history-society

The data is surprising: per capita, you were far more likely to die violently in medieval Europe than in the 20th century's world wars. Steven Pinker's 'Better Angels' builds the empirical case that moral progress is real — and asks what's actually driving it.

The claim seems counterintuitive given the headlines: violence, measured properly, is at historic lows. But critics from Taleb to Gray argue the methodology is flawed and the lull is temporary. Here's what the best evidence actually shows.

The per capita rate of violent death has fallen dramatically across human history — from hunter-gatherer societies to the present. That trend is real and documented. Why it happened, whether it will continue, and what threatens to reverse it remain genuinely open questions.

Most group decisions fail not because the individuals are dumb but because the structure is wrong. This synthesis maps the design principles that turn crowds into cognitive machines.

Condorcet proved something startling: if each voter is just slightly more likely to be correct than wrong, majority voting reliably converges on the right answer. Democracy as knowledge aggregation, not just preference aggregation.

No ant understands the colony. Yet colonies find optimal paths, regulate temperature, and manage resource allocation with startling efficiency. Swarm intelligence is what happens when local rules produce global wisdom.