![]() Ridley hasn’t made anywhere near a strong enough argument to dismiss contrary opinions so casually. And Ridley fails on that score in many ways. Even then, it’s nice if you show a little humility. Frankly, he’s arrogant, and in my book arrogance is only barely tolerated when you’ve satisfied one huge condition: you are absolutely correct, no ifs-ands-or-buts. The first thing that began to exasperate me within a few pages was his attitude. Still, I wanted to give him a chance.īut the book - even though I couldn’t be bothered to finish it - was worse. The review in the Economist made me think Ridley is fairly dismissive of some problems, so my expectation that he’s got something fundamentally new to say is pretty low. I haven’t seen any writer examine the totality of these problems and address how difficult things might get if we’re hit by them all at once, more or less. ![]() I’m fairly optimistic that in the long term humans are pretty good at ratcheting up to a better future, but my gut reaction to the wide array of problems facing today’s civilization is that the cumulative effect might trigger a global “reset button” handing us a new Dark Age, relatively speaking, within a few generations. ![]() I wanted to read this because of the excellent review in the Economist: Getting better all the time: The biological, cultural and economic forces behind human progress.īut I started out skeptical. ![]()
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