Humans Are Progressing Despite The Gloomy News Flow: Pinker

for reason, science, humanism and progress. You think that'd be an easy case to make, but we need Stephen Pinker, Harvard psychologist and professor, to tell us more and why it's been such a struggle for many people to grasp that enlightenment now is a good thing. Professor Pinker, thanks for being with us. Tell us why did you decide to write this book now? Two reasons. One of them is I kept coming here across data showing that the state of humanity has been improving in ways that that

surprised me. I knew from the work that I did for a previous book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, that measures of violence had shown declines that the rate of death in war, violent crime, rape, spousal abuse, child abuse, capital, punishment all had declined over over the centuries and decades.

But then I was pleasantly surprised to see that global poverty has fallen from about of humanity, that literacy has risen to for people under twenty five, that diseases are being decimated, that lesser time has increased, and a few people are aware of these developments. Were aware of everything that goes wrong, and we are not aware of the

gradual things that get better and better. So I wanted to put all of these data between a pair of covers just to uh counter the uh gloomy view of the world that you get from the lines, and also of course try to explain it, because I don't believe there's any mystical force that just makes things better and

better by magic. And I attributed to a few important ideas that came to the four during the second half of the eighteenth century, such as that we should use reason to analyze our situation as opposed to authority and dogma and superstition, that we should enhance science, and that we should value the lives of individual men, women and children as about the highest moral good. These ideas might sound obvious, but they're they're not bad obvious, and I

think collectively they're responsible for the progress that we've enjoyed. Yeah, what's not responsible is us, uh, the media, because you blame us for if it bleeds, it leads and sort of adding to this gloom and doom view of the world. And I'm just wondering, I mean, is that enough to drag down the discourse and sort of the misinformation that we have experienced with uh, you know, potentially ambiguous sources

of news and filtrating different economies. I mean, has that impeded the progress or is that a blip on the screen that's been over emphasized by us. Well, I certainly don't want to join into the in the within the chorus of blaming the mainstream media for for everything, because the mainstream media are short of a heck of a lot better than the alternatives. I do think there's a

there is something of a bias. That is, it is of course essential to point out the problems that occur in the suffering and the injustices and the failures, but what's more important is to be accurate and to also show where where things have gotten better and without It's not a call to balance bad news with feel good stories,

but a lot of good things have happened. They don't happen overnight, but still they're is important to have a balanced view of the world and to be aware of the solutions that actually have made people better off, not

not just the catastrophes and disasters. Professor Pinker, I want to just draw your attention to something specific because we don't necessarily get a chance to focus on it too much, which is a nuclear power and fourth generation nuclear reactors, and what if you could just expand a little bit on what some of the things you described in your

book about the potential for nuclear power. Yeah, that's uh, I have I'm very open about the uh severe problems facing the world that we have not yet solved, and climate change is one of them. But I joined in I think a growing number of science oriented environmentalists in saying that nuclear power is going to have to be part of the solution to mitigating m harmful climate change just because it's the most scalable and abundant source of

um of zero carbon energy. UH. And there is among the the pro nuclear power environmentalists, there is a bit of a debate as to whether we should continue to perfect the second generation light water reactors that have despite the Chernobyl and three miles and have had a a remarkable safety record over the last sixty years, especially compared with alternatives like coal, or whether we should accelerate towards the so called fourth generation designs, which are a variety

of different technologies, none of them in operation now, but they include possible designs where small reactors would be mass produced in shipyards and and and moved by rail or ship to locations and put it out of the way if there's a storm or a warning of an earthquake. UM, there are traveling wave reactors. There, there's a thorium reactors. Uh. These are separate from fusion, which is a whole different

family of technologies. But there is I think tremendous progress on the scale of several decades for UM even safer, even cheaper abundance sources of energy. You know, Stephen, when when people talk about enlightenment, they think of the golden ages of science where there was rapid understanding and aspect for previous analyzes and theorems, And how do you square

