from time to time we all ask some deep
questions why is the world filled with
woe how can we make it better how can we
give meaning and purpose to our lives as
imponderable as these questions may seem
for example morality is dictated by God
in holy scriptures when everyone obeys
his laws the world will be perfect
problems are the fault of evil people
who must be shamed punished and defeated
when our tribe should claim its rightful
greatness under the control of a strong
leader who embodies its authentic virtue
in the past we lived in a state of order
and harmony until alien forces forces
brought on decadence and degeneration we
must restore the society to its golden
age well what about the rest of us in my
forthcoming book enlightenment now I
argue that there is an alternative
system of beliefs and values first
articulated by these people the thinkers
of the Enlightenment of the 18th century
namely that we can use knowledge to
enhance human flourishing
now many people embrace the ideals of
the Enlightenment without being able to
name or describe them as a result they
faded into the background they become
the status quo the establishment other
ideologies have passionate advocates and
I suggest that enlightenment ideals to
need a positive defense and an explicit
commitment and that is what I have tried
to do the Enlightenment centers on four
themes reason science humanism and
progress let me say a few words about
each it all begins with reason reason is
non-negotiable as soon as you try to
provide reasons why we should trust
anything other than reason as soon as
you try to argue why you’re right or why
other people should believe you that
you’re not lying or full of crap
you’ve lost your argument because you’re
appealing to reason now human beings on
their own are not particularly
reasonable my own professional specialty
cognitive psychology has shown that we
are likely to generalize from anecdotes
to reason from stereotypes we all seek
evidence that confirms our beliefs and
ignore evidence it disconfirms them and
we’re overconfident about our knowledge
our wisdom and our rectitude but people
are capable of reason if they establish
certain norms and institutions free
speech open debate and criticism logical
analysis fact-checking and empirical
testing which brings me to the second
enlightenment value science science is
based on the conviction that the world
is intelligible that we can understand
the world by formulating hypotheses and
testing them against reality science has
shown itself to be the most reliable way
of understanding the world including
ourselves a major theme of the
Enlightenment was that there can be a
science of human nature and that beliefs
about society are testable just like any
other beliefs about reality
the third enlightenment ideal is
humanism the idea that the ultimate
moral purpose is to reduce the suffering
and enhance the flourishing of human
beings and other sentient creatures well
that might sound obvious enough who
could be against human flourishing and
the answer is lots of people there are
alternatives to humanism such as that
the ultimate good is to enhance the
glory of the tribe the nation the race
the class or the faith to obey the
dictates of the divinity and pressure
others to do the same to achieve feats
of heroic greatness to advance a
mystical dialectic or struggle or
pursuit of a utopian age humanism is
feasible because people are endowed with
a sense of sympathy and a concern with
the welfare of others by default our
circle of sympathy is rather puny we
tend to feel the pain only of our blood
relatives our allies our friends and
cute little fuzzy baby animals
but our circle of sympathy can be
expanded through the forces of
cosmopolitanism education journalism art
mobility and reason the realization that
I can’t convince you that I’m special
just because I’m me and you’re not and
hope for you to take me seriously while
the final enlightenment ideal is
progress that if we apply knowledge and
sympathy to reduce suffering and enhance
flourishing we can gradually succeed so
how do that enlightenment thing work out
250 years later if you ask most
intellectuals and journalists the answer
is not very well so I’ve discovered that
intellectuals hate progress and
intellectuals who call themselves
progressive really hate progress if you
think that we can solve problems I have
been told that you have a blind faith
and a quasi-religious belief in the
outmoded superstition of the false
promise of the myth of the onward march
of inevitable progress you are a
cheerleader for vulgar American can-do
ISM with the rah-rah spirit of boardroom
ideology Silicon Valley and the Chamber
of Commerce you are a practitioner of
Whig history a naive optimist a
Pollyanna and of course a Pangloss like
the Voltaire character who declared all
us for the best in the best of all
possible worlds
well in fact progress is not a matter of
faith it’s not a matter of having a
sunny versus a morose temperament it is
an empirical hypothesis human well-being
can be measured life health sustenance
prosperity peace freedom safety
knowledge leisure even happiness if they
have increased over time I submit that
is promised well let’s look at the
record starting with the most precious
resource of all life itself for most of
human history life expectancy at Birth
was pinned to about 30 years but
starting with the discovery of
sanitation public health
nation antibiotics other advances in
medicine and public health life
expectancy at birth has increased in
Europe from a little bit more than 30 to
80 years similar trajectory can be seen
in the Americas Asia had a later start
but it has almost caught up and here we
see Africa closing the gap
this line shows the trajectory for the
world as a whole this graph shows a
general pattern in human progress namely
that 250 years ago pretty much everyone
was wretched European and American
countries were the first to make the
great escape from universal poverty and
early death but the trajectory has been
duplicated in other parts of the world
and Asia and Africa are rapidly
advancing for most of human history the
greatest contributor to early death was
child mortality even in the wealthy
countries of Western Europe in the 18th
century about one third of children did
not make it to their fifth birthday but
countries like Sweden managed to bring
the child mortality rate down to far
less than one percent followed by
countries in North America Canada Asian
countries like South Korea Latin
American countries like Chile and most
recently sub-saharan African countries
like Ethiopia which has brought its rate
of child mortality down in just a few
decades from 30 percent to 6 percent
still too high but the progress
continues from most of human history
famine was one of the horsemen of the
apocalypse and catastrophic famines
could strike any part of the world but
since the 19th century famines have been
decimated today they take place only in
the most remote and war-torn corners of
