{"id":94517,"date":"2016-08-19T06:32:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T10:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=94517"},"modified":"2016-08-19T06:32:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-19T10:32:01","slug":"the-stats-that-will-cure-humanitys-worst-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/08\/the-stats-that-will-cure-humanitys-worst-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stats That Will Cure Humanity\u2019s Worst Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
August 19, 2016<\/div>
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By WallStreetDaily.com<\/u><\/a> \"The<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about the bull market in pessimism.<\/p>\n

We humans are wired to love bad news. It\u2019s part of our survival instinct \u2014 and if properly understood, it can help prolong our lives.<\/p>\n

As psychologist Daniel Kahneman has written, \u201cBy shaving a few hundredths of a second from the time needed to detect a predator, this circuit improves the animal\u2019s odds of living long enough to reproduce.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no denying that the news is full of evidence which suggests we\u2019re witnessing the unraveling of this human experiment.<\/p>\n

Terrorism abounds. Mass shooters proliferate. Civil authority seemingly targets certain classes of citizens. We argue about whose lives matter. \u201cProtestors\u201d riot and burn their own cities. A major party presidential candidate \u201cjokes\u201d about the assassination of his rival.<\/p>

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We\u2019re off to a rough start in the 21st century \u2013 an era so far marked by the deadliest and most destructive attack on American soil in our history and a destabilizing, once-every-hundred-years financial crisis and economic downturn.<\/p>\n

The former unleashed the worst tendencies of our national security state, reflected domestically in the sacrifice of basic civil rights such as privacy, and internationally in the form of the endless global War on Terror.<\/p>\n

The latter exposed the craven incompetence of fiscal and monetary authorities, whose responses were and are shaped by a neoliberal Washington Consensus, serving American Empire, enriching the rich, leaving Main Street to suffer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s real, this dystopian siege.<\/em><\/p>\n

Equally real, however, is the fact that over the last several centuries of human history, violence has steadily declined.<\/p>\n

That, as another psychologist, Steven Pinker, writes in The Better Angels of Our Nature<\/em>, \u201cmay be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are, according to Pinker, living in a more peaceful period than any other.<\/p>\n

\u201cNews,\u201d Pinker recently told Julia Belluz of Vox<\/em>, \u201cis a misleading way to understand the world. It\u2019s always about events that happened and not about things that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pinker also notes that after the 2011 publication of The Better Angels of Our Nature,<\/em> rates of violence continue to decline.<\/p>\n

News is a drug, and the mainstream media are your dealers.<\/em><\/p>\n

They know we\u2019re wired to pay attention to negative news. They use this knowledge to draw our attention to their advertisers.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not necessarily lying about the world. All that bad stuff is actually happening.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just that there\u2019s no context. The picture is incomplete, unbalanced.<\/p>\n

But now we know. And your mindset is critical.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk about some data in support of the conclusion that humanity is headed in a positive direction, thanks in many parts to innovation and advances in exponential technologies.<\/p>\n

In a June 27, 2016, piece for Singularity Hub, engineer, physician and entrepreneur Peter Diamandis explained \u201cWhy the World Is Better Than You Think in 10 Powerful Charts<\/strong><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are the 10 conclusions supported by the data that Diamandis cites:<\/p>\n