that with a growing movement to reject evolution? And you know, kind of push back or fund universities less um, you know, sort of anti intellectual bents that can be seen on a number of different levels. Yeah, a lot. We're living in paradoxical times because on the one hand, science is being applied to more and more areas of policy and human life. We've got evidence based policy and evidence based medicine and uh cleo metrics and moneyball. Even in sports,

we've got data driven crime. My husband loves saber metrics by the way, to carry on, Yeah, and the But at the at the same time, we have what seemed to be outbursts of the irrationality, such as anti vaccine campaigns and uh demonization of genetically modified organisms and denial

of human made climate change. The the I think the main answer is that when issues get politicized, when they become identity badges for a political coalition, almost a tribe, that's when all of the mechanisms of human psychology that we're becoming aware of that deny evidence or that actually use our rational faculties to construct the strongest case for what we already believed in the first place, dismissing counter arguments, dismissing counter evidence, that's when it goes into full tilt,

and we use our intelligence instead of getting at the truth. We use our intelligence kind of like high powered lawyers to win the case at all costs. And so we don't yet really know how to de politicize issues so that we can apply our collective rationality to coming up with the best answer as opposed to just glorifying our

side of the political divide. Have you read or sort of listened to any of the criticism of your new book, because it's interesting that it's being criticized by both those who are supposedly in favor of scientific inquiry, inquiry and reason, but also those uh that offer a more dystopian view of the future. Oh yeah, I mean it would be it would contradict my own principles if I only read the positive reviews and didn't read the negative reviews. UM

so so so yes. And there is opposition, and I expected opposition UM from from a number of sectors, from a kind of mainstream UH literary cultural academic um UH cadre of of critics and analysts who are deeply committed to the idea that that Western civilization is in decline, that all our institutions are evil and corrupt, and that it's been in decline. I mean you actually take them seriously for for hundred and fifty years. You wonder why

it hasn't top of yet. Uh. And there's an attitude of uh, a constant dudgeon and and the feeling of taking umbrage at every institution of modern society. And so for someone to like me to come along and say, well, for all its laws, you know, we are living longer, and racial prejudice is going down, and that the rights of women have increased, and poverty is going down globally, and there are fewer wars and crime is down. It's almost like vindicating the establishment that they're committed to uh

to to demonizing. So I expected that. I expected push back from the religious right, because I argue, for a morality that is thoroughly secular, depends only on human well being, doesn't depend on scripture or Messiah's or divine commandments. UH. And I expected uh um pushback on specific issues. So there's a lot of the traditional green movement is dead set against nuclear power, for example. On the other side, a lot of the American right is dead set against

the that there's even a threat of climate change. Because of mission of UM greenhouse gases. Yeah, so anyway, but a lot of opposition and I anticipated all of it. Well, we appreciate you joining us and filling us in on all of that and expressing your ideas, which are an important, uh, an important thing to note given the negative headlines that do cross every day that we bring to everybody every day.

Stephen Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, joining us from Boston, Massachusetts, here to talk about what the trade policy may mean into weigh in and what we just heard. Paresh Upata, director of Currency Strategy at A Mundi Pioneer. He joins us here in our eleven three oh studios,

Thank you so much for being here. What was your impression of what we just heard from Peter Navarrow Well, I thought what I thought was most interesting comment was the need for protectionism in UM certain sectors like he mentioned steel and aluminum, and he in fact highlighted aluminum, and there's little doubt that aluminum production the US has declined sharply. Capacit utilization aluminium is down to thirty seven. But I think what we need to see is not

just arroiffs. I mean to protect the industries one thing, but we need investments, and he describes six smelter plants that have been shut down. The problem is is that we're not seeing new investment in the aluminum industry. So if tariffs are implemented, but these aluminum UM firms start to UH invest and build new factories, then that's positive for growth. But it's unclear if we're going to see that.

