Damian Counsell

I think that's your bias. He comes across okay to me, I'm not a fan of Hasan's but he usually has a decent grasp of detail and rarely embarrasses himself in these situations.

This isn't a matter of bias; it's a matter of facts. He doesn't understand basic maths. He could have tried to make some kind of case about the most meaningful metrics of poverty or the effect on wellbeing of inequality, but his grasp here is stuck at "small vs far away".

Maybe I'm missing something but I thought the thrust of his argument was the numbers in absolute poverty shift dramatically depending on where you set the definition.

No one is arguing with that. Pinker certainly isn't. That's a completely trivial claim. On the substantive point in question and the theme of the book in general, Hasan doesn't have the first idea what he's talking about.

Maybe viewing this snippet in isolation doesn't work, I don't know his book or the context in which the discussion is based.

This has nothing to do with context. A quarter is smaller than a half regardless of the context. Saying that the symbol for a quarter has a number 4 in it so a quarter is bigger than a half, because the symbol for a half only has a number 2 in it, is wrong whatever the context.

Right. What you're saying (not putting on a Cathy Newman voice) is even though there's more (because populations increase) there's less as a percentage. Okay got that but I thought Hasan was disputing even this (i.e. the actual number) if you change the definition?

You can't make meaningful comparisons if you shift the goalposts. You can't talk about trends if you shift the goalposts. You can't talk about targets or thresholds if you shift the goalposts. And the goalposts were set at the *start* of the collection of data.

So a billion added to poverty since 1981 isn't a problem?

Fine, nobody is debating that. But surely rising of absolute is a cause of concern? Doesn't matter to you? I mean even that should go down isn't it?

But that's not what is being discussed. Hasan is arguing with Pinker on Pinker's terms and losing on them. Pinker has never claimed that poverty isn't a concern. He's cited very specific statistical claims and Hasan isn't refuting them; he's simply failing to grasp them.

And really, the point is not at all complex. This IS embarrassing. And it puts Pinker in an awkward spot. Telling your interviewer « you are clueless, man » never goes down well. While trying to make your claim without stating this is hopelessly ineffective.

I’ve noticed a recent trend of people trying to paint Pinker as someone whose pushing some ideology, when in reality he’s a scientist trying to share knowledge You see this especially with people who are hyper critical of his book ‘Enlightenment Now’

It's what happens when "gotcha" journalism comes face to face with grown-up academia. There's only one winner.

Unfortunately that winner is ignorance. Just look at the state of politics in most of the world. A big downturn has led to a rightward shift, doing the sort of things that make the economy and depression worse. The media and education systems have a lot of answer for.

You're conflating; it wasn't my point. The winner in my point was grown-up academia.