Response Paper for Module 7*

*This collection of Response Papers consists of my reflections on the weekly assignments for my Applied Clinical Psychology course I took on January 2023.

January 12, 2023

Our World in Data (2022) by Max Roser

“The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.” The author argues that these statements do not contradict, which I think is true, it is a valid argument. But I’d say that it’s not a sound one, as I don’t think the second statement is true. The fact that there are positive developments, is a good thing, but does not prove the world is objectively any better than it used to be.

Roser picks child mortality rate as a measure and compares it with what it used to be. It’s great that child mortality rate is lower, but this can’t be a measure to claim that the world is generally a better place. This is an example of cherry-picking. To be able to claim whether theworld is better is only possible by comparing every single data, we’d have to consider everything. And that wouldn’t be possible. Just because there is progress in some areas, doesn’t mean that the world is overall a better place. I think the article overall commits chronological

snobbery, or the appeal to novelty fallacy which explains the idea that

Besides, the fact that child mortality rates are lower only proves that our technologies, medical systems, and diets have improved. It doesn’t prove that people behave more morally, which is why it can’t be used to assert that the world is a better place overall.

Also, we shouldn’t view progressiveness as a good thing in and of itself. Simply having progressed doesn’t mean we’re better. Holocaust happened less than a hundred years ago, after hundreds of years of human progress. The human potential to do bad isn’t going to go anywhere, it’s just a matter of circumstances that the most ordinary people commit horrible crimes, as demonstrated by countless studies and discussed as well by Hannah Arendt in her famous Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

In the 1970s, French intellectuals among whom were Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, signed a petition to lower the age of consent laws and normalize sex with a minor. For these intellectuals, the idea of sexual freedom meant a complete freedom of sexual restrictions. To them, these restrictions were results of a traditional ideology that needed to be dismantled. So, sex with a minor was okay in the name of progressivism.

I agree that the world can be much better, but don’t think it will. One can oppose by saying this is such a pessimistic view, to which I would say is a realistic one and being able to make real change depends on acknowledging this. Holding onto a utopian idea helps no one.

Also, here’s a thought experiment. Imagine two hypothetical situations where in the first, a hundred children die due to a natural cause such as a disease. In the second, only one child is molested and brutally murdered by another human. Which of these is worse?

The fact that we pause here is proof that our understanding of morality isn’t about numbers.

There is no way to determine whether the world is a better place by quantifiable methods. Because morality is the domain of human behavior and the human condition is not quantifiable.

[Follow-up thought: But on the other hand, also as a response to the common distinction of evil as nature-made or human-made, from a purely positivist reductionist perspective, the human kind is a consequence of evolution and nature, hence, every ‘’wrongdoing’’ it commits should qualify as a natural disaster that does not, or cannot, contain any evil. Such a distinction presupposes consciousness and free will.]

Some Consequences of Having Too Little (2012) by Shah et al.

The article examines some behavioral consequences of scarcity. It claims that poor people behave in ways that reinforce poverty and that having less results in greater focus. Not only behaviors such as playing the lottery, overborrowing, saving too little are consequences of having less, but it also reinforces that state. The attention shifts to urgent/short-term needs.

Researchers assigned participants budgets and tested their behavior through a number of games. I thought it was interesting the participants behaved in the way they did even though these were just games and the budgets weren’t even real. Also, I think the research idea was a very original one, and never would have thought of looking at poverty’s cognitive and behavioral consequences.

Limitations/Critique:

References

Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.