But when't they invest more? If they thought that it was going to be more lucrative UM, they would, But there's a number of items that's afflicting that industry. One is the electricity costs are very high, which makes it very difficult for um Alcoa and other lumin producers to

be cost effective. So as long as their support so instead of terroriffs, I would argue that if you can give subsidies to reduce the cost of electricity, that is probably a more beneficial impact in the aluminum industry than

than terroriffs, which could ignite a trade war. I'd like to know your thoughts about what's going on with the US dollar and whether we can see you continued US dollar weakness or whether rising US interest rates in the United States UH will compel investors to be bullish the dollar. It's probably what surprises people the most. You know, we have such strong US growth fundamentals, you have a federal reserve that is sounding ever bit more hawkish, but yet

the dollar has has weakened. It reminds me of a period in the mid two thousands where we had the same thing where the FED was hiking interest rates, but the dollar declined seven percent despite FED interest rates going up another hundred twenty five basis points. I see a similar pattern happening now, and the main difference is that global growth remains pretty strong, and I think that that factor is likely to keep the dollar under pressure because we have a lot of FED rate hikes priced in.

But I think that the key theme driving the dollar for the next year or two is monetary policy convergence, where the ECB will tighten policy and the BOJ world time policy. But right now, the markets haven't priced in a lot of that. So would that be good for emerging markets? Um? Well, I think that the global backdrop for emerging markets is actually still pretty constructive. Export growth is pretty strong, and global financial conditions still remain very accommodative.

Those are great conditions for emerging markets. The big wild card is what what Peter Navarre just talked about and what we've been discussing about the prospects of trade wars. That remains the real big wild card for global growth, and that would be particularly negative for emerging markets because trade wars will definitely affect um export depend economies and other economies. You know, I'm just struggling to sort of

extrapolate out here. So if the FED gets more hawkish and raises rates more frequently, the dollar continues it's depreciating path, meaning that foreign investors are less willing to invest in this nation. Isn't this a sort of dangerous recipe allowing borrowing costs in the US to rise somewhat more than perhaps the economy can handle. Well, I think that's certainly a risk and another source of tightening for the overall economy. Um. And that's that's the other factor that I didn't describe

behind dollar weaknesses, the re emergence of twin deficits. Not only is the current account deficit rising, but in particular the budget deficit, which will rise from three point four percent of GDP last year to some estimates i've seen

nearly six percent. And the issue wance the treasury issues were likely to see with fed selling of treasuries and new issue in could lead to a crowding out of investors, and that will drive up treasury yields and borrowing costs for the US at just this at just the wrong time, exactly at a time, um, when when we've entered a mature phase of the U S economic cycle. Um, But we're receiving the stimulus at the time that we probably shouldn't be seeing it. You know, I'm wondering whether I'm

over reading one particular market action today. I'm looking at five year forward break events. Basically, this is a measure of future traders expectations of inflation over the next five years. It's risen to the highest since twenty thirteen. If you look at longer term measures of inflation, they've actually been declining. This seems to me a set up for stag inflation. Do you think that we are heading more toward that

potential reality? I would say that unlikely to see that at this point in time, only because the FETE has definitely communicated that the objective of form of of of Monterrey policy is gradual rate hikes and as long as we see twenty five basis points you know, per quarter.

I think that that reduces the risk of stagflation um, but certainly it's it's worth monitoring, especially with the prospects of trade wars and does that start to hurt um growth and UM and inflation is really the big wild card. It looks like all the trends inflation and wages seem to be on this mild upward trend. But if we were to see real surprise to the upside, then that might force the FED to tighten more aggressively. Then the

risk of stagflation truly increase. I want to thank you for spending time with us and coming into our eleven three oh studios. Pereschial Patia is the director of Currency Strategy at a Mundi Pioneer. Are we getting closer to nuclear or well, many say yes and here to talk about that and frankly the companies uh that corporate role in this sort of escalation of nuclear tensions is Beatrice Finn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

based in Geneva, Switzerland. She joins us here in our eleven three year studios. She also has one a Noble Peace prize and she keeps it on her manta face. I'm sure. Thank you so much, Beatrice for being here with us. You recently put out a report outlining, uh, the corporate role in nuclear arms. Can you sort of

lay out what you found there? Well, we see a very worrying international trend where the nuclear arms states are modernizing their arsenals and frankly threatening to use nuclear weapons. And when Trump says that he wants more usable nuclear weapons, there are companies behind that that produced them. Um and companies like Honeywell, Boweing Airbus for example, that are making these weapons. And of course there's also a huge number of financial institutions that are providing them with the money

to do so. So we've been tracking this and seeing that last year there was an additional eighty one billion dollars made available for new weapons production. Just real quickly does the government pay, like for example, with the US government pay Boeing or Honeywell to develop something in advance? And are they doing so right now? Yeah, it's huge defense contracts that involve these kind of modernization programs of nuclear arsenals that are being put out to these companies.

