pinker

I also recognize that Pinker is making a very sweeping argument in his book, one that he likely can't fully back up.

If you're interested, I highly recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker Note: I'm not speaking of genetic differences across populations, just between all people.

I don't have the book handy, but I think the topic was about genetic differences across individuals, at least I think that's what Pinker was arguing.

In The Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker postulates that one likely reason for the increase in violent crime was the first set of baby boomers becoming teenagers, with rowdy young people outnumbering older ones who might control them by quite a large margin.

Pinker overestimates hunter-gatherer violence and underestimates non-direct violence in present times (such as US covert violence).

Pinker takes a strong normative position on what constitutes violence and what does not.

Would highly recommend that one or 'How the Mind Works' by Pinker.

Pinker's The Blank Slate is a good book on the topic.

I also think expanded notions of violence are appropriate, though excluded from Pinker's analysis.

[+] Pinker says in "The Language Instinct"[1] that careful experiments show that it's nonsense.

Someone should send him a copy of Pinker's book.

For more on this topic, I recommend Steven Pinker's 2007 talk at Google.

[+] Pinker says in "The Language Instinct"[1] that careful experiments show that it's nonsense.

I'm currently reading: Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought".

In the second part of it, Pinker tries to answer the question, "Why do people get so upset over certain words?"[1] He falsifies some popular hypotheses and finds interesting commonalities across languages.

I assume you're referring to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, which has faced a number of criticisms, including his analysis of the data and what - in his mind - constitutes "violence".

Pinker overestimates hunter-gatherer violence and underestimates non-direct violence in present times (such as US covert violence).

Pinker takes a strong normative position on what constitutes violence and what does not.

Would highly recommend that one or 'How the Mind Works' by Pinker.