I agree that Pinker’s chapter on existential risk is an extremely bad interlude in an otherwise excellent book.
Having not read the book, I’m curious why you think this chapter is exceptional rather than perhaps revealing a problem with the other chapters you didn’t notice, perhaps because you’re not so close to the topic that you can notice the way Pinker makes mistakes?
I have a pretty good knowledge of some of the other issues talked about in the book, including climate change, resource depletion, population, trends in living standards over time, and I thought he was on point or nearly on point with all of them. He just goes completely off the rails in the ex risk bit
Sidenote: The general phenomenon you mentioned is sometimes referred to as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect describes the phenomenon of an expert believing news articles on topics outside of their field of expertise even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the expert’s field of expertise are error ridden and full of misunderstanding.
Having not read the book, I’m curious why you think this chapter is exceptional rather than perhaps revealing a problem with the other chapters you didn’t notice, perhaps because you’re not so close to the topic that you can notice the way Pinker makes mistakes?
I have a pretty good knowledge of some of the other issues talked about in the book, including climate change, resource depletion, population, trends in living standards over time, and I thought he was on point or nearly on point with all of them. He just goes completely off the rails in the ex risk bit
Sidenote: The general phenomenon you mentioned is sometimes referred to as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.