So people are making profit out of these indiscriminate in the inhumane weapons of mass destruction that could end us all. Really um back in the this is obviously before, way before you were born. But the President Eisenhower, in his farewell speech to the nation, spoke about the potential danger of the influence in government of the military industrial complex. Uh. Eisenhower was also seemingly an advocate that no private industry

should profit from the manufacture of armaments. Do you believe that we use a flawed lens to look at the effects of the armaments industry? And I'm what I mean by that, particularly a nuclear power nuclear in weapons, not nuclear powers, that's a completely different thing, is that they provide a level of safety which may sound rhetorically coherent but in reality doesn't necessarily work that way. I wonder

what your thoughts are about that exactly. I mean, these weapons put us at the brink of war all the time. We've seen throughout the Cold War, but also after the Cold War, how close we've been to nuclear war and nuclear use, and the consequence of that would be devastating, with hundreds of thousands, maybe million, of casualties, long term impact both on human health, on the environ but also

of course the business sector. Right. But I guess I guess I was going with this is that, um, yes, they sound rhetorically horrible and they are nuclear weapons, but that they provide a kind of context that then allows for the escalation of what you might describe as conventional warfare, whether that is using chemical weapons in Syria or whether that is using terrorists bombs to you know, blow up

in the cin civilians. In other words, it gives you that kind of cover that says, well, we can't use nuclear weapons, so we're going to use these other things. But they kill people nonetheless, absolutely, And I think the entire weapons industry is a problem, but these weapons are really at another level in a way, with the possibility

to in just a few seconds wipe out an entire city. Well, some people would argue that, you know, nuclear weapons have actually prevented another world war since their advent, and basically that the threat of using them has actually created peace. Uh. And a lot of people would say that if a country does fall behind with respect to modernizing their their stashes of nuclear weapons, that they could make it more likely that there could be some kind of conflict. I mean,

what do you say to that? Argument, well, we're the threat of using new weapons is carried out all the time. We have big submarines and airplanes going around with these weapons and sort of hartrigal alert, and it also means that there could be a risk of an accident misunderstanding. The terrence will not always hold up. One day, we will see new weapons being used. We have seen many examples,

for example, where it hasn't prevented war conflict. We are have been that brink of war with North Korea right now. When you talk with companies, when you talk to Boeing or honeywell, what do they say and what do you say to them? These companies and also the financial institutions and invested and they don't like to admit that they are involved in this and trying to sort of d vate. So I think it's really important for the public and

for consumers to know what they are producing. And I think that the report that we produced is to also increase transparency and let consumers know where their money goes and where they're punching funds are being used for. So I think it's um it's for us, it's really important to have this dialogue with the companies. Also and to sort of try to find out what they are producing and and expose that in a way to make the

consumers be able to choose. Do you think that the efforts on the part of US presidents, at least in the past to reduce the nuclear stockpile, which really every president has done, have been matched by the efforts, let's say, on the part of the Russian government. I mean, we've seen tensions go up and down. We've seen some huge progress. We saw that in the eighties, for example, we saw a huge Paris in the sixties after the Cuban missile crisis.

