>>11764363His points go against many peoples narratives and I'd say those people are justified. E.g. on the left, his "overly positive" outlook is seen to have a stifling effect that argues for a preservation of the status quo (e.g. as far as power structures are concerned). Those issues stem from a different people evaluating facts differently.
E.g., as an introductory example, we may select for fast running bunnies and in 50 years have a breed of superfast bunnies - but we may ask what the point of this is.
Now on a more serious (Heideggerian) note: The first persons to own a car were able to take on work many kilometers/miles from their home and you might naively say "wow, humanty was inventive and has progressed!!" But car production leads to an alteration of culture and eventually people working kilometers from where they resides becomes common place and expected, and then we end up in a world where (because norms have been impacted by the car invention) people many jobs aren't even available in working range anymore.
That's one example where having a naive approach to "improvement" misguides you. Or e.g. we might push life expectancy from 80 to 130 and see that as an "improvement" but there's an array of philosophical questions underlying such a judgement.
Similarly, making phones and in effect changing humanities brains by having 3 year olds look at screens for hours of the day. Or (classical anti-capitalist angle), having improved efficiency not leading to less work, but just more production (disassociated from population levels, i.e. demand, that could be regulated down but aren't)
From that angle, you can easily argue that Pinker's rhetoric is harmful. He gives talks about how fucking fast our bunnies are. Amazing! Look at those bunnies. Let's put more energy in making bunnies even faster.
I don't know if one can judge people like him as frauds as from afar we can't judge if he genuinely believes everything he says.
