The basic idea is that if the Cuban Missile Crisis(or numerous other similar events) had ended badly the conclusion would have been reversed. And according to people who were there, such as President John F Kennedy, it very well could have ended badly.
I haven’t looked at the original criticism, but the “basic idea” as you describe it seems to introduce a source of bias: we have more visibility of luckily avoided ways in which things could have gone badly for recent events than for older ones, so if you try to take those into account then you will skew the change over time in the direction opposite to the one Pinker claims.
(If you also look for unluckily avoided ways in which things could have gone well then maybe the bias goes away.)
This has actually been trenchantly criticized on statistical grounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
The basic idea is that if the Cuban Missile Crisis(or numerous other similar events) had ended badly the conclusion would have been reversed. And according to people who were there, such as President John F Kennedy, it very well could have ended badly.
I haven’t looked at the original criticism, but the “basic idea” as you describe it seems to introduce a source of bias: we have more visibility of luckily avoided ways in which things could have gone badly for recent events than for older ones, so if you try to take those into account then you will skew the change over time in the direction opposite to the one Pinker claims.
(If you also look for unluckily avoided ways in which things could have gone well then maybe the bias goes away.)