the world prosperity until the
Industrial Revolution of the 19th
century pretty much the entire world was
poor and there was very little sustained
economic growth but starting with the
Industrial Revolution there was
exponential growth in wealth first in
Europe such as the UK u.s. South Korea
has rapidly
catching up here we have latin-american
country Chile China and India here we
have the graph for the world as a whole
as a result of the this increase in
global prosperity we see not just the
proceeds going to the rich but a
dramatic reduction in extreme poverty
defined by the World Bank as a dollar
ninety per person per day the bare
minimum necessary to feed oneself and
one’s family in 1820 ninety percent of
the world met the definition of extreme
poverty today that figure is less than
ten percent and the World Bank has set
the goal of eliminating extreme poverty
everywhere on Earth by the 2030s so may
we live to see the day as a result
international inequality differences
between countries have been declining
initially with the Industrial Revolution
as the first few countries escaped from
universal poverty they were bound to
open up a gap but that gap has been
decreasing as poor countries have been
getting richer faster than rich
countries are getting richer within rich
countries of course inequality has been
increasing but that does not mean that
poverty has been increasing quite the
contrary in the United States for
example in 1960 about a third of the
population that at least one definition
for are falling below the poverty line
but thanks to social transfers
disposable income that is income after
taxes and transfers has reduced the
poverty rate to about six percent and
when poverty is measured in terms of
consumption what people can afford to
buy I has gone from 30 percent to 3
percent peace for most of human history
war was the natural state of relations
between countries and peace was a mere
respite between wars we can see that in
this graph which shows the percentage of
years in which the great powers of the
day were at war with each other and what
it shows us that in the 1600s the great
powers were pretty much always at war in
the by the 20th century they were
virtually never at war the last war
between two great powers pitted the
United States
against China in Korea in 1953 we zoom
in on the post-war period and look at
the rate of deaths in wars of all kinds
not just great powers but all countries
we see there’s something of a roller
coaster with peaks for the Korean War
the Vietnam War and the iran-iraq war
but the trajectory is decidedly
downwards and today there’s about
one-twentieth the chance of dying in war
that there was in the 1950s freedom and
rights despite some conspicuous and
horrifying backsliding in Russia Turkey
Venezuela and some other countries the
overall trajectory for democracy is
upward as recently as the 1970s the
world had only 31 democracies today it
has more than 100 a majority of
countries are more democratic than
autocratic a majority of people live in
democratic countries the world has never
been more democratic despite the obvious
counter examples governments have been
constrained in the brutality that they
can visit on their citizens here we have
a graph for abolitions of the death
penalty from 1860 to the present about
three countries a year abolished the
death penalty if the current trend
continues no guarantee that it will the
death penalty will vanish off the face
of the earth in some time in the 2020s
similarly country after country has
decriminalized homosexuality we read
about the exceptions but the overall
trend is toward tolerance child labor in
1860 about a third of British children
were set to work in farms and factories
that was quickly brought down in the in
England and in the United States similar
trajectory in Italy and thanks to the
efforts of Kalish such RT who I believe
is here this week the Nobel Peace Prize
winner we see reductions in child labor
globally that one hopes will continue
violent crime in the Middle Ages of the
rate of homicide was about 35 per
hundred thousand per year Western
European countries like England and
netherlands and belgium have brought
that down to about one a thirty five
fold reduction that tends to happen
whenever the rule of law replaces the
code of vendetta in a frontier region
here you see the trajectory in italy in
new england starting with colonial times
the American Wild West of the cowboy
movies had high rates of violence until
it was brought down and even countries
where violence persists such as Mexico
notorious for the gang violence it
actually brought the rate of a homicide
down compared to levels in the 1930s if
we zoom in on the last fifty years we
see the United States which is the most
violent Western democracy has managed to
cut its murder rate in half here we have
the estimate for the world as a whole
the rate of homicide globally has been
brought down by about thirty percent the
World Health Organization has set a goal
of reducing it by fifty percent
in another thirty years a goal that’s
entirely feasible it’s not just homicide
that’s been in decline in the United
States there’s been a decline in
violence against women in the household
domestic violence and a decrease in rape
approximately a seventy five percent
decline since the 1970s indeed we become
safer in all ways thanks to improvements
in regulation and technology our chance
of dying in a car accident has been
reduced by ninety six percent from the
1920s
we’re eighty eight percent less likely
to be mowed down on the sidewalk ninety
nine percent less likely to die in a
plane crash ninety five percent less
likely to die in an accident on the job
far less likely to die in an earthquake
a flood a famine a wildfire on other
so-called acts of God what about the
ultimate act of God the proverbial bolt
from the blue well Americans are 96%
less likely to be killed by a bolt of
lightning knowledge in the early modern
period about one out of every six
Europeans could read or write and then
Netherlands and England achieved
Universal literacy followed by Germany
Italy the United
States increasingly latin-american
countries like Chile
here we see Mexico here’s the trajectory
for the world as a whole about 75% of
the world is literate and the illiterate
people are generally in their 60s and
70s the world is on track to achieving
universal literacy girls – and believe
it or not this may be the most
incredible statistic in the whole group
we’ve been getting smarter hard as it
may be to believe but in a phenomenon
known as the Flynn effect iq has been
increasing by three points a decade for
a century and so the in every region of
the world
so IQ points right now our 30 points
higher than they were a century ago does
this improve all this economic and
educational improvement actually affect
our quality of life well by many
measures it does in 1870 Europeans and
Americans worked more than 60 hours a
week
today they work on less than 40 hours
