’t take into account the effect of the enormous changes in people’s lifestyle since 1960 that have been prompted by the increased danger of crime.
I agree that documenting empirical trends is valuable, but only as long as the limitations of the data are not forgotten. A neat graph often makes things look misleadingly simple.
For example, the historical murder figures are already problematic for Pinker’s thesis considering that the trend has, according to his own graphs, reversed at some point during the the 20th century—but they are absolutely devastating whey you consider that the present murder rate would be at least several times higher without the 20th century advances in medicine, thanks to which most of the once lethal wounds are now easily treated. (And all this is without even considering that what is expected as regular behavior nowadays when it comes to precautions against crime would have struck people from not so long ago as utterly paranoid siege mentality, and so on.) Generally, arguments based on simple plots of historical trends are likely to overlook all sorts of relevant confounding variables.
As for the particular cartoonish and bizarre historical and political claims by Pinker, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Most of his article would be deserving of a good fisking.
Edit: According to Murder and Medicine: The Lethality of Criminal Assault 1960-1999 by A.R. Harris et al. (ungated link here):
Note also that the ceteris paribus assumption doesn’t take into account the effect of the enormous changes in people’s lifestyle since 1960 that have been prompted by the increased danger of crime.