Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
It's nice to hear someone say many of the same things I've been saying, and have the data to back it up.
We are all tempted to listen to whoever says what we want to hear - don't I know it! ;-)

But I am surprised at you when you say he has the data to back it up, you who go so much for science and searching for and proving the truth which, I admit, is a very sound principle.

SP is making a rather sweeping statement that violence is decreasing all over the world. Even if he actually means the Western world, you'd need substantial evidence for such a claim, and someone else would have had to repeat your research with the same result, right?

Now, if you had had a proper reserach, saying investigaitng murders through time, or wars through time, or laws through time, in a specific area, and you had sources (rather than a source) to back up your findings, then there would be reason for others to repeat that result and thereby confirm it.

But SP is all over the place, with all kinds of violence, here and there through history, both in times with written accounts, and in times where no such material is available. And it is all based on two sources whose results are not themselves confirmed, FBI files, and unnamed un-governmental sources (which government?)

Steve P comes across as convincing, because he is convinced. But there is not much evidence for his claims, and I wonder how he is not bothered that there is, as he says, no explanation for why it should be so. He offers various psychological or philosophical explanations, which I are think are unsuited to explain such a claim on their own. I would like substantial social changes to back it up.