thanks to the penetration of running
water electricity washing machines
vacuum cleaners refrigerators
dishwashers stoves and microwaves and
so-called labor-saving devices the
amount of time that we lose to housework
has fallen from more than 60 hours a
week to 20 hours a week and by we being
disproportionately women as a result of
fewer working hours and less hours
wasted on housework leisure time has
increased both for men and for women the
reason that it is not increased as much
for women is that women now spend more
time with their children in fact a
single woman or a working woman today
spends more time with her children than
a stay-at-home married mom spent in the
idyllic 1950s well does it need this
effect happiness does money buy
happiness and the answer is yes this
graph shows the regression line for a
nation’s GDP per capita sorry self rated
happiness of citizens as a function of
the GDP per capita their countries and
you can see that richer countries have
on average half happier citizens each
one of these arrows shows this
regression line for the citizens within
a country so richer countries are
happier richer people within each
country are happier as the world gets
richer it’s people are expected to get
happier well how is the fact of human
progress reflected in the news this
graph shows the results of an algorithm
called sentiment mining that assesses
the degree of optimism or pessimism in
news stories and as you can see that the
New York Times over this period of
increasing human welfare has gotten more
and more morose the same is true of a
sample of the world’s papers so why do
people deny progress part of the answer
comes from a psychological quirk called
the availability heuristic but humans
assess risk according to how easily they
can recall examples from memory now if
you consider the way the news works news
is about stuff that happens not about
stuff that doesn’t happen you never see
a reporter saying Here I am reporting
live from a country that’s not at war or
a city that has not suffered a terrorist
attack or a school that has not been
shot up if you combine the the nature of
the news with the nature of cognition
you get the impression that the world is
getting more dangerous and always has
been there’s also a psychological
phenomenon called the negativity bias
that bad is stronger than good we think
about and feel bad events more than good
ones well you might ask isn’t it good to
be pessimistic
shouldn’t we be raking the mock and
afflicting the comfortable and speaking
truth to power the answer is no it’s
good to be accurate of course it’s
essential to become aware of suffering
and injustice when they occur but we
also have to be aware of how they can be
reduced there are dangers of thoughtless
pessimism
first of all fatalism why waste time and
money on a hopeless cause wife throw
money down a rat hole if it’s not going
to lead to improvement and radicalism if
the world is a flaming dumpster that
only invites the sentiment that we
should smash the Machine drain the swamp
burn the empire to the ground or listen
to people who can say
only I can fix it is progress inevitable
the answer is of course not solutions
create new problems which have to be
solved in their turn and we can always
be blindsided by nasty surprises such as
the world wars the 1960’s crime boom
AIDS in Africa and the opioid epidemic
in the United States today and of course
we face severe global challenges like
climate change and nuclear weapons which
are unsolved but I think the attitude we
should take is that they are solvable
decarbonisation and denuclearization
processes that have begun this graph
shows how much carbon the UK had to emit
per dollar of GDP starting with the
Industrial Revolution and massive coal
burning more and more carbon had to be
burned to achieve a dollar of wealth but
with the replacement of coal by oil than
gas than nuclear renewables that has
come down the United States follow a
similar trajectory China has turned the
corner as has India and the world as a
whole now of course these have to go to
zero and we’re a long way from zero but
the trajectory shows that it is not
impossible
likewise when it comes to nuclear
weapons few people realize that the size
of the world’s nuclear arsenal has been
reduced by 85 percent since the Cold War
again we’d like to bring this down to
zero I were a long way from from there
but the trajectory shows that it is not
impossible
final question does the Enlightenment go
against human nature is humanism arid or
tepid or flattened is the conquest of
disease famine poverty violence and
ignorance boarding do people need to
believe in magic a father in the sky a
strong chief to protect the tribe myths
of heroic ancestors I don’t think so
secular liberal democracies are the
happiest and healthiest places on earth
probably in the history of our species
and the top choice of people who vote
with their feet and I dare say applying
knowledge and sympathy to enhance human
flourishing is heroic Laureus and
spiritual thank you very much
thank you have I used up time for
questions so do we have time for one or
two we have five minutes are there any
questions we’ll start with this room and
then people watching the livestream are
invited to ask questions as well yes
yeah end up first
I’m not a code rich from India very very
interesting articles to see all the
human progress but why do we have a
recent trend of electing authoritarian
governments in spite of all the benefits
of enlightened views a superb question I
think part of the answer is there is
such a narrative of pessimism people
mistakenly think that things are getting
worse and worse and that invites
charismatic leaders who promise to drain
the swamps smash the Machine destroy the
institutions of the Enlightenment I
think it’s a terrible threat and one of
the ways to counter it is to know first
of all the problems are inevitable we
have no right to expect a perfect world
but that we have been chipping away at
them the processes such as liberal
democracy regulated markets institutions
of global cooperation have not brought
us a perfect world they brought us a
much better world and we need to
strengthen those institutions and the
commitment to to make the world better
still but it’s not a hopeless cause
we’ve already been doing it let’s do
that was a fantastic presentation but
you’ve given us so much data in 20
minutes what would be the one or two key
takeaway that we can you know that you’d
like to leave us with out of this entire
as a David Deutsch where problems are
inevitable but problems are solvable
solutions bring new problems which need
to be solved in their in their turn but
human progress is not just possible that
has happened does not happen by magic
it’s not a law of the universe it’s the
result of commitment to what I call the
ideals of the Enlightenment namely
reason science and humanism to the
extent we commit ourselves to those
ideals progress could continue if we