Right now we see a very negative trend. So I think that there's US a lot of concern right now that we're going in the wrong direction in the nuclear arm states. We saw put in last week with an aggressive statement showing off new types of missiles. Of course, the US, the Trump new Nuclear Posture Review um shows uh an attempt to lower the bar for using nuclear weapons and developed more usable nuclear weapons. And we see all the new Crown states right now in a very

negative trend. But we also see a lot of countries going in the other direction. We negotiate a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons last year and seeing a lot of leadership from around the world and countries rejecting this weapon. Beatrice Finn, thank you so much for joining us. Really a pleasure, although you know I'm gonna be worrying about armageddon for the rest of the day. But other than that, it was a pleasure. Beatrice Finn, executive director of the International

Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons based in Geneva. She is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Or thanks you for coming in oil. A lot going on here. I was struck by the I e A. The projection that US shale will account for about half of all new demand within the next ten years. Vincent Piazza, senior equity energy analysts in global sector leader for Bloomberg Intelligence, joins us. Now, how does the increasing US production and frankly exports to

the rest of the world affect oil prices in your estimation? So, I think what we have talked about from time to time when over the last several years is the resilience

of US oil production. And if you take a look at where we bottomed in production of the last couple of years, somewhere around eight point five eight point six million barrels we've driven this higher from the recovery will likely come in somewhere around ten point seven almost eleven million barrel UH per day in eighteen UH and that will likely shift higher to about eleven million barrels in

twenty nine. So you're seeing this strong resilient growth in the US output, especially from unconventional resources from the Permian and to a lesser extent from the baking and also UH from the Eagle forward. In general, the liquids dominant plays. But Lisa, it's not just an oil or liquids driven story. It's also a natural gas story as well. Uh So across the hydro carbon chain UM natural gas from apple Chia,

also natural gas from the Permian as well. So you're seeing a renaissance not just in the crude oil side, but also in UH natural gas from various plays, and that leads to growth in len G exports and also pipeline exports to other countries such as Mexico. Who sets the price. What's the price setting mechanism for oil? And is it different for oil? And it is from let's say natural gas and liqui five Naturally it's it's it's

the standard demand versus supply really UM. And what we've seen here from the US perspective is this strong growth UH in crude oil output and that has placed sort of a limiting factor on the surge UH in crude oil prices. In general. What you're seeing here is capacity that that's being taken offline in other parts of the world, namely OPEC, not having as much of an impact relative to history UM as it is as it is today. Uh. I read a story yesterday on the Bloomberg that I

thought was kind of interesting. Uh. It was members of OPEC senior officials saying that they were speaking to hedge funds down at the SARAH conference in Houston it's going on right now, and UH they were concerned they felt like hedge funds didn't understand their industry. Uh. Did you see that story? UM? I did not, but it wouldn't

surprise me, right. I mean, given the volatility and the cyclicality of oil and gas UM, there are a lot of factors that go into the equation, and it is a conundrum for not just UH energy specific hedge funds, but generalists as well. So what do OPEC members want investors to be seeing that they're not right now, I think the history of OPEC has been um a sense that while there may be constraints put around UM output, that there always been some leakage on output. In other words,

compliance has always been difficult. And what they want investors to appreciate that they seem pretty steadfast in their commitment to controlling the output from their side. What I think many have misunderstood and what we had b I have we've spoken about, is this resurgence in crude oil, this resilience in crude oil production, not only crude oil, but also natural gas production because of the shorter cycle nature

of unconventional output. What about the input costs and how that relates to those refiners and those in the mid stream of production. Because we've heard a lot about how low input cost means that you've got a nice fat marchin for if you're running an oil refinery. Well, those differentials have now narrowed somewhat given the given the tighter balances in Cushing, it used to be wider difference in

the spread between Brent and w T i UH. That has now consolidated, and now you're in a seasonal period where refiners are going through their traditional maintenance getting ready for the big driving season. Getting ready for the big driving season. Um, so you do hab refiners coming offline. In general, that differential now is somewhere around three dollars. It was almost twice that at one point last year.

But given the output surge in crude oil, uh, that differential seems to be where will likely likely be in the near term. All right, I want to thanks very much for being here and as always appreciate the thoughts and experience of Vincent Piazza. He is our senior equity energy analyst and global sector leader for Bloomberg in intelligence. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts,

SoundCloud or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abramo. It's one before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide on Bloomberg Radio.