THE VIDEO SHELF · human progress
Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers | Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker's TED talk presents data on homicide, war, poverty and pollution to argue that the world has improved over the past decades. He frames progress as problem-solving, not inevitability.
Why HN readers recommended it
Cited as a data-backed counter to doom and pessimism about the state of the world.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- TED
- Topic
- human progress
- Format
- talk
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 6
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2018–2022
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
A quick google search puts the average number of deaths due to car crashes at 3,287 per day [1]. Another one gives me a list of four deaths attributed to autonomous vehicles [2]. Not four per day. Just four. Ever. Memory leads me to recall …
JoshCole on Hacker News · 2018-05
In Tesla that crashed in Autopilot mode sped up before hitting truck: police"Is the world getting better or worse? A look at the numbers | Steven Pinker" [VIDEO] tl;dr: it's getting better. We're living longer, homicides are down, fewer wars and autocracies, etc..
blippage on Hacker News · 2021-07
In Americans' life ratings reach record high
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.