don’t it won’t and we’ll take a couple
of questions from the from cyberspace if
the media is part of the problem driving
our pessimistic view of the world and
what should we do differently as
consumers of the news I I don’t want to
make the media a villain
lord knows they’ve been the subject of
enough intemperate attacks and it is
thanks of court to the to the media that
we know about what’s what’s going wrong
and it indeed it’s futile to expect of
the media that they just balance bad
news with good news have more
heartwarming stories of you know tiger
cubs at the zoo that’s not what I would
be advocating rather that the if the
point of media coverage is to give us a
picture of the world so that we know
what’s going wrong it must also show
when things go right in order that we
have a signal as to what actually helps
what what the solutions are to the
problems if the picture of the world is
there are no solutions things are bad
and they’re just getting worse and worse
than the rational response would be to
just throw up your hands and be
fatalistic enjoy life while you can so I
would like to I would encourage as part
of just the ethics of and the
professional standards of the media
number one that news be placed in
historical and statistical context that
a op-ed columnist should not use
something that blew up yesterday as
an indication of the world is getting
worse all Trent all claims about trends
have to be backed up by quote by
statistical data and by comparisons of
past periods things suck now but in many
cases think they were worst in the past
the Iraq and Syrian and civil wars are
awful the Vietnam War was worse people
have to remember that I do we have time
for another question from cyberspace are
you surprised by the change in the mood
of our society during the past 10 years
and how do you expect it to evolve in
the next five years what can change the
trend good questions I am surprised
there are in a lot of the countries that
are doing that are actually pretty rich
pretty healthy there has has been an
increase in pessimism this is not true
of countries in the developing world
that have had the most rapid rate of
growth in China the polls show people
are actually pretty optimistic about the
future but in the United States is maybe
the the most gloomy country in terms of
expectations about tomorrow and there’s
an extremely high correlation between
votes for Donald Trump and a belief that
the country is heading in the wrong
direction what can we do to to change it
well I think we do need a more numerous
and statistically savvy press and
political class and intellectual class I
think there should be far more a
statistical thinking that’s considered
to be part of everyone’s basic education
so that we aren’t misled by incidents
such as terrorism or shootings into
thinking that that is the direction of
society as a whole that is we have to
push back against cognitive biases like
the availability heuristic and also I
think education and public discourse
should remind itself of how bad things
were in the past why we have need
institutions like free speech and and
liberal democracy for all its problems
we need to be reminded of what happened
and the cultural revolution in China and
Nazi Germany and the Bolshevik
Revolution in Russia and other cases in
which we have learned from mistakes in
history part of our education should be
to realize how bad things used to be
so that we can properly evaluate the
institutions that were solutions to
those problems if we forget what they
were the problems they were originally
designed to solve we could take them for
granted and then become cynical about
them and indeed look at every gap
between utopia and the state of the
world and they’ll always be such a gap
the rule will never be perfect as a sign
of the corruption and evil of our
wait for the microphone so that people
out of the world can hear you – I’m
Sebastian senator from New Jersey Steve
it’s a beautiful talk I really like how
you give us perspective about how we
should feel will defend us believe I
want to ask the question because the
Enlightenment in some sense – succeeded
so well isn’t there a problem that the
world of knowledge has become so complex
then most people can’t understand it as
a practicing scientist you know I’m very
well trained that all the things you
talked about but if I go to some other
field it’s very hard for me to judge
anything what’s right or wrong
yeah and so in a circumstance like that
I think in the end discourse comes down
to Authority as those two reasons and so
maybe the Enlightenment has succeed is
so much that the whole idea of rational
is no longer effective in today’s
society look at autism and vaccines and
the fake news and so on so what
mechanisms do we have to go beyond that
or do you believe just the sort of
traditional idea of talking out and
we’ll all come to the right answer is
that gonna work
yeah it’s a great question but although
we should not be misled by the outbursts
of irrationality at present into
thinking that the world has gotten less
rational you’re in my college days there
was a huge growth in astrology and tarot
cards and mysticism and then you know
crystal healing and all kinds of
nonsense that came about in the year in
the 1960s so this is humans are always
vulnerable to superstition and
misinformation and lies and fake news
and conspiracy theories so these are
really not new problems but the point
you made that do we have to kind of fall
back on Authority ultimately because
none of us can okay yeah complexity none
of us can be an expert in anything but
our own field if that I mean the the
long-term global answer is you since we
do have to trust others we need ways of
knowing which authorities to trust
namely the authorities who deserve their
epistemic Authority by basing their
opinions on evidence open debate a
history of their beliefs being
challenged and so we know that there
deserve our credulity more than
alternative authorities so I think
institutions like science and journalism
have to open up their workings reinforce
their their methods of arriving at their
claims such as peer review in science
and peer achill testability
fact-checking in journalism there has to
be greater awareness that without those
mechanisms we humans are naturally going
to gravitate toward fallacy and rumor
and superstition and ignorance so that’s
to be part of the conventional wisdom
knowledge is hard you shouldn’t trust
anyone but the people that you take most
seriously are those who have a track
record of doubting their own beliefs and
constantly fact-checking and verifying
them and we scientists journalists etc
should boast when we succeed at doing
that say
we’ll look of course we’re sometimes
wrong but at least we at least we try to
fact-check at least we try to document
our sources if the other guys don’t even
do that then you know they’re they’re
full of baloney certainly don’t believe
them
you got to earn the authority I know
thank you very much [Applause]
