I read Stephen Pinker books, including this one on violence.
So it is why I know that jerk John Gray hasn't really read the book. Or read the book but didn't really read it.
You couldn't browse through a book and pretended you comprehend it. Study (citation later) shows that browsing is just skipping, and part of the information loss is just lost without being filled in by the gap filling capacity of the brain. it is not the same as looking at a picture with it partially covered up.
"He sees Pinkerites as similarly trying to assuage some existential angst by fetishizing data, reading into it meaning that isn't there. “Lacking any deeper faith and incapable of living with doubt,” Gray writes, “it is only natural that believers in reason should turn to the sorcery of numbers.”
There you have it. “The sorcery of numbers.” The postmodernist mentality at its worst: there’s no such thing as truth. Don’t even try to understand reality by examining evidence for what’s actually happening. Instead, place reliance on – what? – John Gray’s deeper wisdom, uncontaminated by data? Magicians and sorcery indeed!"
The more I read about postmodernists, the less I like about it, and those who wrote papers and books with that premise.
The strong preference for scientific minded writers, who base knowledge and concepts on study of data and reality, instead of make stuff up like philosophers and called it wisdom.