Nassim Taleb mentioned The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker 2 times

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2
mentions
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
  1. Junk Science: severely flawed thesis/handling of data.

    — Nassim Taleb

    2018-01-29 on amazon.com

  2. For instance, the science journalist Steven Pinker played that trick with his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, which claims a decline of violence in modern human history, and attributes this to modern institutions. My collaborator Pasquale Cirillo and I, when we put his “data” under scrutiny, found out that either he didn’t understand his own numbers (actually, he didn’t), or he had a story in mind and kept adding charts, not realizing that statistics isn’t about data but distillation, rigor, and avoiding being fooled by randomness—but no matter, the general public and his state-worshipping IYI colleagues found it impressive (for a while).

    — Nassim Taleb

    2017-12-28 in Skin in the Game