questions why is the world filled with
woe how can we make it better how can we
give meaning and purpose to our lives as
imponderable as these questions may seem
for example morality is dictated by God
in holy scriptures when everyone obeys
his laws the world will be perfect
problems are the fault of evil people
who must be shamed punished and defeated
when our tribe should claim its rightful
greatness under the control of a strong
leader who embodies its authentic virtue
in the past we lived in a state of order
and harmony until alien forces forces
brought on decadence and degeneration we
must restore the society to its golden
age well what about the rest of us in my
forthcoming book enlightenment now I
argue that there is an alternative
system of beliefs and values first
articulated by these people the thinkers
of the Enlightenment of the 18th century
namely that we can use knowledge to
enhance human flourishing
now many people embrace the ideals of
the Enlightenment without being able to
name or describe them as a result they
faded into the background they become
the status quo the establishment other
ideologies have passionate advocates and
I suggest that enlightenment ideals to
need a positive defense and an explicit
commitment and that is what I have tried
to do the Enlightenment centers on four
themes reason science humanism and
progress let me say a few words about
each it all begins with reason reason is
non-negotiable as soon as you try to
provide reasons why we should trust
anything other than reason as soon as
you try to argue why you’re right or why
other people should believe you that
you’re not lying or full of crap
you’ve lost your argument because you’re
appealing to reason now human beings on
their own are not particularly
reasonable my own professional specialty
cognitive psychology has shown that we
are likely to generalize from anecdotes
to reason from stereotypes we all seek
evidence that confirms our beliefs and
ignore evidence it disconfirms them and
we’re overconfident about our knowledge
our wisdom and our rectitude but people
are capable of reason if they establish
certain norms and institutions free
speech open debate and criticism logical
analysis fact-checking and empirical
testing which brings me to the second
enlightenment value science science is
based on the conviction that the world
is intelligible that we can understand
the world by formulating hypotheses and
testing them against reality science has
shown itself to be the most reliable way
of understanding the world including
ourselves a major theme of the
Enlightenment was that there can be a
science of human nature and that beliefs
about society are testable just like any
other beliefs about reality
the third enlightenment ideal is
humanism the idea that the ultimate
moral purpose is to reduce the suffering
and enhance the flourishing of human
beings and other sentient creatures well
that might sound obvious enough who
could be against human flourishing and
the answer is lots of people there are
alternatives to humanism such as that
the ultimate good is to enhance the
glory of the tribe the nation the race
the class or the faith to obey the
dictates of the divinity and pressure
others to do the same to achieve feats
of heroic greatness to advance a
mystical dialectic or struggle or
pursuit of a utopian age humanism is
feasible because people are endowed with
a sense of sympathy and a concern with
the welfare of others by default our
circle of sympathy is rather puny we
tend to feel the pain only of our blood
relatives our allies our friends and
cute little fuzzy baby animals
but our circle of sympathy can be
expanded through the forces of
cosmopolitanism education journalism art
mobility and reason the realization that
I can’t convince you that I’m special
just because I’m me and you’re not and
hope for you to take me seriously while
the final enlightenment ideal is
progress that if we apply knowledge and
sympathy to reduce suffering and enhance
flourishing we can gradually succeed so
how do that enlightenment thing work out
250 years later if you ask most
intellectuals and journalists the answer
is not very well so I’ve discovered that
intellectuals hate progress and
intellectuals who call themselves
progressive really hate progress if you
think that we can solve problems I have
been told that you have a blind faith
and a quasi-religious belief in the
outmoded superstition of the false
promise of the myth of the onward march
of inevitable progress you are a
cheerleader for vulgar American can-do
ISM with the rah-rah spirit of boardroom
ideology Silicon Valley and the Chamber
of Commerce you are a practitioner of
Whig history a naive optimist a
Pollyanna and of course a Pangloss like
the Voltaire character who declared all
us for the best in the best of all
possible worlds
well in fact progress is not a matter of
faith it’s not a matter of having a
sunny versus a morose temperament it is
an empirical hypothesis human well-being
can be measured life health sustenance
prosperity peace freedom safety
knowledge leisure even happiness if they
have increased over time I submit that
is promised well let’s look at the
record starting with the most precious
resource of all life itself for most of
human history life expectancy at Birth
was pinned to about 30 years but
starting with the discovery of
sanitation public health
nation antibiotics other advances in
medicine and public health life
expectancy at birth has increased in
Europe from a little bit more than 30 to
80 years similar trajectory can be seen
in the Americas Asia had a later start
but it has almost caught up and here we
see Africa closing the gap
this line shows the trajectory for the
world as a whole this graph shows a
general pattern in human progress namely
that 250 years ago pretty much everyone
was wretched European and American
countries were the first to make the
great escape from universal poverty and
early death but the trajectory has been
duplicated in other parts of the world
and Asia and Africa are rapidly
advancing for most of human history the
greatest contributor to early death was
child mortality even in the wealthy
countries of Western Europe in the 18th
century about one third of children did
not make it to their fifth birthday but
countries like Sweden managed to bring
the child mortality rate down to far
less than one percent followed by
countries in North America Canada Asian
countries like South Korea Latin
American countries like Chile and most
recently sub-saharan African countries
like Ethiopia which has brought its rate
of child mortality down in just a few
decades from 30 percent to 6 percent
still too high but the progress
continues from most of human history
famine was one of the horsemen of the
apocalypse and catastrophic famines
could strike any part of the world but
since the 19th century famines have been
decimated today they take place only in
the most remote and war-torn corners of
the world prosperity until the
Industrial Revolution of the 19th
century pretty much the entire world was
poor and there was very little sustained
economic growth but starting with the
Industrial Revolution there was
exponential growth in wealth first in
Europe such as the UK u.s. South Korea
has rapidly
catching up here we have latin-american
country Chile China and India here we
have the graph for the world as a whole
as a result of the this increase in
global prosperity we see not just the
proceeds going to the rich but a
dramatic reduction in extreme poverty
defined by the World Bank as a dollar
ninety per person per day the bare
minimum necessary to feed oneself and
one’s family in 1820 ninety percent of
the world met the definition of extreme
poverty today that figure is less than
ten percent and the World Bank has set
the goal of eliminating extreme poverty
everywhere on Earth by the 2030s so may
we live to see the day as a result
international inequality differences
between countries have been declining
initially with the Industrial Revolution
as the first few countries escaped from
universal poverty they were bound to
open up a gap but that gap has been
decreasing as poor countries have been
getting richer faster than rich
countries are getting richer within rich
countries of course inequality has been
increasing but that does not mean that
poverty has been increasing quite the
contrary in the United States for
example in 1960 about a third of the
population that at least one definition
for are falling below the poverty line
but thanks to social transfers
disposable income that is income after
taxes and transfers has reduced the
poverty rate to about six percent and
when poverty is measured in terms of
consumption what people can afford to
buy I has gone from 30 percent to 3
percent peace for most of human history
war was the natural state of relations
between countries and peace was a mere
respite between wars we can see that in
this graph which shows the percentage of
years in which the great powers of the
day were at war with each other and what
it shows us that in the 1600s the great
powers were pretty much always at war in
the by the 20th century they were
virtually never at war the last war
between two great powers pitted the
United States
against China in Korea in 1953 we zoom
in on the post-war period and look at
the rate of deaths in wars of all kinds
not just great powers but all countries
we see there’s something of a roller
coaster with peaks for the Korean War
the Vietnam War and the iran-iraq war
but the trajectory is decidedly
downwards and today there’s about
one-twentieth the chance of dying in war
that there was in the 1950s freedom and
rights despite some conspicuous and
horrifying backsliding in Russia Turkey
Venezuela and some other countries the
overall trajectory for democracy is
upward as recently as the 1970s the
world had only 31 democracies today it
has more than 100 a majority of
countries are more democratic than
autocratic a majority of people live in
democratic countries the world has never
been more democratic despite the obvious
counter examples governments have been
constrained in the brutality that they
can visit on their citizens here we have
a graph for abolitions of the death
penalty from 1860 to the present about
three countries a year abolished the
death penalty if the current trend
continues no guarantee that it will the
death penalty will vanish off the face
of the earth in some time in the 2020s
similarly country after country has
decriminalized homosexuality we read
about the exceptions but the overall
trend is toward tolerance child labor in
1860 about a third of British children
were set to work in farms and factories
that was quickly brought down in the in
England and in the United States similar
trajectory in Italy and thanks to the
efforts of Kalish such RT who I believe
is here this week the Nobel Peace Prize
winner we see reductions in child labor
globally that one hopes will continue
violent crime in the Middle Ages of the
rate of homicide was about 35 per
hundred thousand per year Western
European countries like England and
netherlands and belgium have brought
that down to about one a thirty five
fold reduction that tends to happen
whenever the rule of law replaces the
code of vendetta in a frontier region
here you see the trajectory in italy in
new england starting with colonial times
the American Wild West of the cowboy
movies had high rates of violence until
it was brought down and even countries
where violence persists such as Mexico
notorious for the gang violence it
actually brought the rate of a homicide
down compared to levels in the 1930s if
we zoom in on the last fifty years we
see the United States which is the most
violent Western democracy has managed to
cut its murder rate in half here we have
the estimate for the world as a whole
the rate of homicide globally has been
brought down by about thirty percent the
World Health Organization has set a goal
of reducing it by fifty percent
in another thirty years a goal that’s
entirely feasible it’s not just homicide
that’s been in decline in the United
States there’s been a decline in
violence against women in the household
domestic violence and a decrease in rape
approximately a seventy five percent
decline since the 1970s indeed we become
safer in all ways thanks to improvements
in regulation and technology our chance
of dying in a car accident has been
reduced by ninety six percent from the
1920s
we’re eighty eight percent less likely
to be mowed down on the sidewalk ninety
nine percent less likely to die in a
plane crash ninety five percent less
likely to die in an accident on the job
far less likely to die in an earthquake
a flood a famine a wildfire on other
so-called acts of God what about the
ultimate act of God the proverbial bolt
from the blue well Americans are 96%
less likely to be killed by a bolt of
lightning knowledge in the early modern
period about one out of every six
Europeans could read or write and then
Netherlands and England achieved
Universal literacy followed by Germany
Italy the United
States increasingly latin-american
countries like Chile
here we see Mexico here’s the trajectory
for the world as a whole about 75% of
the world is literate and the illiterate
people are generally in their 60s and
70s the world is on track to achieving
universal literacy girls – and believe
it or not this may be the most
incredible statistic in the whole group
we’ve been getting smarter hard as it
may be to believe but in a phenomenon
known as the Flynn effect iq has been
increasing by three points a decade for
a century and so the in every region of
the world
so IQ points right now our 30 points
higher than they were a century ago does
this improve all this economic and
educational improvement actually affect
our quality of life well by many
measures it does in 1870 Europeans and
Americans worked more than 60 hours a
week
today they work on less than 40 hours
thanks to the penetration of running
water electricity washing machines
vacuum cleaners refrigerators
dishwashers stoves and microwaves and
so-called labor-saving devices the
amount of time that we lose to housework
has fallen from more than 60 hours a
week to 20 hours a week and by we being
disproportionately women as a result of
fewer working hours and less hours
wasted on housework leisure time has
increased both for men and for women the
reason that it is not increased as much
for women is that women now spend more
time with their children in fact a
single woman or a working woman today
spends more time with her children than
a stay-at-home married mom spent in the
idyllic 1950s well does it need this
effect happiness does money buy
happiness and the answer is yes this
graph shows the regression line for a
nation’s GDP per capita sorry self rated
happiness of citizens as a function of
the GDP per capita their countries and
you can see that richer countries have
on average half happier citizens each
one of these arrows shows this
regression line for the citizens within
a country so richer countries are
happier richer people within each
country are happier as the world gets
richer it’s people are expected to get
happier well how is the fact of human
progress reflected in the news this
graph shows the results of an algorithm
called sentiment mining that assesses
the degree of optimism or pessimism in
news stories and as you can see that the
New York Times over this period of
increasing human welfare has gotten more
and more morose the same is true of a
sample of the world’s papers so why do
people deny progress part of the answer
comes from a psychological quirk called
the availability heuristic but humans
assess risk according to how easily they
can recall examples from memory now if
you consider the way the news works news
is about stuff that happens not about
stuff that doesn’t happen you never see
a reporter saying Here I am reporting
live from a country that’s not at war or
a city that has not suffered a terrorist
attack or a school that has not been
shot up if you combine the the nature of
the news with the nature of cognition
you get the impression that the world is
getting more dangerous and always has
been there’s also a psychological
phenomenon called the negativity bias
that bad is stronger than good we think
about and feel bad events more than good
ones well you might ask isn’t it good to
be pessimistic
shouldn’t we be raking the mock and
afflicting the comfortable and speaking
truth to power the answer is no it’s
good to be accurate of course it’s
essential to become aware of suffering
and injustice when they occur but we
also have to be aware of how they can be
reduced there are dangers of thoughtless
pessimism
first of all fatalism why waste time and
money on a hopeless cause wife throw
money down a rat hole if it’s not going
to lead to improvement and radicalism if
the world is a flaming dumpster that
only invites the sentiment that we
should smash the Machine drain the swamp
burn the empire to the ground or listen
to people who can say
only I can fix it is progress inevitable
the answer is of course not solutions
create new problems which have to be
solved in their turn and we can always
be blindsided by nasty surprises such as
the world wars the 1960’s crime boom
AIDS in Africa and the opioid epidemic
in the United States today and of course
we face severe global challenges like
climate change and nuclear weapons which
are unsolved but I think the attitude we
should take is that they are solvable
decarbonisation and denuclearization
processes that have begun this graph
shows how much carbon the UK had to emit
per dollar of GDP starting with the
Industrial Revolution and massive coal
burning more and more carbon had to be
burned to achieve a dollar of wealth but
with the replacement of coal by oil than
gas than nuclear renewables that has
come down the United States follow a
similar trajectory China has turned the
corner as has India and the world as a
whole now of course these have to go to
zero and we’re a long way from zero but
the trajectory shows that it is not
impossible
likewise when it comes to nuclear
weapons few people realize that the size
of the world’s nuclear arsenal has been
reduced by 85 percent since the Cold War
again we’d like to bring this down to
zero I were a long way from from there
but the trajectory shows that it is not
impossible
final question does the Enlightenment go
against human nature is humanism arid or
tepid or flattened is the conquest of
disease famine poverty violence and
ignorance boarding do people need to
believe in magic a father in the sky a
strong chief to protect the tribe myths
of heroic ancestors I don’t think so
secular liberal democracies are the
happiest and healthiest places on earth
probably in the history of our species
and the top choice of people who vote
with their feet and I dare say applying
knowledge and sympathy to enhance human
flourishing is heroic Laureus and
spiritual thank you very much
thank you have I used up time for
questions so do we have time for one or
two we have five minutes are there any
questions we’ll start with this room and
then people watching the livestream are
invited to ask questions as well yes
yeah end up first
I’m not a code rich from India very very
interesting articles to see all the
human progress but why do we have a
recent trend of electing authoritarian
governments in spite of all the benefits
of enlightened views a superb question I
think part of the answer is there is
such a narrative of pessimism people
mistakenly think that things are getting
worse and worse and that invites
charismatic leaders who promise to drain
the swamps smash the Machine destroy the
institutions of the Enlightenment I
think it’s a terrible threat and one of
the ways to counter it is to know first
of all the problems are inevitable we
have no right to expect a perfect world
but that we have been chipping away at
them the processes such as liberal
democracy regulated markets institutions
of global cooperation have not brought
us a perfect world they brought us a
much better world and we need to
strengthen those institutions and the
commitment to to make the world better
still but it’s not a hopeless cause
we’ve already been doing it let’s do
that was a fantastic presentation but
you’ve given us so much data in 20
minutes what would be the one or two key
takeaway that we can you know that you’d
like to leave us with out of this entire
as a David Deutsch where problems are
inevitable but problems are solvable
solutions bring new problems which need
to be solved in their in their turn but
human progress is not just possible that
has happened does not happen by magic
it’s not a law of the universe it’s the
result of commitment to what I call the
ideals of the Enlightenment namely
reason science and humanism to the
extent we commit ourselves to those
ideals progress could continue if we
don’t it won’t and we’ll take a couple
of questions from the from cyberspace if
the media is part of the problem driving
our pessimistic view of the world and
what should we do differently as
consumers of the news I I don’t want to
make the media a villain
lord knows they’ve been the subject of
enough intemperate attacks and it is
thanks of court to the to the media that
we know about what’s what’s going wrong
and it indeed it’s futile to expect of
the media that they just balance bad
news with good news have more
heartwarming stories of you know tiger
cubs at the zoo that’s not what I would
be advocating rather that the if the
point of media coverage is to give us a
picture of the world so that we know
what’s going wrong it must also show
when things go right in order that we
have a signal as to what actually helps
what what the solutions are to the
problems if the picture of the world is
there are no solutions things are bad
and they’re just getting worse and worse
than the rational response would be to
just throw up your hands and be
fatalistic enjoy life while you can so I
would like to I would encourage as part
of just the ethics of and the
professional standards of the media
number one that news be placed in
historical and statistical context that
a op-ed columnist should not use
something that blew up yesterday as
an indication of the world is getting
worse all Trent all claims about trends
have to be backed up by quote by
statistical data and by comparisons of
past periods things suck now but in many
cases think they were worst in the past
the Iraq and Syrian and civil wars are
awful the Vietnam War was worse people
have to remember that I do we have time
for another question from cyberspace are
you surprised by the change in the mood
of our society during the past 10 years
and how do you expect it to evolve in
the next five years what can change the
trend good questions I am surprised
there are in a lot of the countries that
are doing that are actually pretty rich
pretty healthy there has has been an
increase in pessimism this is not true
of countries in the developing world
that have had the most rapid rate of
growth in China the polls show people
are actually pretty optimistic about the
future but in the United States is maybe
the the most gloomy country in terms of
expectations about tomorrow and there’s
an extremely high correlation between
votes for Donald Trump and a belief that
the country is heading in the wrong
direction what can we do to to change it
well I think we do need a more numerous
and statistically savvy press and
political class and intellectual class I
think there should be far more a
statistical thinking that’s considered
to be part of everyone’s basic education
so that we aren’t misled by incidents
such as terrorism or shootings into
thinking that that is the direction of
society as a whole that is we have to
push back against cognitive biases like
the availability heuristic and also I
think education and public discourse
should remind itself of how bad things
were in the past why we have need
institutions like free speech and and
liberal democracy for all its problems
we need to be reminded of what happened
and the cultural revolution in China and
Nazi Germany and the Bolshevik
Revolution in Russia and other cases in
which we have learned from mistakes in
history part of our education should be
to realize how bad things used to be
so that we can properly evaluate the
institutions that were solutions to
those problems if we forget what they
were the problems they were originally
designed to solve we could take them for
granted and then become cynical about
them and indeed look at every gap
between utopia and the state of the
world and they’ll always be such a gap
the rule will never be perfect as a sign
of the corruption and evil of our
wait for the microphone so that people
out of the world can hear you – I’m
Sebastian senator from New Jersey Steve
it’s a beautiful talk I really like how
you give us perspective about how we
should feel will defend us believe I
want to ask the question because the
Enlightenment in some sense – succeeded
so well isn’t there a problem that the
world of knowledge has become so complex
then most people can’t understand it as
a practicing scientist you know I’m very
well trained that all the things you
talked about but if I go to some other
field it’s very hard for me to judge
anything what’s right or wrong
yeah and so in a circumstance like that
I think in the end discourse comes down
to Authority as those two reasons and so
maybe the Enlightenment has succeed is
so much that the whole idea of rational
is no longer effective in today’s
society look at autism and vaccines and
the fake news and so on so what
mechanisms do we have to go beyond that
or do you believe just the sort of
traditional idea of talking out and
we’ll all come to the right answer is
that gonna work
yeah it’s a great question but although
we should not be misled by the outbursts
of irrationality at present into
thinking that the world has gotten less
rational you’re in my college days there
was a huge growth in astrology and tarot
cards and mysticism and then you know
crystal healing and all kinds of
nonsense that came about in the year in
the 1960s so this is humans are always
vulnerable to superstition and
misinformation and lies and fake news
and conspiracy theories so these are
really not new problems but the point
you made that do we have to kind of fall
back on Authority ultimately because
none of us can okay yeah complexity none
of us can be an expert in anything but
our own field if that I mean the the
long-term global answer is you since we
do have to trust others we need ways of
knowing which authorities to trust
namely the authorities who deserve their
epistemic Authority by basing their
opinions on evidence open debate a
history of their beliefs being
challenged and so we know that there
deserve our credulity more than
alternative authorities so I think
institutions like science and journalism
have to open up their workings reinforce
their their methods of arriving at their
claims such as peer review in science
and peer achill testability
fact-checking in journalism there has to
be greater awareness that without those
mechanisms we humans are naturally going
to gravitate toward fallacy and rumor
and superstition and ignorance so that’s
to be part of the conventional wisdom
knowledge is hard you shouldn’t trust
anyone but the people that you take most
seriously are those who have a track
record of doubting their own beliefs and
constantly fact-checking and verifying
them and we scientists journalists etc
should boast when we succeed at doing
that say
we’ll look of course we’re sometimes
wrong but at least we at least we try to
fact-check at least we try to document
our sources if the other guys don’t even
do that then you know they’re they’re
full of baloney certainly don’t believe
them
you got to earn the authority I know
thank you very much [Applause]
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